34 Powerful and Shareable Easter Quotes — Unlocking the Bible

For thousands of years, Christians around the world celebrate Easter by rejoicing in the risen Christ. We grieve Jesus’s last hours that were marked by betrayal, humiliation, torture, and agony. We humble ourselves in gratitude for his innocent blood shed for our behalf.

And most gloriously, we rejoice at his victory over death and the grave!

Christ’s victory is our victory. Our debts are paid, and our tarnished records are wiped clean before a just, holy God. Believers inherit his victory over death through faith in the resurrected Savior King.

As we ponder these quotes about Christ’s death and resurrection, may we hold them close to our hearts and apply them to our lives as redeemed sons and daughters of the risen King. He is risen; he is risen indeed!

Sin

“Never did God so manifest His hatred of sin as in the death and suffering of His only begotten Son. Hereby He showed Himself unappeasable to sin, and that it was impossible for Him to be at peace with it.” ― Jonathan Edwards

“[Jesus] became the final Priest and the final Sacrifice. Sinless, he did not offer sacrifices for himself. Immortal, he never has to be replaced. Human, he could bear human sins. Therefore he did not offer sacrifices for himself; he offered himself as the final sacrifice. There will never be the need for another.” ― John Piper

“Thou Son of the Blessed, what grace was manifest in Thy condescension! Grace brought Thee down from heaven; Grace stripped Thee of Thy glory; Grace made Thee poor and despicable; Grace made Thee bear such burdens of sin, such burdens of sorrow, such burdens of God’s curse as are unspeakable.” ― John Bunyan

The Blood of Jesus

“The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn to the suffering and death of Christ—the blood of Christ. This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death.” ― John Piper

“God declares to us that Jesus Christ, who once had His side pierced, today has His heart open, as it were, that we may have assurance of the love that He bears us; that as He once had His arms fastened to the cross, now He has them wide open to draw us to Himself; and that as once He shed his blood, so today He wishes us to be plunged within it.” ― John Calvin

“I thought I could have leaped from earth to heaven at one spring when I first saw my sins drowned in the Redeemer’s blood.” ― Charles Spurgeon

“We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ… It is not earned,but accepted… Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.” ― Oswald Chambers

“Christ is so in love with holiness, that at the price of His blood He will buy it for us.” ― John Flavel

The Cross

“By the cross we know the gravity of sin and the greatness of God’s love toward us.” ― John Chrysostom

“All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.” ― Oswald Chambers

“Only at the cross do we see the love of God without ambiguity. Here is God’s farthest reach, His most ambitious rescue effort. God personally came to our side of the chasm, willing to suffer for us and with us. At the cross His love burst upon the world with unmistakable clarity.” ― Erwin Lutzer

“The cross stands high above the opinions of men and to that cross all opinions must come at last for judgment.” ― A.W. Tozer

“The Cross is the vindication of God. The Cross is the vindication of the character of God. The Cross not only shows the love of God more gloriously than anything else, it shows His righteousness, His justice, His holiness, and all the glory of His eternal attributes…” ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God’s love, they cannot escape the cross… When we suffer there will sometimes be mystery. Will there also be faith? Yes. If our attention is focused more on the cross and on the God of the cross than on the suffering itself.” ― D.A. Carson

“Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.” ― Horatius Bonar

Love

“It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will… it was his love for sinners like me.” ― D.A. Carson

“Behold, what manner of love is this, that Christ should be arraigned and we adorned, that the curse should be laid on His head and the crown set on ours.” ― Thomas Watson

“Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; but the Father, for love!” ― Octavius Winslow

“God must either inflict punishment or assume it. And He chose the latter course.” ― Erwin Lutzer

“Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to—because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.” ― Philip Yancey

Christ’s Resurrection

“The message of Easter is not that Jesus is alive; it is so much more. The message of Easter is that Jesus has risen!” ― Colin Smith

“Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there.” ― Clarence W. Hall

“The resurrection was God the Father’s way of authenticating all of the truths that were declared by Jesus.” ― R.C. Sproul

“We understand and acknowledge that the Resurrection has placed a glorious crown upon all of Christ’s sufferings!” ― A.W. Tozer

“The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is one of the best attested facts on record. There were so many witnesses to behold it, that if we do in the least degree receive the credibility of men’s testimonies, we cannot and we dare not doubt that Jesus rose from the dead.” ― Charles Spurgeon

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time. ― Martin Luther

“Paul put all of his eggs in the basket of resurrection. If that didn’t happen, then Christianity is just a sham.” ― John Piper

“After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“And He departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.” ― Augustine

Salvation

“Salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.” ― A.W. Tozer

“Come, and see the victories of the cross. Christ’s wounds are thy healings, His agonies thy repose, His conflicts thy conquests, His groans thy songs, His pains thine ease, His shame thy glory, His death thy life, His sufferings thy salvation.” ― Matthew Henry

“It is at the cross where God’s Law and God’s grace are both most brilliantly displayed, where His justice and His mercy are both glorified. But it is also at the cross where we are most humbled. It is at the cross where we admit to God and to ourselves that there is absolutely nothing we can do to earn or merit our salvation.” ― Jerry Bridges

Joy

“No man shall ever take from me the joy that Christ rose from the dead.” ― Charles Spurgeon

“The resurrection of Christ is the most joyful event that ever came to pass.” ― Jonathan Edwards

via 34 Powerful and Shareable Easter Quotes — Unlocking the Bible

What are the proofs for the resurrection of Jesus? (Video)

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7 Questions to See if Easter Really Matters to You

Yesterday, we gathered with our churches and families on Easter Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. I trust you had a great day. What Easter really means to us, though, is not determined by what we did yesterday; it’s how we live every other day. Use these questions to decide how much the resurrection really means to you:

1. Do you so believe that Jesus is alive that you’ve chosen to follow Him by trusting Him and turning from your wrong? If you haven’t taken this step yet, the resurrection doesn’t mean much to you.  If you do want to follow Jesus, check out this site for information on how to do so.  Contact me so I can pray for you.
2. Does a relationship with God affect your everyday life? Do you seek Him everyday through His Word and prayer? Do you make choices with the desire to please Him? If you focus on God only a few days each year, you may have celebrated something yesterday that really doesn’t matter to you.
3. Do you believe that you can turn away from sins that seem to control you? Easter reminds us that God can overcome anything – including death – so He can surely empower us to break our bondages to sin. If you think you’re just “stuck” and can never win, you need to let the truth of the resurrection sink in some more.
4. Do you trust that God can restore broken relationships? The resurrection is about renewal – about life that arises out of death. It’s a reminder that God can take the most broken situation and put it together again. If you’ve quit trying to restore a relationship, you may have forgotten about resurrection power.
5. Have you given up? Even followers of Jesus struggle with discouragement and depression. Even we reach the proverbial “end of our rope” at times. If you’re there and have decided there’s no hope, I plead with you to go back to the resurrection story again. It’s filled with hope . . . and expectation . . . and possibility . . . and power . . . and victory.
6. Do you tell others about Jesus? The sacrificial death and victorious resurrection of Jesus make Christianity unique. We have hope that no one else has. If we can keep that good news to ourselves, though, it must not mean much to us. Genuine belief in resurrection victory cannot be silenced.
7. Do you fear death? I don’t particularly want to die today, and I certainly don’t want it to hurt when I do die, but I don’t fear death for a second. That’s what a strong belief in the resurrection and heaven can do for you. Unwarranted fear of death shows you haven’t rested in the resurrection yet.

Be honest. Does the resurrection story really affect your life beyond yesterday? 

Source: 7 Questions to See if Easter Really Matters to You

How Easter Killed My Faith in Atheism | WSJ

One by one, my objections evaporated. I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection. In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus.

Earlier this week, humorist Ricky Gervais presented his arguments for atheism and why he thought he was a better Christian than many Christians. In this follow-up essay, writer Lee Strobel offers his defense of Easter.

It was the worst news I could get as an atheist: my agnostic wife had decided to become a Christian. Two words shot through my mind. The first was an expletive; the second was “divorce.”

I thought she was going to turn into a self-righteous holy roller. But over the following months, I was intrigued by the positive changes in her character and values. Finally, I decided to take my journalism and legal training (I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune) and systematically investigate whether there was any credibility to Christianity.

Maybe, I figured, I could extricate her from this cult.

I quickly determined that the alleged resurrection of Jesus was the key. Anyone can claim to be divine, but if Jesus backed up his claim by returning from the dead, then that was awfully good evidence he was telling the truth.

For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn’t merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle.

Was Jesus really executed? In my opinion, the evidence is so strong that even atheist historian Gerd Lüdemann said his death by crucifixion was “indisputable.”

Was Jesus’ tomb empty? Scholar William Lane Craig points out that its location was known to Christians and non-Christians alike. So if it hadn’t been 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 before.

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Historical Evidence for the Resurrection

The Bible says that Christ’s resurrection is the pattern that those who believe in Him will follow. In other words, those who believe in Christ will one day be resurrected by God just as He was. The resurrection proves that those who trust in Christ will not be subject in eternity to a half-human existence in just their souls. It proves that our bodies will be resurrected one day. Because of the resurrection of Christ, believers will one day experience, forever, the freedom of having a glorified soul and body.

 

The historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ is very good. Scholars such as William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Gary Habermas, and others have done an especially good job of detailing that evidence.1 It is the aim of this article to offer a sort of synthesis of some of their key points and show the strength of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Christ.

A method commonly used today to determine the historicity of an event is “inference to the best explanation.” William Lane Craig describes this as an approach where we “begin with the evidence available to us and then infer what would, if true, provide the best explanation of that evidence.” In other words, we ought to accept an event as historical if it gives the best explanation for the evidence surrounding it.

When we look at the evidence, the truth of the resurrection emerges very clearly as the best explanation. There is no other theory that even come close to accounting for the evidence. Therefore, there is solid historical grounds for the truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

It is worth pointing out that in establishing the historicity of the resurrection, we do not need to assume that the New Testament is inspired by God or even trustworthy. While I do believe these things, we are going to focus here on three truths that even critical scholars admit. In other words, these three truths are so strong that they are accepted by serious historians of all stripes. Therefore, any theory must be able to adequately account for these data.

The three truths are:

1. The tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered empty by a group of women on the Sunday following the crucifixion.
2. Jesus’ disciples had real experiences with one whom they believed was the risen Christ.
3. As a result of the preaching of these disciples, which had the resurrection at its center, the Christian church was established and grew.

Virtually all scholars who deal with the resurrection, whatever their school of thought, assent to these three truths. We will see that the resurrection of Christ is the best explanation for each of them individually. But then we will see, even more significantly, that when these facts are taken together we have an even more powerful case for the resurrection–because the skeptic will not have to explain away just one historical fact, but three. These three truths create a strongly woven, three chord rope that cannot be broken.

The Empty Tomb

To begin, what is the evidence that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered empty by a group of women on the Sunday following the crucifixion?

First, the resurrection was preached in the same city where Jesus had been buried shortly before. Jesus’ disciples did not go to some obscure place where no one had heard of Jesus to begin preaching about the resurrection, but instead began preaching in Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus had died and been buried. They could not have done this if Jesus was still in his tomb–no one would have believed them. No one would be foolish enough to believe a man had raised from the dead when his body lay dead in the tomb for all to see. As Paul Althaus writes, the resurrection proclamation “could not have been maintained in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour, if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned.”

Second, the earliest Jewish arguments against Christianity admit the empty tomb. InMatthew 28:11-15, there is a reference made to the Jew’s attempt to refute Christianity be saying that the disciples stole the body. This is significant because it shows that the Jews did not deny the empty tomb. Instead, their “stolen body” theory admitted the significant truth that the tomb was in fact empty. The Toledoth Jesu, a compilation of early Jewish writings, is another source acknowledging this. It acknowledges that the tomb was empty, and attempts to explain it away. Further, we have a record of a second century debate between a Christian and a Jew, in which a reference is made to the fact that the Jews claim the body was stolen. So it is pretty well established that the early Jews admitted the empty tomb.

Why is this important? Remember that the Jewish leaders were opposed to Christianity. They were hostile witnesses. In acknowledging the empty tomb, they were admitting the reality of a fact that was certainly not in their favor. So why would they admit that the tomb was empty unless the evidence was too strong to be denied? Dr. Paul Maier calls this “positive evidence from a hostile source. In essence, if a source admits a fact that is decidedly not in its favor, the fact is genuine.”

Third, the empty tomb account in the gospel of Mark is based upon a source that originated within seven years of the event it narrates. This places the evidence for the empty tomb too early to be legendary, and makes it much more likely that it is accurate. What is the evidence for this? I will list two pieces. A German commentator on Mark, Rudolf Pesch, points out that this pre-Markan source never mentions the high priest by name. “This implies that Caiaphas, who we know was high priest at that time, was still high priest when the story began circulating.” For “if it had been written after Caiaphas’ term of office, his name would have had to have been used to distinguish him from the next high priest. But since Caiaphas was high priest from A.D. 18 to 37, this story began circulating no later than A.D. 37, within the first seven years after the events,” as Michael Horton has summarized it. Furthermore, Pesch argues “that since Paul’s traditions concerning the Last Supper [written in 56] (1 Cor 11) presuppose the Markan account, that implies that the Markan source goes right back to the early years” of Christianity (Craig). So the early source Mark used puts the testimony of the empty tomb too early to be legendary.

Fourth, the empty tomb is supported by the historical reliability of the burial story. NT scholars agree that he burial story is one of the best established facts about Jesus. One reason for this is because of the inclusion of Joseph of Arimethea as the one who buried Christ. Joseph was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrein, a sort of Jewish supreme court. People on this ruling class were simply too well known for fictitious stories about them to be pulled off in this way. This would have exposed the Christians as frauds. So they couldn’t have circulated a story about him burying Jesus unless it was true. Also, if the burial account was legendary, one would expect to find conflicting traditions–which we don’t have.

But how does the reliability of Jesus’ burial argue that the tomb was empty? Because the burial account and empty tomb account have grammatical and linguistic ties, indicating that they are one continuous account. Therefore, if the burial account is accurate the empty tomb is likely to be accurate as well. Further, if the burial account is accurate then everyone knew where Jesus was buried. This would have been decisive evidence to refute the early Christians who were preaching the resurrection–for if the tomb had not been empty, it would have been evident to all and the disciples would have been exposed as frauds at worst, or insane at best.

Fifth, Jesus’ tomb was never venerated as a shrine. This is striking because it was the 1st century custom to set up a shrine at the site of a holy man’s bones. There were at least 50 such cites in Jesus’ day. Since there was no such shrine for Jesus, it suggests that his bones weren’t there.

Sixth, Mark’s account of the empty tomb is simple and shows no signs of legendary development. This is very apparent when we compare it with the gospel of Peter, a forgery from about 125. This legend has all of the Jewish leaders, Roman guards, and many people from the countryside gathered to watch the resurrection. Then three men come out of the tomb, with their heads reaching up to the clouds. Then a talking cross comes out of the tomb! This is what legend looks like, and we see none of that in Mark’s account of the empty tomb–or anywhere else in the gospels for that matter!

Seventh, the tomb was discovered empty by women. Why is this important? Because the testimony of women in 1st century Jewish culture was considered worthless. As Craig says, “if the empty tomb story were a legend, then it is most likely that the male disciples would have been made the first to discover the empty tomb. The fact that despised women, whose testimony was deemed worthless, were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb can only be plausibly explained if, like it or not, they actually were the discoverers of the empty tomb.”

Because of the strong evidence for the empty tomb, most recent scholars do not deny it. D.H. Van Daalen has said, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.” Jacob Kremer, who has specialized in the study of the resurrection and is a NT critic, has said “By far most exegetes hold firmly to the reliability of the biblical statements about the empty tomb” and he lists twenty-eight scholars to back up his fantastic claim.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the various theories used to explain away the empty tomb, such as that the body was stolen. But those theories are laughed at today by all serious scholars. In fact, they have been considered dead and refuted for almost a hundred years. For example, the Jews or Romans had no motive to steal the body–they wanted to suppress Christianity, not encourage it by providing it with an empty tomb. The disciples would have had no motive, either. Because of their preaching on the resurrection, they were beaten, killed, and persecuted. Why would they go through all of this for a deliberate lie? No serious scholars hold to any of these theories today. What explanation, then, do the critics offer, you may ask? Craig tells us that “they are self-confessedly without any explanation to offer. There is simply no plausible natural explanation today to account for Jesus’ tomb being empty. If we deny the resurrection of Jesus, we are left with an inexplicable mystery.” The resurrection of Jesus is not just the best explanation for the empty tomb, it is the only explanation in town!

The Resurrection Appearances

Next, there is the evidence that Jesus’ disciples had real experiences with one whom they believed was the risen Christ. This is not commonly disputed today because we have the testimony of the original disciples themselves that they saw Jesus alive again. And you don’t need to believe in the reliability of the gospels to believe this. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul records an ancient creed concerning Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection appearances that is much earlier than the letter in which Paul is recording it:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time…

It is generally agreed by critical scholars that Paul receive this creed from Peter and James between 3-5 years after the crucifixion. Now, Peter and James are listed in this creed as having seen the risen Christ. Since they are the ones who gave this creed to Paul, this is therefore a statement of their own testimony. As the Jewish Scholar Pinchahs Lapide has said, this creed “may be considered the statement of eyewitnesses.”

Now, I recognize that just because the disciples think they saw Jesus doesn’t automatically mean that they really did. There are three possible alternatives:

1. They were lying
2. They hallucinated
3. They really saw the risen Christ

Which of these is most likely? Were they lying? On this view, the disciples knew that Jesus had not really risen, but they made up this story about the resurrection. But then why did 10 of the disciples willingly die as martyrs for their belief in the resurrection? People will often die for a lie that they believe is the truth. But if Jesus did not rise, the disciples knew it. Thus, they wouldn’t have just been dying for a lie that they mistakenly believed was true. They would have been dying for a lie that they knew was a lie. Ten people would not all give their lives for something they know to be a lie. Furthermore, after witnessing events such as Watergate, can we reasonably believe that the disciples could have covered up such a lie?

Because of the absurdity of the theory that the disciples were lying, we can see why almost all scholars today admit that, if nothing else, the disciples at least believed that Jesus appeared to them. But we know that just believing something to be true doesn’t make it true. Perhaps the disciples were wrong and had been deceived by a hallucination?

The hallucination theory is untenable because it cannot explain the physical nature of the appearances. The disciples record eating and drinking with Jesus, as well as touching him. This cannot be done with hallucinations. Second, it is highly unlikely that they would all have had the same hallucination. Hallucinations are highly individual, and not group projections. Imagine if I came in here and said to you, “wasn’t that a great dream I had last night?” Hallucinations, like dreams, generally don’t transfer like that. Further, the hallucination theory cannot explain the conversion of Paul, three years later. Was Paul, the persecutor of Christians, so hoping to see the resurrected Jesus that his mind invented an appearance as well? And perhaps most significantly, the hallucination theory cannot even deal with the evidence for the empty tomb.

Since the disciples could not have been lying or hallucinating, we have only one possible explanation left: the disciples believed that they had seen the risen Jesus because theyreally had seen the risen Jesus. So, the resurrection appearances alone demonstrate the resurrection. Thus, if we reject the resurrection, we are left with a second inexplicable mystery–first the empty tomb and now the appearances.

The Origin of the Christian Faith

Finally, the existence of the Christian church is strong proof for the resurrection. Why is this? Because even the most skeptical NT scholars admit that the disciples at least believed that Jesus was raised from the grave. But how can we explain the origin of that belief? William Lane Craig points out that there are three possible causes: Christian influences, pagan influences, or Jewish influences.

Could it have been Christian influences? Craig writes, “Since the belief in the resurrection was itself the foundation for Christianity, it cannot be explained as the later product of Christianity.” Further, as we saw, if the disciples made it up, then they were frauds and liars–alternatives we have shown to be false. We have also shown the unlikeliness that they hallucinated this belief.

But what about pagan influences? Isn’t it often pointed out that there were many myths of dying and rising savior gods at the time of Christianity? Couldn’t the disciples have been deluded by those myths and copied them into their own teaching on the resurrection of Christ? In reality, serious scholars have almost universally rejected this theory since WWII, for several reasons. First, it has been shown that these mystery religious had no major influence in Palestine in the 1st century. Second, most of the sources which contain parallels originated after Christianity was established. Third, most of the similarities are often apparent and not real–a result of sloppy terminology on the part of those who explain them. For example, one critic tried to argue that a ceremony of killing a bull and letting the blood drip all over the participants was parallel to holy communion. Fourth, the early disciples were Jews, and it would have been unthinkable for a Jew to borrow from another religion. For they were zealous in their belief that the pagan religions were abhorrent to God.

Jewish influences cannot explain the belief in the resurrection, either. 1st century Judaism had no conception of a single individual rising from the dead in the middle of history. Their concept was always that everybody would be raised together at the end of time. So the idea of one individual rising in the middle of history was foreign to them. Thus, Judaism of that day could have never produced the resurrection hypothesis. This is also another good argument against the theory that the disciples were hallucinating. Psychologists will tell you that hallucinations cannot contain anything new–that is, they cannot contain any idea that isn’t already somehow in your mind. Since the early disciples were Jews, they had no conception of the messiah rising from the dead in the middle of history. Thus, they would have never hallucinated about a resurrection of Christ. At best, they would have hallucinated that he had been transported directly to heaven, as Elijah had been in the OT, but they would have never hallucinated a resurrection.

So we see that if the resurrection did not happen, there is no plausible way to account for the origin of the Christian faith. We would be left with a third inexplicable mystery.

Three Independent Facts

These are three independently established facts that we have established. If we deny the resurrection, we are left with at least three inexplicable mysteries. But there is a much, much better explanation than a wimpy appeal to mystery or a far-fetched appeal to a stolen body, hallucination, and mystery religion. The best explanation is that Christ in fact rose from the dead! Even if we take each fact by itself, we have good enough evidence. But taken together, we see that the evidence becomes even stronger. For example, even if two of these facts were to be explained away, there would still be the third truth to establishes the fact of the resurrection.

These three independently established facts also make alternative explanations less plausible. It is generally agreed that the explanation with the best explanatory scope should be accepted. That is, the theory that explains the most of the evidence is more likely to be true. The resurrection is the only hypothesis that explains all of the evidence. If we deny the resurrection, we must come up with three independent natural explanations, not just one. For example, you would have to propose that the Jews stole the body, then the disciples hallucinated, and then somehow the pagan mystery religions influenced their beliefs to make them think of a resurrection. But we have already seen the implausibility of such theories. And trying to combine them will only make matters worse. As Gary Habermas has said, “Combining three improbable theories will not produce a probable explanation. It will actually increase the degree of improbability. Its like putting leaking buckets inside each other, hoping each one will help stop up the leaks in the others. All you will get is a watery mess.”

Legend?

Before examining, briefly, the implications of the resurrection, I wish to take a quick look at perhaps the most popular theory today against the resurrection–that it was a legend that developed over time. The facts we have established so far are enough to put to rest any idea of a legend.

First, we have seen that the testimony of the resurrection goes back to the original experiences. Remember the eyewitness creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-5? That is the first-hand testimony of Peter and James. So it is not the case that the resurrection belief evolved over time. Instead, we have testimony from the very people who claimed to have experienced it. Second, how can the myth theory explain the evidence for the empty tomb? Third, the myth theory cannot explain the origin of the Christian faith–for we have already seen that the real resurrection of Christ is the only adequate cause for the resurrection belief. Fourth, the myth theory cannot explain the conversion of Paul. Would he be convinced by a myth? His conversion was in fact too early for any myth to have developed by then. How then can we explain his conversion? Do we dare accuse him of lying when he said he saw the risen Christ?

Fifth, we have seen the evidence that the empty tomb story in Mark was very early–within seven years of the events. That is not long enough for legends. Sixth, we have seen that the empty tomb narrative lacks the classic traits of legendary development. Seventh, critical scholars agree that the resurrection message was the foundation of the preaching of the early church. Thus, it could not have been the product of the later church. Ninth, there is very good evidence that the gospels and Acts were written very early. For example, the book of Acts never records the death of Paul, which occurred in about 64, or the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in 70.

Since both Jerusalem and Paul are key players in the book of Acts, it seems strange that their demises would be omitted. The best explanation seems to be that Paul’s death and Jerusalem’s destruction are omitted because the book of Acts had been completed before they happened. This means that Acts was written before 64, when Paul died. Since Acts is volume 2 of Luke’s writings, the book of Luke being the first, then the Gospel of Luke was even earlier, perhaps 62. And since most scholars agree that Mark was the first gospel written, that gospel would have been composed even earlier, perhaps in the late 50s. This brings us within twenty years of the events, which is not enough time for legends to develop. So the legend theory is not very plausible.

On the basis of the evidence we have seen, it appears to me that the resurrection is the best explanation. It explains the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the existence of the Christian church. No other competing theory can explain all three of these facts. In fact, none of these competing theories can even give a satisfying explanation for even one of these facts. So it seems like the rational person will accept that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

The Importance of the Resurrection

But, in conclusion, don’t we have to ask ourselves what implications this has? Why does it matter? Or is this some dry, dusty old piece of history that has no relevance to our lives? I believe that the resurrection is the most important truth in the world. It has far reaching implications on our lives.

First, the resurrection proves that the claims Jesus made about himself are true. What did Jesus claim? He claimed to be God. One might say, “I don’t believe that He claimed to be God, because I don’t believe the Bible.” But the fact is that even if we take only the passages which skeptical scholars admit as authentic, it can still be shown that Jesus claimed to be God. I have written a paper elsewhere to demonstrate this. So it is impossible to get around the fact that Jesus claimed to be God. Now, if Jesus had stayed dead in the tomb, it would be foolish to believe this claim. But since He rose from the dead, it would be foolish not to believe it. The resurrection proves that what Jesus said about Himself is true–He is fully God and fully man.

Second, have you ever wondered what reasons there are to believe in the Bible? Is there good reason to believe that it was inspired by God, or is it simply a bunch of interesting myths and legends? The resurrection of Jesus answers the question. If Jesus rose from the dead, then we have seen this validates His claim to be God. If He is God, He speaks with absolute certainty and final authority. Therefore, what Jesus said about the Bible must be true. Surely you are going to accept the testimony of one who rose from the dead over the testimony of a skeptical scholar who will one day die himself–without being able to raise himself on the third day. What did Jesus say about the Bible? He said that it was inspired by God and that it cannot error. I will accept the testimony of Jesus over what I would like to be true and over the opinions of other men and women. Therefore I believe that the Bible is inspired by God, without error. Don’t get misled by the numerous skeptical and unbelieving theories about the Bible. Trust Jesus–He rose from the dead.

Third, many people are confused by the many different religions in the world. Are they all from God? But on a closer examination we see that they cannot all be from God, because they all contradict each other. They cannot all be true any more than 2+2 can equal both 4 and 5 at the same time. For example, Christianity is the only religion that believes Jesus Christ is both God and man. All other religions say that he was a good man only-and not God. Clearly, both claims cannot be right! Somebody is wrong. How are we to know which religion is correct? By a simple test: which religion gives the best evidence for its truth? In light of Christ’s resurrection, I think that Christianity has the best reasons behind it.

Jesus is the only religious leader who has risen from the dead. All other religious leaders are still in their tombs. Who would you believe? I think the answer is clear: Jesus’ resurrection demonstrates that what He said was true. Therefore, we must accept his statement to be the only way to God: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through me” (John 14:6).

Fourth, the resurrection of Christ proves that God will judge the world one day. The apostle Paul said, “God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” The resurrection of Christ proves something very personal and significant to each of us–we will have to give an account of ourselves to a holy God. And if we are honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that we do not measure up to his standard. We are sinful, and therefore deserve to be condemned at His judgment.

Which leads to our fifth point. The resurrection of Christ provides genuine hope for eternal life. Why? Because Jesus says that by trusting in Him, we will be forgiven of our sins and thereby escape being condemned at the judgment. The NT doesn’t just tell us that Christ rose from the dead and leave us wondering why He did this. It answers that He did this because we are sinners. And because we have sinned, we are deserving of God’s judgment. Since God is just, He cannot simply let our sins go. The penalty for our sins must be paid.

The good news is that God, out of His love, became man in Jesus Christ in order to pay the penalty for sinners. On the cross, Jesus died in the place of those who would come to believe in Him. He took upon Himself the very death that we deserve. The apostle Paul says “He was delivered up because of our sins.” But the apostle Paul goes on to say “He was raised to life because of our justification.” Paul is saying that Christ’s resurrection proves that His mission to conquer sin was successful. His resurrection proves that He is a Savior who is not only willing, but also able, to deliver us from the wrath of God that is coming on the day of judgment. The forgiveness that Jesus died and rose to provide is given to those who trust in Him for salvation and a happy future.

Let me close with the sixth reason the resurrection is significant. The Bible says that Christ’s resurrection is the pattern that those who believe in Him will follow. In other words, those who believe in Christ will one day be resurrected by God just as He was. The resurrection proves that those who trust in Christ will not be subject in eternity to a half-human existence in just their souls. It proves that our bodies will be resurrected one day. Because of the resurrection of Christ, believers will one day experience, forever, the freedom of having a glorified soul and body.
1 See William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith and The Son Rises, J.P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City, and Gary Habermas’ The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus and Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, a debate with then-atheist Anthony Flew.

This article appeared on the Desiring God web site and is used with permission.

Good Friday and the Resurrection

Lee Strobel Shares why he believes in Christianity

“Anyone can claim to be God, 
but Jesus backed it up with the empty tomb.”

 ~ Lee Strobel

Easter: Verifying the Resurrection

 

If the resurrection of jesus christ demonstrates the points covered in the preceding chapter, it is obviously the best news the world has ever heard. But we ask, “Can any news that good be believed?” That question leads to an investigation of the evidences for the resurrection.

Some modern theologians maintain that we have no need for historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ or evidences of any other point of Christian belief for that matter. Such things are supposed to be authenticated by the logic of faith alone. There is, of course, a sense in which that is true. Christians know that their faith rests not on their ability to demonstrate the truthfulness of the biblical narratives but rather on supernatural activity of the Holy Spirit within their hearts leading them to faith. Yet many come to faith through the various evidences for the resurrection, and the substance and form of the Christian faith rests upon those evidences. Apart from them our experiences of Christ could be mystical and even quite wrong.

We have every right to investigate the evidences, for the Bible itself speaks of “many infallible proofs” of the resurrection (Acts 1:3 KJV). We want to look at six of them in this chapter.

The Resurrection Narratives

A first important evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that of the resurrection narratives themselves. There are four of them, one in each Gospel; they are more or less independent. Yet they are also harmonious, and that suggests their reliability as historical documents.

That the accounts are basically independent is evident from the considerable variations of detail. Of course there might be some overlap simply because reports of a given incident would have been circulating throughout the Christian church when these books were being written. An account could have been told by different people at times in nearly identical language. But the four writers obviously did not sit down together and conspire to make up the story of Christ’s resurrection. If four people had sat down together and said, “Let’s invent an account of a resurrection of Jesus Christ” and had then worked out the details of their stories, there would be far more agreement than we find. We would not find the many small apparent contradictions. Yet if the story were not true and they had somehow separately made it up, it is impossible that we should have the essential agreement we find. In other words, the nature of the narratives is what we would expect from four separate accounts prepared by eyewitnesses.

Here are two examples. First, there is the variety of statements about the moment at which the women first arrived at the tomb. Matthew says that it was “toward the dawn of the first day of the week” (Mt. 28:1). Mark says that it was “very early on the first day of the week … when the sun had risen” (Mk. 16:2). Luke says that it was “at early dawn” (Lk. 24:1). John says that “it was still dark” (Jn. 20:1). These phrases are the kind of thing the authors would have standardized if they had been working on their accounts together. But they are in no real contradiction. For one thing, although John says that it was “still dark,” he obviously does not mean that it was pitch black; the next phrase says that Mary Magdalene “saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.” Presumably, the women started out while it was yet dark but arrived at the garden as day was breaking.

A second example of variation in detail in the midst of essential harmony is the listing of the women who made the first visit to the garden. Matthew says there were two Marys, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary” (Mt. 28:1). Mark writes, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome” (Mk. 16:1). Luke refers to “Mary Magdalene and Jo-anna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them” (Lk. 24:10). John mentions only “Mary Magdalene” (Jn. 20:1). Actually, one reference throws light on the others. Mark and Luke, for example, explain who Matthew’s “other Mary” was. When we put them together we find that on that first Easter morning, when it was still dark, at least five women set out for the tomb: Mary Magdalene (who is mentioned by each of the writers), Mary the mother of James, Salome, Jo-anna, and at least one other unnamed woman (who fits into Luke’s reference to “other women,” which includes Salome). The purpose of their trip is to anoint Christ’s body. They already know of the difficulty they face, for the tomb had been sealed by a large stone and they have no idea how they can move it. It begins to lighten a bit as they travel, so when they finally draw close to the tomb they see that the stone has been moved. That is something they were not expecting; so, although it suits their purpose, they are nevertheless upset and uncertain what to do. Apparently, they send Mary Magdalene back to tell Peter and John about the new development, which John himself records, although he does not mention the presence of the other women (Jn. 20:2). As the women wait for her to return, the morning grows lighter; eventually, emboldened by daybreak, the women go forward. Now they see the angels and are sent back into the city by them to tell the other disciples (Mt. 28:5–7; Mk. 16:5–7; Lk. 24:4–7).

In the meantime, Mary Magdalene has found Peter and John, who immediately leave her behind them and run to the tomb. John records their view of the graveclothes and points out that it was at this moment that he personally believed (Jn. 20:3–9). Finally, Mary Magdalene arrives back at the tomb again and is the first to see Jesus (Jn. 20:11–18; compare Mk. 16:9). On the same day Jesus also appears to the other women as they are returning from the tomb, to Peter, to the Emmaus disciples, and to the others as they are gathered together that evening in Jerusalem.

Two other factors also strongly suggest that these are accurate historical accounts. The first is that they leave problems for the reader that would have been eliminated were they fictitious. For example, there is the problem, repeated several times over, that the disciples did not always recognize Jesus when he appeared to them. Mary did not recognize him in the garden (Jn. 20:14). The Emmaus disciples did not know who he was (Lk. 24:16). Even much later, when he appeared to many of the disciples in Galilee, we are told that “some doubted” (Mt. 28:17). From the point of view of persuasion, the inclusion of such details is foolish. The skeptic who reads them will say, “It is obvious that the reason why the disciples did not immediately recognize Jesus is that he was actually someone else. Only the gullible believed, and that was because they wanted to believe. They were self-deluded.” Whatever can be said for that argument, the point is that the reason why such problems were allowed to remain in the narrative is that they are, in fact, the way the appearances happened. Consequently, they at least provide strong evidence that these are honest reports of what the writers believed to have transpired.

Another example of a problem is Christ’s statement to Mary that she was not to touch him because he was “not yet ascended to the Father” (Jn. 20:17). Yet Matthew tells us that, when Jesus appeared to the other women, presumably within minutes of his appearance to Mary, they “took hold of his feet and worshiped him” (Mt. 28:9). In the whole history of the Christian church no one has given a thoroughly convincing explanation of that anomaly. But it is allowed to stand because, whatever the reason, that is what happened.

Finally, the accounts evidence a fundamental honesty and accuracy through what we can only call their natural simplicity. If we were setting out to write an account of Christ’s resurrection and resurrection appearances, could we have resisted the urge to describe the resurrection itself—the descent of the angel, the moving of the stone, the appearance of the Lord from within the recesses of the tomb? Could we have resisted the urge to recount how he appeared to Pilate and confounded him? Or how he appeared to Caiaphas and the other members of the Jewish Sanhedrin? The various apocryphal Gospels (the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of Pilate and others) contain these elements. Yet the Gospel writers include none, because either they did not happen or else the writers themselves did not witness them. The Gospels do not describe the resurrection because no one actually witnessed it. It would have made good copy, but the disciples all arrived at the tomb after Jesus had been raised.

The Empty Tomb

A second major evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the empty tomb. We might deny that an actual resurrection took place, but we can hardly deny that the tomb was empty. The disciples began soon after the crucifixion and burial to preach about the resurrection, at a time when those to whom they preached could simply walk to the tomb to see if the body of the supposedly resurrected Lord still lay there.

The empty tomb has been so formidable an argument for the resurrection throughout history that unbelievers have invented a number of theories to account for it. One theory is that the women and later the disciples went to the wrong place. It is conceivable that in the dark the women might have made such an error. But, as we have seen, it was not entirely dark, and besides they had been there earlier and thus were acquainted with its location. Again, we cannot suppose that John and Peter and then all the others would make an identical error.

Another theory is the so-called swoon theory. According to that view, Jesus did not die on the cross but rather swooned—as a result of which he was taken for dead and then buried alive. In the cool of the tomb he revived, moved the stone, and went forth to appear as resurrected. But that explanation has numerous problems. There are the difficulties in believing that a Roman guard entrusted with an execution could be fooled in such a manner; or that the spear thrust into Christ’s side would not have killed him even if he had been swooning; or that a weak, barely surviving Christ could have had the strength to move the large stone and overcome Roman guards. Further, one would have to suppose that a Christ in such a condition could convince his disciples that he had overcome death triumphantly.

Finally, there are the views that someone either stole or simply moved the body. But who? Certainly not the disciples, for if they had removed the body, they would later hardly have been willing to die for what they knew to be a fabrication. Nor would the Jewish or Roman authorities have taken the body. We might imagine that they could have moved it initially in order better to guard it—for the same reasons they sealed the tomb and posted a watch: “We remember how that imposter said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ Therefore order the sepulchre to be made secure until the third day, lest his disciples go and steal him away, and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead’” (Mt. 27:63–64). If that had happened, they would certainly have produced the body later when the disciples began their preaching. The authorities hated the gospel and did everything in their power to stop its spread. They arrested the apostles, threatened them and eventually killed some of them. None of that would have been necessary if they could have produced the body. The obvious reason why they did not is that they could not. The tomb was empty. The body was gone.

A Not Quite Empty Tomb

According to John, the tomb was not quite empty. The body of Jesus was gone but the graveclothes remained behind. The narrative suggests that there was something about them so striking that at least John saw them and believed in Jesus’ resurrection.

Every society has its distinct modes of burial, and that was true in ancient cultures as today. In Egypt bodies were embalmed. In Italy and Greece they were often cremated. In Palestine they were wrapped in linen bands that enclosed dry spices and were placed face up without a coffin in tombs generally cut from the rock in the Judean and Galilean hills. Many such tombs still exist and can be seen by any visitor to Palestine.

Another aspect of Jewish burial in ancient times is of special interest for understanding John’s account of Jesus’ resurrection. In a book called The Risen Master (1901), Henry Latham calls attention to a unique feature of Eastern burials, which he noticed when in Constantinople during the last century. He says that the funerals he witnessed there varied in many respects, depending upon whether the funeral was for a poor or rich person. But in one respect all the arrangements were identical. Latham noticed that the bodies were wrapped in linen cloths in such a manner as to leave the face, neck and upper part of the shoulders bare. The upper part of the head was covered by a cloth that had been twirled about it like a turban. Latham concluded that since burial styles change slowly, particularly in the East, that mode of burial may well have been practiced in Jesus’ time.

Luke tells us that when Jesus was approaching the village of Nain earlier in his ministry, he met a funeral procession leaving the city. The only son of a widow had died. Luke says that when Jesus raised him from death two things happened. First, the young man sat up, that is, he was lying on his back on the bier without a coffin. And second, he at once began to speak. Hence, the graveclothes did not cover his face. Separate coverings for the head and body were also used in the burial of Lazarus (Jn. 11:44).

It must have been in a similar manner that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus buried Jesus Christ. The body of Jesus was removed from the cross before the beginning of the Jewish sabbath, was washed, and then was wrapped in linen bands. One hundred pounds of dry spices were carefully inserted into the folds of the linen. One of them, aloes, was a powdered wood like fine sawdust with an aromatic fragrance; another, myrrh, was a fragrant gum that would be carefully mixed with the powder. Jesus’ body was thus encased. His head, neck and upper shoulders were left bare. A linen cloth was wrapped about the upper part of his head like a turban. The body was then placed within the tomb where it lay until sometime on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

What would we have seen had we been there at the moment at which Jesus was raised from the dead? Would we have seen him stir, open his eyes, sit up, and begin to struggle out of the bandages? We must remember that it would have been difficult to escape from the bandages. Is that what we would have seen? Not at all. That would have been a resuscitation, not a resurrection. It would have been the same as if he had recovered from a swoon. Jesus would have been raised in a natural body rather than a spiritual body, and that was not what happened.

If we had been present in the tomb at the moment of the resurrection, we would have noticed that all at once the body of Jesus seemed to disappear. John Stott says that the body was “ ‘vaporized,’ being transmuted into something new and different and wonderful.” Latham says that the body had been “exhaled,” passing “into a phase of being like that of Moses and Elias on the Mount.”³ We would have seen only that it was gone.

What would have happened then? The linen cloths would have collapsed once the body was removed, because of the weight of the spices, and would have been lying undisturbed where the body of Jesus had been. The cloth which surrounded the head, without the weight of spices, might well have retained its concave shape and have lain by itself separated from the other cloths by the space where the neck and shoulders of the Lord had been.

That is exactly what John and Peter saw when they entered the sepulcher, and the eyewitness account reveals it perfectly. John was the first at the tomb, and as he reached the open sepulcher in the murky light of early dawn he saw the graveclothes lying there. Something about them attracted his attention. First, it was significant that they were lying there at all. John places the word for “lying” at an emphatic position in the Greek sentence. We might translate it, “He saw, lying there, the graveclothes” (Jn. 20:5). Further, the cloths were undisturbed. The word that John uses (keimena) is used in the Greek papyri of things that have been carefully placed in order. (One document speaks of legal papers saying, “I have not yet obtained the documents, but they are lying collated.” Another speaks of clothes that are “lying [in order] until you send me word.”) Certainly John noticed that there had been no disturbance at the tomb.

At that point Peter arrived and went into the sepulcher. Undoubtedly Peter saw what John saw, but in addition he was struck by something else. The cloth that had been around the head was not with the other cloths. It was lying in a place by itself (Jn. 20:7). And what was more striking, it had retained a circular shape. John says that it was “wrapped together” (KJV). We might say that it was “twirled about itself.” And there was a space between it and the cloths that had enveloped the body. The narrative says, “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself” (20:6–7). Finally John too entered the sepulcher and saw what Peter saw. When he saw it he believed.

What did John believe? He might have explained it to Peter like this. “Don’t you see, Peter, that no one has moved the body or disturbed the grave-clothes? They are lying exactly as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea left them on the eve of the sabbath. Yet the body is gone. It has not been stolen. It has not been moved. Clearly it must have passed through the clothes, leaving them as we see them now. Jesus must be risen.” Stott says, “A glance at these graveclothes proved the reality, and indicated the nature, of the resurrection.”

The Post-Resurrection Appearances

A fourth evidence for the resurrection is the obvious fact that Jesus was seen by the disciples. According to the various accounts he appeared to Mary Magdalene first of all, then to the other women who were returning from the tomb, afterward to Peter, to the Emmaus disciples, to the ten gathered in the upper room, then (a week later) to the eleven disciples including Thomas, to James, to five hundred brethren at once (1 Cor. 15:6, perhaps on a mountainside in Galilee), to a band of disciples who had been fishing on the lake of Galilee, to those who witnessed the ascension from the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, and last of all to Paul, who claimed to have seen Christ in his vision on the road to Damascus. During the days following the resurrection, all these persons moved from blank, enervating despair to firm conviction and joy. Nothing accounts for that but the fact that they had indeed seen Jesus.

During the last century a well-known critic of the Gospels, Ernest Renan, wrote that belief in Christ’s resurrection arose from the passion of a hallucinating woman, meaning that Mary Magdalene was in love with Jesus and deluded herself into thinking that she had seen him alive when she had actually only seen the gardener. That is preposterous. The last person in the world that Mary (or any of the others) expected to see was Jesus. The only reason she was in the garden was to anoint his body. Moreover, even if Mary had believed in some sort of resurrection through the power of love, there is no evidence that the disciples could have been so deluded or that they anticipated anything of the kind. Many despaired; some, like the Emmaus disciples, were scattering. Thomas, for one, was adamant in his disbelief. Yet we find that within a matter of days after the Lord’s alleged resurrection, all of them were convinced of what beforehand they would have judged impossible. And they went forth to tell about it, persisting in their conviction even in the face of threats, persecution and death.

One clear example of unbelieving disciples being convinced of the resurrection solely by the appearance of Jesus is that of the Emmaus disciples. One of them is identified. He is Cleopas (Lk. 24:18). If he is to be identified with the Clopas (slight variation in spelling) mentioned in John 19:25, then we know that his wife’s name was Mary, that she was in Jerusalem, had witnessed the crucifixion along with the other women and was therefore probably the one returning to Emmaus with him on the first Easter morning.

The importance of this identification lies in the fact that Mary, and perhaps Cleopas too, had witnessed the crucifixion and therefore had not the slightest doubt that Jesus was dead. Mary had seen the nails driven into Christ’s hands. She had seen the cross erected. She saw the blood. Finally, she saw the spear driven into his side. Afterwards Mary undoubtedly went back to where she was staying. The Passover came, and Mary and Cleopas observed it like good Jews. They waited in sadness over the holidays—from the day of the crucifixion until the day of the resurrection—for the same sabbath restraints on travel that had kept the women from going to the sepulcher to anoint the body would also have kept Cleopas and Mary from returning home to Emmaus. The morning after the Saturday sabbath finally came. It is possible that Mary is one who went to the tomb to anoint the body. If that is the case, she saw the angels, returned to tell Cleopas about it, and then—look how remarkable this is—joined him in preparing to leave. So far from their thinking was any idea of the literal truth of Christ’s bodily resurrection!

What is more, during the time that Cleopas and Mary were getting ready to leave, Peter and John set out for the sepulcher. They entered the tomb. Right then John believed in some sense, although he may not have understood all that the resurrection meant. Peter and John returned, told Cleopas, Mary and the others what they had seen. And then—again this is most remarkable—Cleopas and Mary went right on packing. As soon as they were ready, they left Jerusalem. Did that Palestinian peasant couple believe in Christ’s resurrection? Certainly not. Did they come to believe, as they eventually did, because of their own or someone else’s wishful thinking or a hallucination? No. They were so sad at the loss of Jesus, so miserable, so preoccupied with the reality of his death, that they would not even take twenty or thirty minutes personally to investigate the reports of his resurrection.

If someone should say, “But surely they must not have heard the reports; you are making that part of the story up,” the objection is answered by the words of Cleopas. When Jesus appeared to them on the road and asked why they were so sad, Cleopas answered by telling him first about the crucifixion and then adding, “Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us [Peter and John] went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see” (Lk. 24:22–24).

What accounts for a belief in the resurrection on the part of Christ’s disciples? Nothing but the resurrection itself. If we cannot account for the belief of the disciples in that way, we are faced with the greatest enigma in history. If we account for it by a real resurrection and real appearances of the risen Lord, then Christianity is understandable and offers a sure hope to all.

The Transformed Disciples

A fifth evidence for the resurrection flows from what has just been said: the transformed character of the disciples.

Take Peter as an example. Before the resurrection Peter is in Jerusalem tagging along quietly behind the arresting party. That night he denies Jesus three times. Later he is in Jerusalem, fearful, shut up behind closed doors along with the other disciples. Yet all is changed following the resurrection. Then Peter is preaching boldly. He says in his first sermon on the day of Pentecost, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know—this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:22–24). A few chapters farther on in Acts we find him before the Jewish Sanhedrin (the body that condemned Jesus to death), saying, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).

“Something tremendous must have happened to account for such a radical and astounding moral transformation as this. Nothing short of the fact of the resurrection, of their having seen the risen Lord, will explain it.”

Another example is James, Jesus’ brother. At one point none of Jesus’ brothers believed in him (Jn. 7:5). Jesus once declared, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house” (Mt. 13:57). But later James does believe (compare Acts 1:14). What made the difference? Obviously, only the appearance of Jesus to him, which is recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:7.

The New Day of Christian Worship

The final though often overlooked evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the change of the day of regular Christian worship from the Jewish sabbath (Saturday) to Sunday, the first day of the week. Could anything be more fixed in religious tradition than the setting aside of the seventh day for worship as practiced in Judaism? Hardly. The sanctification of the seventh day was embodied in the law of Moses and had been practiced for centuries. Yet from the very beginning we see Christians, though Jews, disregarding the sabbath as their day of worship and instead worshiping on Sunday. What can account for that? There is no prophecy to that effect, no declaration of an early church council. The only adequate cause is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an event so significant that it immediately produced the most profound changes, not only in the moral character of the early believers, but in their habits of life and forms of worship as well.

I was once speaking to another minister about his spiritual experience when the conversation turned to the resurrection. The minister said that when he came out of seminary he possessed no real convictions concerning the gospel of Christ. He probably believed some things intellectually, but they had not gripped his heart. He said that he began to reflect on the resurrection. I asked, “What did you find?” First of all, he replied, he discovered a strange happiness and internal rest as he struggled with the accounts and the questions that they forced to his mind. That indicated to him that, although he did not have the answers yet, at least he was on the right track. As he studied he came to see the importance of the issue. He saw that if Jesus really rose from the dead, everything else recorded about him in the New Testament is true—at least there is no sound reason for rejecting it. And he concluded that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, he should leave the ministry.

So he read books. He visited the seminary where he had studied. He talked with his professors. He said that he became convinced that Jesus is indeed risen, as the Bible declares, and that all the other doctrines of the faith stand with it. Interestingly enough, he came to that conclusion several weeks before Easter that particular year, and on Easter he therefore stood up in church to proclaim his personal faith in these things. Afterward members of his congregation said that they had never heard preaching like that before, and several believed in Christ as a result of his preaching.

That has happened to many: to jurists like Frank Morison, Gilbert West, Edward Clark and J. N. D. Anderson; to scholars like James Orr, Michael Ramsey, Arnold H. M. Lunn, Wolfhart Pannenburg and Michael Green. Green says that “the evidence in favor of this astonishing fact is overwhelming.” Ramsey wrote, “So utterly new and foreign to the expectations of men was this doctrine, that it seems hard to doubt that only historical events could have created it.”⁷

Did Jesus rise from the dead? If he did, then he is the Son of God and our Savior. It is for us to believe and follow him.^[1]

 

---

^[1] Boice, J. M. (1986). Foundations of the Christian faith: a comprehensive & readable theology (pp. 349–360). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Passion Week Visualized

 

The following Infographics are from the NIV QuickView Bible (Zondervan, 2012) (website). Navigate and understand the Bible easily with more than 360 visual Infographics, 20 maps, lists, and color-coded sections alongside the NIV text. The Bible is presented as never before through at-a-glance snapshots that visually display key stories and insights from God’s Word.

Resurrection Research Links

Articles

Christianity, the Resurrection, and the Mystery Religions by John Ankerberg and John Weldon

Contemporary Scholars and the Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Dr. William Lane Craig

Evidence for the Resurrection of Christ by Dr. Peter Kreeft

Evidence for the Resurrection by Josh McDowell

Explaining Away Jesus’ Resurrection: The Recent Revival of Hallucination Theories by Dr. Gary Habermas

Outlining the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

The Case for Christ’s Resurrection by Dr. Gary Habermas

The Earliest Record for The Death and Resurrection of Jesus: 1 Corinthians 15: 3-7 by Eric Chabot

The Resurrection as a Historical Problem by N.T. Wright

The Resurrection of Jesus Research Page by Christian CADRE

Audio

Claims of Jesus and Resurrection by Doug Groothuis

Did the Resurrection Happen? (Radio Interview) featuring Dr. Gary Habermas

Evidence for the Resurrection with Mike Licona

Resurrection of Jesus: Interview with Gary Habermas

The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth by Dr. William Lane Craig

The Minimal Facts Approach by Dr. Gary Habermas

The Resurrection of Jesus by Tim McGrew

Debates

Gary Habermas vs. Kenneth Humphreys: Resurrection- Religious Fiction or Historical Fact? (2008)

Michael Licona vs. Richard Carrier Debate: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? (2010)

William Lane Craig vs. Bart Ehrman: Is there Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? (2006)

William Lane Craig vs. James Crossley Debate: Was Jesus Bodily Raised from the Dead?

For more debates and outstanding apologetics audio, go here.

Video

Did Jesus Rise from the Grave? The Resurrection Reality featuring Lee Strobel

Is There a Case for the Resurrection of Jesus? (7:30) featuring Dr. William Lane Craig

The Top Ten Myths about the Resurrection featuring Mike Licona [10 video series]

Things Which Ought To Be Better Known about the Resurrection of Jesus by Peter J. Williams

Was Jesus Really Crucified? (3:20) featuring Mike Licona

Was there Really an Empty Tomb? (3:00) featuring Mike Licona

What do Scholars believe about the Resurrection of Jesus? (4:26) featuring Dr. William Lane Craig

Why the Resurrection is Important (1:30) by Dr. Gary Habermas

Courage and Godspeed,
Chad

Source

Gifted sculptor Gil Amelio recreates the final moments of Jesus’ life and the sacrifice that changed eternity.

Gil Amelio: The Face Of Christ
Watch as gifted sculptor Gil Amelio recreates the final moments of Jesus’ life and the sacrifice that changed eternity.

34 Powerful and Shareable Easter Quotes — Unlocking the Bible

For thousands of years, Christians around the world celebrate Easter by rejoicing in the risen Christ. We grieve Jesus’s last hours that were marked by betrayal, humiliation, torture, and agony. We humble ourselves in gratitude for his innocent blood shed for our behalf.

And most gloriously, we rejoice at his victory over death and the grave!

Christ’s victory is our victory. Our debts are paid, and our tarnished records are wiped clean before a just, holy God. Believers inherit his victory over death through faith in the resurrected Savior King.

As we ponder these quotes about Christ’s death and resurrection, may we hold them close to our hearts and apply them to our lives as redeemed sons and daughters of the risen King. He is risen; he is risen indeed!

Sin

“Never did God so manifest His hatred of sin as in the death and suffering of His only begotten Son. Hereby He showed Himself unappeasable to sin, and that it was impossible for Him to be at peace with it.” ― Jonathan Edwards

“[Jesus] became the final Priest and the final Sacrifice. Sinless, he did not offer sacrifices for himself. Immortal, he never has to be replaced. Human, he could bear human sins. Therefore he did not offer sacrifices for himself; he offered himself as the final sacrifice. There will never be the need for another.” ― John Piper

“Thou Son of the Blessed, what grace was manifest in Thy condescension! Grace brought Thee down from heaven; Grace stripped Thee of Thy glory; Grace made Thee poor and despicable; Grace made Thee bear such burdens of sin, such burdens of sorrow, such burdens of God’s curse as are unspeakable.” ― John Bunyan

The Blood of Jesus

“The only answer in these modern times, as in all other times, is the blood of Christ. When our conscience rises up and condemns us, where will we turn? We turn to Christ. We turn to the suffering and death of Christ—the blood of Christ. This is the only cleansing agent in the universe that can give the conscience relief in life and peace in death.” ― John Piper

“God declares to us that Jesus Christ, who once had His side pierced, today has His heart open, as it were, that we may have assurance of the love that He bears us; that as He once had His arms fastened to the cross, now He has them wide open to draw us to Himself; and that as once He shed his blood, so today He wishes us to be plunged within it.” ― John Calvin

“I thought I could have leaped from earth to heaven at one spring when I first saw my sins drowned in the Redeemer’s blood.” ― Charles Spurgeon

“We trample the blood of the Son of God if we think we are forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation for the forgiveness of God and for the unfathomable depth of His forgetting is the death of Jesus Christ… It is not earned,but accepted… Our Lord does not pretend we are all right when we are all wrong. The atonement is a propitiation whereby God, through the death of Jesus, makes an unholy man holy.” ― Oswald Chambers

“Christ is so in love with holiness, that at the price of His blood He will buy it for us.” ― John Flavel

The Cross

“By the cross we know the gravity of sin and the greatness of God’s love toward us.” ― John Chrysostom

“All heaven is interested in the cross of Christ, all hell terribly afraid of it, while men are the only beings who more or less ignore its meaning.” ― Oswald Chambers

“Only at the cross do we see the love of God without ambiguity. Here is God’s farthest reach, His most ambitious rescue effort. God personally came to our side of the chasm, willing to suffer for us and with us. At the cross His love burst upon the world with unmistakable clarity.” ― Erwin Lutzer

“The cross stands high above the opinions of men and to that cross all opinions must come at last for judgment.” ― A.W. Tozer

“The Cross is the vindication of God. The Cross is the vindication of the character of God. The Cross not only shows the love of God more gloriously than anything else, it shows His righteousness, His justice, His holiness, and all the glory of His eternal attributes…” ― Martyn Lloyd-Jones

“Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God’s love, they cannot escape the cross… When we suffer there will sometimes be mystery. Will there also be faith? Yes. If our attention is focused more on the cross and on the God of the cross than on the suffering itself.” ― D.A. Carson

“Faith is the acknowledgment of the entire absence of all goodness in us, and the recognition of the cross as the substitute for all the want on our part. The whole work is His, not ours, from first to last.” ― Horatius Bonar

Love

“It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will… it was his love for sinners like me.” ― D.A. Carson

“Behold, what manner of love is this, that Christ should be arraigned and we adorned, that the curse should be laid on His head and the crown set on ours.” ― Thomas Watson

“Who delivered up Jesus to die? Not Judas, for money; not Pilate, for fear; not the Jews, for envy; but the Father, for love!” ― Octavius Winslow

“God must either inflict punishment or assume it. And He chose the latter course.” ― Erwin Lutzer

“Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to—because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.” ― Philip Yancey

Christ’s Resurrection

“The message of Easter is not that Jesus is alive; it is so much more. The message of Easter is that Jesus has risen!” ― Colin Smith

“Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there.” ― Clarence W. Hall

“The resurrection was God the Father’s way of authenticating all of the truths that were declared by Jesus.” ― R.C. Sproul

“We understand and acknowledge that the Resurrection has placed a glorious crown upon all of Christ’s sufferings!” ― A.W. Tozer

“The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is one of the best attested facts on record. There were so many witnesses to behold it, that if we do in the least degree receive the credibility of men’s testimonies, we cannot and we dare not doubt that Jesus rose from the dead.” ― Charles Spurgeon

Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time. ― Martin Luther

“Paul put all of his eggs in the basket of resurrection. If that didn’t happen, then Christianity is just a sham.” ― John Piper

“After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“And He departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.” ― Augustine

Salvation

“Salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.” ― A.W. Tozer

“Come, and see the victories of the cross. Christ’s wounds are thy healings, His agonies thy repose, His conflicts thy conquests, His groans thy songs, His pains thine ease, His shame thy glory, His death thy life, His sufferings thy salvation.” ― Matthew Henry

“It is at the cross where God’s Law and God’s grace are both most brilliantly displayed, where His justice and His mercy are both glorified. But it is also at the cross where we are most humbled. It is at the cross where we admit to God and to ourselves that there is absolutely nothing we can do to earn or merit our salvation.” ― Jerry Bridges

Joy

“No man shall ever take from me the joy that Christ rose from the dead.” ― Charles Spurgeon

“The resurrection of Christ is the most joyful event that ever came to pass.” ― Jonathan Edwards

via 34 Powerful and Shareable Easter Quotes — Unlocking the Bible

Answering Sixteen Objections to the Resurrection of Jesus

by Eric Chabot

There are several approaches to defending the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Skeptics have offered a wide range of natural explanations throughout history to explain away the bodily resurrection of  Jesus. In this post, I will go ahead and several of them and try to give a response. In some cases I will leave some additional reading.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Andreas Kostenberger co-authored this statement about historical investigations (published through B&H which has SBC ties). Kostenberger, along with Bock and Chatraw, write:

“With regard to the past, one cannot empirically prove a historical event in the same way in which one proves a mathematical equation or verifies that someone is six feet tall or has blue eyes, though historical evidence can point strongly in one direction. Historical truths are tested by assessing hypotheses in view of the evidence and then accepting the hypothesis that best explains the evidence.”-Köstenberger, Andreas J.; Bock, Darrell L.; Chatraw, Josh. Truth in a Culture of Doubt: Engaging Skeptical Challenges to the Bible (pp. 166-167). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Let’s assess some of the hypotheses that best explains the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus:

#1: Legends Hypothesis: This hypothesis states that the New Testament accounts of the disciples who gave testimonies of the postmortem appearances are all legends that were invented much later.

Response: This can’t be supported by the evidence. From about AD 48 until his death, Paul wrote at least 13 of the New Testament’s books. Given that historians look to those who are contemporaries of the events, Paul is an important resource for what historians can know about Jesus of Nazareth. Furthermore, the earliest documents we have for the life of Jesus are Paul’s letters. To see common objections to Paul, see here.

Paul was a very competent rabbi who was trained at the rabbinic academy called the House of Hillel by ‘Gamaliel,’ a key rabbinic leader and member of the Sanhedrin. Of his 13 books, critical scholars even accept six of them as being authentic in that we can be certain of the author and date of these writings. Of course, there are other scholars such as Luke Timothy Johnson and Raymond Brown that think more than six of them are authored by Paul. But of the 13 books, the six are Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians and 1 Thessalonians. And it is fairly well known that Bart Ehrman has written a book called, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why The Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

In this book, he discusses the other Pauline books that are in question to authorship. I will provide a response to this here by Mike Licona. I think Mike shows there can be a plausible case for the traditional authorship of the disputed New Testament letters that are attributed to Paul.

30 A.D.—–33A.D.—-40 A.D.—-50 A.D.—-55 A.D.—60 A.D.—65 A.D—70 A.D.

(CREED OF 1 Cor. 15:3-8 received before 55 A.D.)

Also, the creed that Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8  has been dated very shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Even the skeptical scholar Gerd Lüdemann says about the creed, “I do insist that the discovery of pre-Pauline confessional foundations is one of the great achievements in New Testament scholarship.” (1)

Even if the four Gospels were written some 30-70 years later, we still can posit that there was an entire oral history before the Gospels reached their written form. We can say confidently that there was simply not enough time for exaggeration or a legend to develop…

FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE >>>

Answering Sixteen Objections to the Resurrection of Jesus | ThinkApologetics.com

HE IS RISEN: Jesus Christ Is Risen From Dead To Prove That He And He Alone Is The Only Way To Heaven

Jesus Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again on the THIRD DAY according to the Scriptures. He did all that for YOU, to buy your pardon to SET YOU FREE.

“He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”Matthew 28:6 (KJV)

For the past 2,000 years, there has been one story that has taken precedence over any and every other story ever told. The story of a man, flesh and blood, who gave His life willingly on the cross as a ransom for sin, as the Old Testament prophets have proclaimed, and rose from the dead 3 days later to prove that every word He spoke was true and faithful.

“That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Ephesians 2:12,13 (KJV)

On the cross at Calvary, Jesus of Nazareth willingly shed His blood as a payment for sin. More specifically, as a payment for your sin, and my sin, for the sins of the whole world. Are you thinking that your religion will save you? Think again, it will not. It cannot. Maybe you’re a good Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, take your pick. They are all equally meaningless apart from the shed blood of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Open the pages of the Bible and search to your heart’s content, but you will never find a ruling class of priests for the church. There are no nuns, no popes, no Vatican, no sacraments, no confessing to a priest, no eucharist, no mass, no dress code, no haircut length. No tithing for a Christian. But on page after page, you will see a recurring theme. Everywhere you look, you will see Jesus, and He alone is enough. He is sufficient.

THE COMING LITERAL, VISIBLE AND PHYSICAL THOUSAND YEAR REIGN OF JESUS CHRIST ON THIS EARTH FROM JERUSALEM

In the Philippines, they are slashing their own skin in idolatrous rituals because they do not believe that Jesus on the cross paid it all. But Jesus shed blood is enough, it’s more than enough. And there is nothing you, on your best day, can ever add to it.

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;” Ephesians 1:7 (KJV)

After Jesus died on the cross, He lay in the tomb for 3 full days and 3 full nights. He was as dead as dead ever gets. But on the third day, according to the scriptures, He rose from the dead with the power over life and death in His own hands. Proving that He and He alone was the sacrifice for sin that God will accept. This is the gospel which we preach to the saving of your soul.

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:” 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 (KJV)

Jesus Christ was crucified, died, was buried and rose again on the THIRD DAY according to the Scriptures. He did all that for YOU, to buy your pardon to SET YOU FREE. All you have to do is accept or reject that FREE GIFT. If you reject it, when you die, you will burn forever in a place called Hell. If you accept it, the Bible says the moment you die you will be with Christ in Heaven never to die again. Which one do YOU want?

Our sins have separated us from a righteous and holy God, but in His Mercy and love towards us He has made a way of escape for all those who seek it. I am talking to you, right here and right now. God has an AMAZING gift for you, it costs you nothing but it caused Him to shed every drop of blood He had so He could purchase it for you. What is it? It’s your salvation.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” Romans 10:9-10 (KJV)

Pray and ask the Lord, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me a sinner, and save me. I now, with a repentant heart, receive you as my personal Saviour”.

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” Romans 10:13 (KJV)

Jesus Christ was crucified, died, buried, and rose on the third day to save you from the flames of an eternal Hell. He made the payment for your sin on the cross at Calvary, and rose from the dead 3 days later to prove it.

He is the only way to Heaven, without Him there is no hope of any kind. With Him there is eternity with God in Heaven. Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah of Israel, the Lamb slain from before the foundations of the world. The one and only hope of mankind. The only Saviour.

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” John 14:6 (KJV)

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The post HE IS RISEN: Jesus Christ Is Risen From Dead To Prove That He And He Alone Is The Only Way To Heaven appeared first on Now The End Begins.

The Day that Transformed the World Forever

Of all holidays, Easter is the one that celebrates a single event that transformed the world forever.  There are many religions with different founders, prophets, and teachers going back thousands of years, but only one of them has a founder who professed to be the messiah – the son of God who could save mankind.

Jesus was born in a Jewish family and lived and walked among the people of Israel.  Every year, Jesus’s parents took his family to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  On one such occasion, when he was twelve, Jesus got separated from his parents and made his way to the temple, where he sat with the esteemed teachers – listening, asking questions, and teaching.  According to Luke 2:47, “[e]veryone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.”  Later, when his adult ministry began, Jesus drew thousands upon thousands who flocked to hear him.

No one else in human history made the claims Jesus did to be able to deal with every last problem of the human heart.  One primary reason the Bible is a perennial bestseller is that it’s the most complete owner’s manual to the most complex creation of all – the human species.  Nowhere else can one find as succinct yet comprehensive an explanation of what God’s love is all about than in the Bible’s Psalms and Jesus’s teaching through parables.

Another unique quality about Jesus is that he welcomed people whom no other religious leader would be caught dead with – society’s rejects, reviled tax collectors, and prostitutes.  By caring for outcasts and the disenfranchised, Jesus showed a radical level and standard of mercy and love never seen before.  Once, when Jesus was having dinner with a Jewish Pharisee, a woman convicted by her own sin came to Jesus to wash his feet with her tears and hair and then apply expensive perfume.  His host was aghast at the immoral woman’s presence, but Jesus responded that God’s work is to forgive sinners, and that those who are forgiven much can then love much.

Utterly unique in other ways, Jesus performed many miracles, healing the sick, blind, crippled, and deaf – the news of which traveled throughout the land, prompting many more to seek him out.  And he healed them all.  Jesus also confronted evil head on and drove demonic spirits out of people dangerously possessed and abandoned by society.

His work did not stop with miraculous healing.

Because God himself became flesh in the person of Jesus to save people through their own faith, he went on to demonstrate his love and power in an ultimate way that could not be missed or denied: bringing the dead back to life.  One such resurrection miracle was that of Lazarus, who was irrefutably dead and entombed for four days.  Upon Jesus’s command, Lazarus got up and walked out of the tomb – that people would know beyond a shadow of a doubt who Jesus was.

All other religions require works to achieve enlightenment and salvation.  Christianity turns that on its head: faith in Christ and all his teachings transforms the heart, from which good works naturally follow.  In saying, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” Jesus presents an ingeniously compelling appeal that even the most hardened cynic can’t easily refuse.

Skeptics of the Bible’s truth and the reality of Jesus need understand that there’s actually much more reliable historical evidence for his life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection than there is evidence for any other historical figure of ancient times.

Consider that no one doubts the authenticity of the life and acts of Alexander the Great.  Yet there are only two original biographical accounts of his life, which were written by Arrian and Plutarch some four hundred years after Alexander died.  The manuscripts of Virgil and Horace, both of whom lived within a generation of Christ, were written more than four centuries after their deaths, yet no one doubts that they lived and authored poetic masterpieces.  Looking at the big picture, there are about 1,000 times as many manuscripts preserving the New Testament (about 25,000) than other classical ancient works with the exception of Homer, whose Iliad is backed by 1,800 manuscripts (but still less than one tenth of the New Testament number).

We know the historical Jesus mainly through four different accounts known as the Gospels – Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John – all written within a generation or two of Jesus’s life.  Matthew and John provide eyewitness accounts from their years of walking with Jesus as disciples.  Mark also had eyewitness experience.  Luke, the doctor, learned about Jesus from his friend Paul, the apostle who wrote most of the letters of the New Testament.

Easter is the commemoration of the single event that transformed the world forever – the resurrection of Jesus after his death on the cross.  That God would send his Son to die as a sacrifice for the sin of all who would believe in Him is an unbelievable gift – beyond most people’s comprehension.  That a resurrection and a joyous eternal life await believers is beyond anything anyone could imagine.  That is the promise and essence of Easter.

Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute in Seattle.  Reach him at scottp@discovery.org.

Source: The Day that Transformed the World Forever

Easter Verse Of The Day

The Source of the Believer’s Inheritance

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (1:3a)

Peter assumes it is necessary for believers to bless God. The intention is so implicit that the Greek text omits the word be, which the translators added. (In the original, the sentence literally begins, “Blessed the God,” which conveys Peter’s expectation that his audience “bless God” as the source of all spiritual inheritance.) The apostle adores God and implores others to do the same.

Peter further calls Him the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a phrase that identified God in a distinctly Christian way. Historically the Jews had blessed God as their creator and redeemer from Egypt. His creation emphasized His sovereign power at work and His redemption of Israel from Egypt His saving power at work. But those who became Christians were to bless God as the Father of their Lord Jesus Christ.

With one exception (when the Father forsook Him on the cross, Matthew 27:46), every time the Gospels record that Jesus addressed God, He called Him “Father” or “My Father.” In so doing, Jesus was breaking with the Jewish tradition that seldom called God Father, and always in a collective rather than personal sense (e.g., Deut. 32:6; Isa. 63:16; 64:8; Jer. 3:19; 31:9; Mal. 1:6; 2:10). Furthermore, in calling God His Father, Jesus was claiming to share His nature. While speaking with the Jews at an observance of the Feast of the Dedication, Christ declared, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Later, in response to Philip’s request that He reveal the Father, Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9; cf. vv. 8, 10–13). Jesus affirmed that He and the Father possess the same divine nature—that He is fully God (cf. John 17:1, 5). The Father and the Son mutually share the same life—one is intimately and eternally equal to the other—and no one can truly know one without truly knowing the other (cf. Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22). No person can claim to know God unless he knows Him as the One revealed in Jesus Christ, His Son. Jesus Himself said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him” (John 14:6–7).

In his writings, the apostle Paul also declared the Father and the Son to be of the same essence: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 1:3; cf. Eph. 1:3, 17). Likewise, John wrote in his second epistle: “Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love” (2 John 3). Whenever the New Testament calls God Father, it primarily denotes that He is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 7:21; 10:32; 11:25–27; 16:27; 25:34; 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 10:21–22; 22:29; 23:34; John 3:35; 5:17–23; 6:32, 37, 44; 8:54; 10:36; 12:28; 15:9; 17:1; Rom. 15:6; 2 Cor. 11:31; cf. John 14:23; 15:16; 16:23; 1 John 4:14; Rev. 1:6). God is also the Father of all believers (Matt. 5:16, 45, 48; 6:1, 9; 10:20; 13:43; 23:9; Mark 11:25; Luke 12:30, 32; John 20:17; Rom. 1:7; 8:15; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 2:18; 4:6; Phil. 4:20; Heb. 12:9; James 1:27; 1 John 2:13; 3:1).

One commentator calls Peter’s use in verse 3 of Christ’s full redemptive name “a concentrated confession.” All that the Bible reveals about the Savior appears in that title: Lord identifies Him as sovereign Ruler; Jesus as incarnate Son; and Christ as anointed Messiah-King. The apostle personalizes that magnificent title with the simple inclusion of the pronoun our. The divine Lord of the universe belongs to all believers, as does the Jesus who lived, died, and rose again for them, and as does the Christ, the Messiah whom God anointed to be their eternal King who will grant them their glorious inheritance.

The Motive for the Believer’s Inheritance

who according to His great mercy (1:3b)

His great mercy was the motive behind God’s granting believers eternal life—sharing the very life of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Ephesians 2:4–5 also expresses this divine generosity, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)” (cf. Titus 3:5). Both here and in Ephesians, the apostolic writer added an enlarging adjective (great and “rich”).

Mercy focuses on the sinner’s miserable, pitiful condition. The gospel is prompted by God’s compassion toward those who were dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1–3). All believers were once in that wretched, helpless condition, compounded by a deceitful heart (Gen. 6:5; 8:21; Eccl. 9:3; Jer. 17:9; Mark 7:21–23), corrupt mind (Rom. 8:7–8; 1 Cor. 2:14), and wicked desires (Eph. 4:17–19; 5:8; Titus 1:15) that made them slaves to sin, headed for just punishment in hell. Therefore they needed God, in mercy, to show compassion toward their desperate, lost condition and remedy it (cf. Isa. 63:9; Hab. 3:2; Matt. 9:27; Mark 5:19; Luke 1:78; Rom. 9:15–16, 18; 11:30–32; 1 Tim. 1:13; 1 Peter 2:10).

Mercy is not the same as grace. Mercy concerns an individual’s miserable condition, whereas grace concerns his guilt, which caused that condition. Divine mercy takes the sinner from misery to glory (a change of condition), and divine grace takes him from guilt to acquittal (a change of position; see Rom. 3:24; Eph. 1:7). The Lord grieves over the unredeemed sinner’s condition of gloom and despair (Ezek. 18:23, 32; Matt. 23:37–39). That is manifest clearly during His incarnation as Jesus healed people’s diseases (Matt. 4:23–24; 14:14; 15:30; Mark 1:34; Luke 6:17–19). He could have demonstrated His deity in many other ways, but He chose healings because they best illustrated the compassionate, merciful heart of God toward sinners suffering the temporal misery of their fallen condition (cf. Matt. 9:5–13; Mark 2:3–12). Jesus’ healing miracles, which nearly banished illness from Israel, were proof that what the Old Testament said about God the Father being merciful (Ex. 34:6; Ps. 108:4; Lam. 3:22; Mic. 7:18) was true.

Apart from even the possibility of any merit or worthiness on the sinner’s part, God grants mercy to whomever He will: “For He [God] says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’ So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy” (Rom. 9:15–16). Out of His infinite compassion and free, abundant, and limitless mercy, He chose to grant eternal life—it was not because of anything sinners could do or deserve (Ex. 33:19; Rom. 9:11–13; 10:20; 2 Tim. 1:9). It is completely understandable that Paul called God “the Father of mercies” (2 Cor. 1:3).

The Appropriation of the Believer’s Inheritance

has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1:3c)

The prophet Jeremiah once asked the rhetorical question, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?” (Jer. 13:23). His graphic analogy implied a negative answer to the question of whether or not sinners could change their natures (cf. 17:9). Humanity’s sinful nature needs changing (Mark 1:14–15; John 3:7, 17–21, 36; cf. Gen. 6:5; Jer. 2:22; 17:9–10; Rom. 1:18–2:2; 3:10–18), but only God, working through His Holy Spirit, can transform the sinful human heart (Jer. 31:31–34; John 3:5–6, 8; Acts 2:38–39; cf. Ezek. 37:14; Acts 15:8; Rom. 8:11; 1 John 5:4). In order for sinners to receive an eternal inheritance from God, they must experience His means of spiritual transformation, the new birth. Peter affirms that truth in this last portion of verse 3, when he says God has caused believers to be born again (see discussion on 1:23–25 in chapter 7 of this volume; cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).

Jesus effectively explained the necessity of regeneration—the new birth—to Nicodemus, a prominent Jewish teacher.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life. (John 3:1–15)

To illustrate the means of the new birth, Jesus referred to the episode of the bronze serpent (Num. 21:4–9), an Old Testament narrative Nicodemus would have known well. When the snake-bitten Israelites in the wilderness acknowledged their sin and God’s judgment on them for it and looked to the means He provided to deliver them (a bronze snake on a pole), they received physical healing from their poisonous bites. By analogy, if sinners would experience spiritual deliverance, they must recognize their spiritual condition as poisoned by their sin and experience salvation from spiritual and eternal death by looking to the Son of God and trusting in Him as their Savior. Jesus cut to the core of Nicodemus’s self-righteousness and told him what all sinners need to hear, that they are spiritually regenerated only by faith in Jesus Christ (cf. John 1:12–13; Titus 3:5; James 1:18).

Peter goes on to declare that regeneration results in believers receiving a living hope. The unbelieving world knows only dying hopes (Job 8:13; Prov. 10:28; Eph. 2:12), but believers have a living, undying hope (Pss. 33:18; 39:7; Rom. 5:5; Eph. 4:4; Titus 2:13; Heb. 6:19) that will come to a complete, final, and glorious fulfillment (Rom. 5:2; Col. 1:27). It is a hope that Peter later described when he wrote, “according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). This hope is what prompted Paul to tell the Philippians, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). At death believers’ hope becomes reality as they enter the glorious presence of God and the full, unhindered, joyous fellowship with the Trinity, the angels, and other saints (Rom. 5:1–2; Gal. 5:5).

The means of Christians’ appropriating this living hope and eternal inheritance is spiritual birth, and the power for that appropriation was demonstrated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus told Martha, just prior to the raising of her brother Lazarus from the grave, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die” (John 11:25–26; cf. 14:19). Paul instructed the Corinthians concerning the vital ramifications of the resurrection, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). Even if one hoped in Christ in this life, but not beyond it, he would be lost (v. 19). However, Christ rose from the dead, forever securing the believer’s living hope in heaven by finally conquering death (vv. 20–28, 47–49, 54–57).^[1]

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1:3 / Peter at once launches into praise of God for planning so magnificent a salvation. The Israelites of old praised God as the creator of the world (2 Chron. 2:12) and as their redeemer from Egyptian slavery (Deut. 4:20). Peter develops the characteristic Jewish approach by adopting an explicitly Christian stance. He praises God as the Father of his unique Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and as the One who raised this Jesus from the dead. As a Christian, Peter blesses God for the new creation, as expressed in the new birth of believers, and for divine provision for them of “an inheritance” of a promised land “in heaven,” safe beyond the slavery of sin or the frenzy of foes.

The experiences of new birth and of a living hope are beyond human procurement. They are God’s gracious gift and are bestowed solely on account of his great mercy, for there is no way in which they can ever be deserved or earned. They come to us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that is, as the direct consequence of his total triumph over the worst that the powers of evil can achieve; namely, death itself.

The concept of new birth is based on the teaching of Jesus (John 3:3–8). It speaks of the gift of spiritual life on a plane previously unknown in an individual’s experience. It can no more be acquired by self-effort than a babe can bring about its own physical birth.

The first result of this new birth, and the first characteristic of the new pilgrim life of the believer, is hope (anchor for the soul, firm and secure: Heb. 6:19). Hope is living (cf. 1:23; 2:4–5), not merely because it is active (Heb. 4:12), or is simply an improved version of the Jewish hope (Heb. 7:19). Nor are we to misunderstand the translation “have been born anew to a living hope” (rsv) to mean “hope has been restored.” Peter is referring to something of a different order: a sure and confident outlook which has a divine, not a human, source. That new quality of hope is generated in the believer by the new spiritual life brought about by the new birth. Peter is writing to encourage readers who face an uncertain future threatened by persecution of one degree or another. This living hope highlights the fact that the present life is by no means the limit of the believer’s expectation. As the word is used in everyday parlance, “hope” can prove a delusion (Job 7:6; Eph. 2:12; cf. Col. 1:5). The living hope in the newborn Christian has a vigor, a patient endurance, and an assurance beyond any human power: such hope can no more fail than the living God who bestows it. Peter elaborates the nature and the content of living hope in the following two verses.^[2]

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God establishes our hope in Christ (1:3)

In his play No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre gives his own vision of hell. Two women and a man, doomed to perdition, enter a room that seems to threaten no torment. But they are sentenced to remain together in that same room for ever—without sleep and without eyelids. All three enter with pretensions about their past. The man pretends that he was a hero of the revolution. In reality, he was killed in a train wreck when he tried to escape after betraying his comrades. The women have even more sordid lives. In the forced intimacy of the room their guilty secrets are all wrung out. Nothing can be hidden, and nothing can be changed. Sartre’s imagination has well prepared us for his famous line, ‘Hell is other people.’ But the moral of the play is the line of doom to which the drama moves: ‘You are—your life, and nothing else.’

Sartre rejected Christianity, but his play invites heart-searching. Who wants to say that he is what he has been rather than what he meant to be, or what he hopes to be? Sartre implies that hell begins when hope ends. Sartre’s image falls far short of the reality of hell, for God’s judgment exposes sinners not simply to the lidless eyes of other sinners, but to the all-seeing gaze of God himself. Yet Sartre reminds us of how desperately we need hope. While there is life, there is hope, we say. But if hope dies, what life can remain?

Peter writes a letter of hope. The hope he proclaims is not what we call a ‘fond hope’. We cherish fond hopes because they are so fragile. We ‘hope against hope’ because we do not really expect what we hope for. But Peter writes of a sure hope, a hope that holds the future in the present because it is anchored in the past. Peter hopes for God’s salvation, God’s deliverance from sin and death. His hope is sure, because God has already accomplished his salvation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

The resurrection of Jesus was a life-changing reality for Peter. When Jesus died on the cross, it was the end of all Peter’s hopes. He knew only bitter sorrow for his own denials. The dawn could not bring hope; with the crowing of the cock he heard the echo of his curses.

But Jesus did not stay dead. On that Easter morning Peter learned from the women of the empty tomb and the message of the angels. He went running to the tomb and saw its evidence. He left in wonder, but Jesus remembered Peter and appeared to him even before he came to eat with the disciples in the upper room. Hope was reborn in Peter’s heart with the sight of his living Lord. Now Peter writes to praise God for that living hope. The resurrection did much more than restore his Master to him. The resurrection crowned the victory of Christ, his victory for Peter, and for those to whom he writes. The resurrection shows that God has made the Crucified both Lord and Christ. At the right hand of the Father Jesus rules until the day that he will come to restore and renew all things.² With the resurrection of Jesus and his entrance into glory, a new age has begun. Peter now waits for the day when Jesus will be revealed from heaven (1:7, 13). Peter’s living hope is Jesus.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Peter blesses God, rejoicing in what he has done. He uses a form of praise to God that was an important part of worship in the Old Testament. The eighteen ‘blessings’ that we know from the later synagogue service go back to early times, perhaps in some form even to Peter’s day. Those blessings look forward to the fulfilment of the promises of God, yearning for the time of realization:

Speedily cause the offspring of David, Thy servant, to flourish, and let his horn be exalted by thy salvation, because we wait for Thy salvation all the day. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who causest the horn of salvation to flourish.

How different from the plaintive longing of that benediction is the astonished joy of the apostle Peter! Peter can bless the God and Father of his Lord, Jesus Christ. He can exult in the Offspring of David, raised up in salvation to the throne. God’s promises have all come true in Christ. There is more to come, for Christ is to come, but our living hope is real in our living Lord.

Christ’s resurrection spells hope for us not just because he lives, but because, by God’s mercy, we live. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. By the resurrection of Christ, God has given life, not only to him, but to us. We are given new birth by God; he fathers us by the resurrection of his Son. In Christ’s triumph God makes all things new, beginning with us.

The resurrection carried Christ not only out of the grave but to his Father’s throne. The great day of the renewal of all things had already begun. Yet Peter preached that heaven must receive Christ until the time of renewal, a time still to come. The time of new birth for the universe will come when Christ comes again. But for those united to Christ in his death and resurrection, that new day has already dawned.

When we speak of the new birth, we think of the change that God’s grace works in us. We are brought from death to life. Peter speaks of our being born of imperishable seed through the living word of God that was preached to us (1:23–25). But if we think only of what happens to us, we may be puzzled by the statement that we are given new birth by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The means of our new birth is not first the message of the resurrection; it is the fact of the resurrection. When Christ rose he secured our salvation. He entered that new day of which the prophets spoke, and he brought us with him. Peter is saying what Paul also declared: when Christ rose, we rose. In giving life to Christ, God gave life to all those who are united to Christ. God’s elect have a hope that is as sure as Christ’s resurrection. Christ has not just made their salvation possible; he has made it sure.

Like Paul, Peter also speaks of baptism as the sign of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection (3:21). Some commentators would see this passage, or indeed the whole letter, as instruction given in a service for baptism. But Peter does not in the least focus on the sign, but on the spiritual reality of our new life in Christ. His teaching is beautifully appropriate for baptismal instruction, but gives no real evidence of being designed for this specific purpose, far less limited to it.³The Father, who gives new birth to his children through the resurrection of Christ, also through Christ brings them to a living faith (1:5; 3:21). Our faith and hope are in God; his living word, the good news of the gospel, has brought life to us (1:23). The things to which believers in Old Testament times looked forward have now happened (1:12).

Yet we, too, look to the future. The salvation that was scaled by Christ’s resurrection and planted in our hearts by the seed of the Word will be revealed completely when Christ comes again in glory. Our hope is anchored in the past: Jesus rose! Our hope remains in the present: Jesus lives! Our hope is completed in the future: Jesus is coming! (1:5, 7, 13).

The apostle leads us to praise God that our salvation is his work. We could not even begin to accomplish it, and we do not in any sense deserve it. Yet, as trophies of God’s grace, we have the privilege of adoring the Father of our Lord Jesus as our Father. Peter’s praise is not a mere formula; praise is the goal of God’s gracious work, as Peter later reminds us (2:9).^[3]

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A Living Hope

Throughout his epistle, Peter encourages his readers to hope. Hope is based on a living faith in Jesus Christ. It characterizes the believer who patiently waits for the salvation God has promised to his people. “Hoping is disciplined waiting.”

3. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Filled to overflowing with spiritual blessings which he wants to convey to his readers, Peter writes one long sentence in Greek (vv. 3–9). In our modern versions, translators have divided this lengthy sentence. Nevertheless, the sentence itself reveals the intensity of the writer and the fullness of his message. In the introductory part of this sentence we observe the following points:

• “Praise.” This word is actually the first word in a doxology, for instance, at the conclusion of many books of the Psalms: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. 41:13; and with variations 72:18; 89:52; 106:48). The word praise is common in the New Testament, too. Zechariah begins his song with an exuberant burst of praise: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68; also see Rom. 1:25b; 9:5).
• “God and Father.” Within the early church, Jewish Christians adapted the benedictions of their forefathers to include Jesus Christ. Note that the doxology in verse 3, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” is identical to the wording of 2 Corinthians 1:3 and Ephesians 1:3 (compare also 2 Cor. 11:31).

God has revealed himself in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Jesus, all the elect share in his sonship. Through him they call God their Father, for they are his children. With the church universal, the believer confesses the words of the Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

Maker of heaven and earth.

Because of Jesus Christ, we call his Father our Father and his God our God (John 20:17). Fatherhood is one of the essential characteristics of God’s being; it is part of his deity. God is first Father of Jesus, and then because of Christ he is Father of the believer.

Peter indicates our relationship to the Father and the Son when he uses the personal pronoun our (“God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”). Also, in the next sentence, Peter discloses that God is our Father because God “has given us new birth.” That is, the Father has begotten us again in giving us spiritual rebirth. The Father has given us rebirth because of our Lord Jesus Christ.

• “Lord.” Verse 3 is the only text in this epistle in which Peter writes the title and names our Lord Jesus Christ. With the pronoun our, Peter includes himself among the believers who confess the lordship of Jesus Christ. “To call Jesus Lord is to declare that he is God.” Moreover, in the early church Christians confessed their faith in the brief statement Jesus is Lord (1 Cor. 12:3). The name Jesus encompasses the earthly ministry of the Son of God, and the name Christ refers to his messianic calling. Four times in three verses (vv. 1–3) Peter employs the name Jesus Christ.
• “Mercy.” Peter describes our relationship to God the Father by saying, “In his great mercy he has given us new birth.” We read almost the same wording in one of Paul’s epistles (“God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ” [Eph. 2:4–5]). Apparently Peter was acquainted with Paul’s epistles (see 2 Peter 3:15–16). Together with the other apostles, Peter presents Christian doctrine on regeneration (e.g., see John 3:3, 5).
• “Birth.” Notice that we receive a new spiritual birth from God the Father. Peter writes that God “has given us new birth” (v. 3), and later he continues, “For you have been born again” (v. 23). Just as we are passive in natural birth, so we are in spiritual birth. That is, God is active in the process of begetting us, for he causes us to be born again. With the words new and again in these two verses, Peter shows the difference between our natural birth and our spiritual birth.

Peter speaks from personal experience, for he remembers when he fell into the sin of denying Jesus. Later, when Jesus restored him to apostleship, he became the recipient of God’s great mercy and received new life through restoration. Therefore, he includes himself when he writes, “He has given us new birth” (italics added). Incidentally, the passages in which Peter uses the personal pronouns our or us are few (1:3; 2:24; 4:17). First Peter is an epistle in which the author addresses his readers as “you.” The infrequent use of the first person, singular (2:11; 5:1, 12) or plural, is therefore much more significant.

• “Hope.” What is hope? It is something that is personal, living, active, and part of us. In verse 3, it is not something that pertains to the future (compare Col. 1:5; Titus 2:13). Instead, it brings life to God’s elect who are waiting with patient discipline for God’s revelation in Jesus Christ.
• “Resurrection.” What is the basis for our new life? Peter tells us that “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” God has made us alive and has given us living hope. Without the resurrection of Christ, our rebirth would be impossible and our hope would be meaningless. By rising from the dead, Jesus Christ has given us the assurance that we, too, shall rise with him (see Rom. 6:4). Why? As Peter preached on Pentecost, “God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him” (Acts 2:24). Jesus is the first one to break the bonds of death, so that through him we have our rebirth, and in him we have eternal life (1 John 5:12).

Peter speaks as an eyewitness, for he had the unique experience of meeting Jesus after he rose from the grave. Peter ate and drank with Jesus and became a witness of Jesus’ resurrection (refer to Acts 10:41).

Doctrinal Considerations in 1:3

Twice in this short epistle Peter introduces teaching on the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1:3; 3:21). This teaching, to be sure, is central to the Christian religion. When the eleven apostles came together after Jesus’ ascension and prior to Pentecost, they chose a successor to Judas Iscariot. Peter, as spokesman, declared that this person had to be a follower of Jesus from the day of his baptism to the time of his ascension, and that he had to be a witness of Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 1:22).

As an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus, Peter proclaimed this truth in his sermon to the multitude gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost (Acts 2:31). When he preached to the crowd at Solomon’s porch, he said that God raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 3:15; compare 4:2, 33). And last, when Peter spoke in the home of Cornelius at Caesarea, he taught the resurrection of Jesus (Acts 10:40). Peter testified to this truth throughout his ministry of preaching and writing.^[4]

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^[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2004). 1 Peter (pp. 30–34). Chicago: Moody Publishers.

^[2] Hillyer, N. (2011). 1 and 2 Peter, Jude (pp. 31–32). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

^[3] Clowney, E. P. (1988). The message of 1 Peter: the way of the cross (pp. 43–47). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

^[4] Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of the Epistles of Peter and the Epistle of Jude (Vol. 16, pp. 39–42). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

Resurrection & Suffering Saints

Last year in time for Easter the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas unveiled its panoramic new stained glass, reputedly the world’s largest. At left is the Garden of Eden, surrounded by Old Testament figures. In the center the resurrected Christ, surrounded by Gospel figures, emerges from the garden tomb. At right, heroes from the Church age surround the garden of the Tree of Life, whose leaves will heal the nations.

These heroes include Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and St. Francis of Assisi. John Wesley and Francis Asbury are there, of course. There’s early church martyr Perpetua, a noblewoman executed in the Roman amphitheater. There’s Teresa of Avila, the 16th century Spanish nun, and mystic. Easily recognizable are Pope John XXIII, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Less recognizable but no less important is the early 20th century black preacher William Seymour, whose Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles ignited modern Pentecostalism with hundreds of millions of followers globally.

Martin Luther is there, nailing his protesting theses. So too is cerebral John Calvin, to whose inclusion some diehard Methodists might object, but I don’t think John Wesley would mind, at least not strongly!

From more recent times, Montgomery bus boycott heroine Rosa Parks is there, along with Chicago mother Mamie and her teenage son Emmett Till, whose Mississippi murder helped ignite the civil rights movement. Less familiar to Americans, there’s mid 20th century Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, who worked to reconcile Eastern Orthodoxy with Roman Catholicism. Likewise for Korean Methodist Bishop Sundo Kim, who created the 75,000 member Kwang Lim Methodist Church in Seoul. Mai Gray, the first black leader of United Methodist Women, is there. And there’s E. Stanley Jones, the great Methodist missionary to India. Finally there’s Matthew Joyner, a “special needs” child and Church of the Resurrection member who died young but whose legacy is honored through ministry.

So this Church age tableau is multiracial, showing male and female, from young to old. The stained glass magisterially illustrates the cosmic centrality of Christ, whose death and Easter resurrection unleashed grace-powered forces that continue to sweep through history, profoundly shaping all humanity, both believers and not.

Christ’s death and resurrection showcase gross injustice, inhuman suffering and the triumph of divine love over demonic evil. His followers as shown in this window partake of that suffering and glory. Most portrayed there are great and famous, by divine grace. Of course, many many more followers of Christ also suffer and prevail in faith, without wide recognition, but God notices.

The suffering among Christ’s followers was made most vivid this week by the acquittalin Pakistan of numerous men accused in 2014 of murdering a young Pakistani Christian couple. Shahzad Masih and Shama Masih, who had four children, labored in a brick kiln. A mob of hundreds, urged on by clerics and possibly their employer, accused them of burning a Koran. They were tortured and then incinerated in the oven where they made bricks. In their agony, we hope they recalled the torment on the cross of their Savior, in whose presence they now rejoice.

Thanks to Easter, suffering in faith is redeemed, and righteousness prevails over murderous injustice, for all eternity. The massive window at Church of the Resurrection tells part of the story, whose ending is not yet, but whose conclusion is victorious, guaranteed by the resurrected Man at center with pierced arms outstretched.

Source:

The Ultimate Sacrifice — Happy Easter!

Jesus paid the highest price for you and me because He loves us more than we could ever imagine.

Jesus paid the highest price for you and me because He loves us more than we could ever imagine. He was put to death by being crucified on a cross, and his body was laid in a tomb behind a stone. He lived and then died rejected and alone. Like a rose He was trampled on the ground. Jesus took the fall and thought of you ABOVE ALL !

Here are 8 biblical terms to think about. As we learn about these words during Easter, we can appreciate the reason we celebrate.

REPENTANCE

Repentance is not just saying, “I’m sorry.” It’s turning away from the sin that separated us from God; reaching out, instead, to receive God’s forgiveness and the new life he offers. Repentance is necessary for salvation (Acts 3:19). We must agree with God about our sin and turn toward him. We do not need to be perfect before we come to God, and we will still sin while we’re in this human body. But too often we shrug off our sins by saying, “Well, God’s forgiven me, so I’m okay.” That is not repentance. Repentance puts action to our words. True repentance means letting the forgiveness you’ve experienced change your life.

FORGIVENESS

Throughout history, God has been merciful and forgiving to those who repent of their sin. But that doesn’t mean forgiveness is automatic. Because the penalty for sin is death, God’s law says there can be no forgiveness without the sacrifice of a life. Jesus death paid the ultimate price, and now our sins are wiped out, gone forever. It is true that we will still sin in this life, but God continues to forgive us when we come to him (1 John 1:9)

SACRIFICE

A true sacrifice involves giving up something that is cherished. It is no accident that the Crucifixion and Resurrection occurred during Passover. As the most important sacrifice in the Old Testament, Passover paints the most vivid picture of the greatest sacrifice ever made: the one made by God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus sacrificed his place in heaven to become human; he then sacrificed his life by dying on the cross to pay the price for our sins (Philippians 2:8). Giving our total lives as a living sacrifice to him is our natural and appropriate response of worship (Romans 12:1)

SALVATION

Some people call for God to save them only when they are desperate and in immediate danger. In the Old Testament, when God’s people called out to him for salvation, they were looking for deliverance from their enemies. We may not have an army on our doorstep, but we’re all in immediate danger from the effects and consequences of sin. We can’t save ourselves from this— we need a rescue operation. Thankfully, God executed the rescue operation for salvation. He sent his Son to save the world by paying the penalty for sin and bringing us back to God (John 3:16-17). Our salvation is the accomplishment of the Crucifixion and Resurrection—the beautiful fruit of Easter..

CROSS

The cross points to God’s rescue plan of the world. When we think of the cross, we should think of Jesus Christ, who was painfully stretched out and nailed to it, whose blood was shed, whose side was pierced and whose death paid the price of all sin (Isaiah 53:5). Without Jesus’ death on a cross, Christians cannot inherit God’s gift of salvation. We also associate the cross with Christ’s call on our life. He asks us to take up our own cross, in denial of ourselves and in commitment to him (Mark 8:34).

GRAVE

Christians have eternal life, but it doesn’t mean we’ll never die a physical death. We all have to leave this life sometime. But Jesus’ empty grave means we don’t have to fear death anymore. In fact, we’re told that he defeated death and Hades. His resurrection means that we can have life even after our bodies die and that one day our bodies will be raised anew (Romans 6:4).We can live in peace with the Lord forever.

RESURRECTION

The resurrection is evidence of God’s satisfaction with the Son’s sacrifice on humanity’s behalf (1 Peter 1:3-5). The Holy Spirit brought Christ to life again. That same Holy Spirit dwells within believers; therefore, Christians can trust that we, too, will rise to eternal life after we experience physical death. All of these truths are celebrated in words of joy that ring out each Easter in many different languages: “The Lord is Risen! He is risen indeed!”

JESUS

Jesus paid the penalty for the sins of all humankind on the cross. Buried in a borrowed tomb, he rose again three days later as proof that his mission to conquer sin and death had been accomplished. Jesus appeared to his disciples and then returned to heaven 40 days later with the promise that he would return again someday. Jesus’ words and life show us how to live life, but his message was that humanity should respond to God’s love. Jesus claimed to be much more than a wise man or great teacher. He claimed to be God—a God willing to die for his creation so that their love relationship could be restored (Romans 5:10). Through his birth, life, death, and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled the hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament that foretold of a coming Messiah, a Savior not only for the nation of Israel, but for the whole world (1 Timothy 4:10). How will you respond to Jesus’ life and love?

The point and the pinnacle of Easter celebration is the worship of Jesus Christ, the one who declared, “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17-18).

Source: The Ultimate Sacrifice

There Are Worse Things Than Hiding Easter Eggs

I’m not worried about churches that hide Easter eggs for kids once a year – I’m worried about churches that hide the Gospel from people every week. – Clayton Pruett

Dr. Jack Graham’s Prestonwood Baptist Church is having their annual Easter Egg Drop – in which they dump thousands of eggs out of a helicopter for an egg hunt at their Dallas campus. Graham, a two time president of the SBC and big fan of Beth Moore and Word-Faith, Hillsong pastors Brian Houston and Christine Caine, is a proven #DOWNGRADE specialist and so a helicopter egg drop (a Stephen Furtick specialty) at Graham’s church seems hardly newsworthy. Prestonwood’s press announcements about the egg drop, devoid of Christ altogether, narrowly avoided becoming the focus of Friday’s Daily #DOWNGRADE segment.

But the words of Clayton Pruett, circulating in social media, stung me back into focus and put things into perspective.

Clayton is dead-on the money.

As odd as it seems that a church would adopt a once-pagan ritual associated with the celebration of Spring – which Catholics adopted in the 13th century as part of a fasting from eggs during Lent – there are worse things than letting children scurry around looking for plastic eggs with trinkets and sugary treasures inside. As a Protestant that’s still protesting, with a fundamentalist Baptist streak who’s just naturally adverse to such acts of irreverent tom-foolery, I can’t find it in myself to anathematize the whole endeavor. I keep hearing the hillbilly slogan common in my Ozarkian upbringing, “There are bigger fish to fry.”

Easter egg hunts to me, therefore, are a matter of Christian liberty and so I let it go, remembering there are hills upon which Zion’s flag of Gospel is yet to wave and upon which might make a fairer hill to die.

What’s far more concerning, as Pruett points out, than hiding eggs from children is hiding the Gospel from church-goers every week. And even worse (at least in principle) is hiding the Gospel from church-goers on Resurrection Sunday.

Millions of American Christians will gather in church tomorrow to hear that “Easter is About Second Chances.” Many will hear that Easter is about a chance at a “clean slate” or “fresh start.” Members at Saddleback will hear an allegorization of the Gospel from Rick Warren, as his Easter promopromises to explain that the death, burial and resurrection are symbolic of three days you’ll have to go through over and again in your life to overcome “depression and discouragement.”

Oh, sure. The Gospel can perhaps be found in these places, and if you listen hard enough, perhaps it will even be spoken of in the pulpit through subtle hints and passing references. It’s like an Easter egg hunt, except for believers that are desperate to hear the story of Christ’s resurrection wash over them like a treasured hope and weekly reminder that all in Christ will be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:22).

As the fuddy-duddy that I am, I would rather buy my kids a bag of candies or marshmallow Peeps than have them scour the church grounds for an hour to find scattered in the dirt what hasn’t already been pillaged by the rest of the mob of chocolate-faced carpet-crawlers on a savage sugar-high (although the kids would have far less fun). But maybe, that’s part of the nonsensical  and hard-won fun that makes being a kid memorable and exciting. And yet, finding the Gospel in church shouldn’t be this way.

There’s enough Gospel to go around; it’s not in short supply. If I find more Gospel, it doesn’t mean someone else has to find less. There’s no expiration date on this Gospel, and the more of it that’s consumed, somehow the more room you have for greater and greater amounts. And unlike the treats you may find in plastic eggs, there’s no sugar crash in the end that leaves you feeling lethargic or feeling as though a diabetic comma might be inevitable. Furthermore, the Gospel isn’t a luxury afforded to affluent children in suburban neighborhoods dressed in pastel colors, belonging to parents in pretty dresses or pressed slacks. The Gospel is for everyone – every economic bracket, every neighborhood, every ethnicity. And Gospel-preaching can’t be an annual affair, for unlike the goodies found inside plastic eggs, the Gospel feeds and nourishes the believer as our primary source of sustenance.

In the end, searching for a plastic egg or two (or thousands dropped out of a helicopter) may not sit well with some of you, but it won’t be the end of the true and apostolic, New Testament Church. Forsaking the Gospel or hiding it away for those ambitious enough to look for it like a hidden egg, however, might just kill it (if Christ were to allow such a thing). So, hunt for those eggs if you want. But please, find a church where you don’t have to hunt for Gospel.

The post There Are Worse Things Than Hiding Easter Eggs appeared first on Pulpit & Pen.

Apologetics: 10 Quotes on the Resurrection of Jesus

The central claim of the NT is that Jesus was physically resurrected after being crucified. If this claim arose from decades of embellishment instead of historical truth, then Jesus is dead, the apostles were liars, and our faith is worthless (1 Cor. 15:14–17). But evidences from the first and second centuries reveal that eyewitness testimony about Jesus emerged rapidly and circulated reliably. The NT texts relied on testimonies from apostolic eyewitnesses, and all of these texts were completed while the eyewitnesses were still alive. That’s why we can declare with confidence: Don’t worry; I read the book. He didn’t stay dead. — Timothy Paul Jones (from, How Do You Know Jesus Really Rose from the Dead?)

At its foundation, Christianity is based on evidence. First Corinthians 15 recounts the critical core of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Without Jesus’ resurrection (a historical event), there is no Christianity and no hope for a future in heaven (a theological assertion). If Jesus is nothing more than an embellished legend, then the hope of heaven is little more than a wish. In order for Christianity to be true, it must include a belief in certain historical facts and a belief that the Bible preserves an accurate account of those events. This establishes the identity of Jesus as the resurrected Savior. In this sense, theology can’t be separated from history. Rather, theology depends on history. — Kenneth Samples (from, 5 Levels of Christian Faith)

After studying the historical origins of the Christian faith, I came to these conclusions: that Jesus died on the cross is as certain as anything historical can be; that he rose from the dead is by far the best explanation of the events surrounding his death; and that Jesus claimed to be God is the best explanation for the immediate Christian proclamation of Jesus’ deity. Putting it all together: Jesus claimed to be God, and he proved it by rising from the dead. The case for Christianity is powerful. Despite my ardent desire to believe in Islam, I had to admit that history was in favor of Christian claims, and even more reluctantly, that it challenged Islamic teachings. — Nabeel Qureshi (from, No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity)

The wise do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. It is really quite absurd. So everything from the Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by the groveling enthusiasts as part of their plan to get themselves martyred. — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (cited in, Evidence for the Resurrection by Josh & Sean McDowell)

The real cover-up [of Watergate], the lie, could only be held together for two weeks, and then everybody else jumped ship in order to save themselves. Now, the fact is that all that those around the President were facing was embarrassment, maybe prison. Nobody’s life was at stake. But what about the disciples? Twelve powerless men, peasants really, were facing not just embarrassment or political disgrace, but beatings, stonings, execution. Every single one of the disciples insisted, to their dying breaths, that they had physically seen Jesus bodily raised from the dead. Don’t you think that one of those apostles would have cracked before being beheaded or stoned? That one of them would have made a deal with the authorities? None did. Jesus is Lord: That’s the thrilling message of Easter. And it’s an historic fact, one convincingly established by the evidence—and one you can bet your life upon. Go ahead researchers—dig up all the old graves you want. You won’t change a thing. He has risen. — Chuck Colson (cited in, Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?)

When we turn to the Gospels, we find multiple, independent attestation of this burial story, and Joseph of Arimathea is specifically named in all four accounts. On top of that, the burial story in Mark is so extremely early that it’s simply not possible for it to have been subject to legendary corruption. When you read the New Testament, there’s no doubt that the disciples sincerely believed the truth of the resurrection, which they proclaimed to their deaths. The idea that the empty tomb is the result of some hoax, conspiracy, or theft is simply dismissed today. — William Lane Craig (cited in, Case-Making 101: A Resurrection Apologetic)

There is an important difference between the apostle martyrs and those who die for their beliefs today. Modern martyrs act solely out of their trust in beliefs that others have taught them. The apostles died for holding to their own testimony that they had personally seen the risen Jesus. Contemporary martyrs die for what they believe to be true. The disciples of Jesus died for what they knew to be either true or false. ― Gary Habermas, (from, The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus)

None of [the] major figures who constituted the inner circle of Jesus would have become or remained followers of Jesus after the crucifixion if there was no resurrection and no resurrection appearances of Jesus. The church, in the persons of its earliest major leaders, was constituted by the event of the resurrection, coupled with the Pentecost event! The stories of these figures, especially their post-Easter stories, are the validation of this fact. There would be no church without the risen and appearing Jesus. ― Ben Witherington III (from, What Have They Done with Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories & Bad History)

In order for the Resurrection of Jesus to be a late legend, the story would have to be both late and a legend. It is neither. The earliest New Testament documents include the Resurrection story, and the record of the early Church fathers demonstrates that the story was not altered over time. The truth of the Gospel accounts and the Resurrection of Jesus is still the most reasonable inference from the evidence. — J Warner Wallace (from, Investigating Easter: Is The Resurrection A Late Legend?)

If the Resurrection [of Jesus] had not happened, obviously the disciples would have known it. I can find no way that these particular men could have been deceived. Therefore they not only would have died for a lie—here’s the catch—they would have known it was a lie. It would be hard to find a group of men anywhere in history who would die for a lie if they knew it was a lie. — Josh McDowell (from, More Than a Carpenter)

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2 Years Ago Franklin Graham Delivered Chilling Easter Message… It’s Still Powerful

Rev. Franklin Graham has been considered a steady, intelligent voice for the Christian faith, and his words often represent what most evangelical conservatives believe to be true. Roughly 2 years ago, Graham issued a chilling Easter message about anti-Christian attitudes in our own country and around the world.

“Untold millions of Christians around the world are celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Graham said during his Easter message.

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For some, however, worshiping Jesus and fellowshipping with other believers has proven to be far more costly than others.

“(M)illions in many countries risk their freedom and their very lives to worship Him and claim His name,” the reverend explained.

For some, the threats come from radical Islamic organizations, such as the Islamic State group, which has made it quite clear that its members are willing to kill any and every proponent of the Christian faith.

Why does Islam hate so much? It’s because the Quran teaches its followers to hate. https://t.co/t8QaTZ3U4A #BrusselsAttacks

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) March 24, 2016

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But, for others, the threat is not so much to their lives as it is to their religious liberty.

Graham pointed out that American citizens have become increasingly on the receiving end of anti-Christianity rhetoric despite our constitutional protections.

“Even in America there has recently grown an ugly, anti-Christian bias and intolerance that is changing our nation from the inside out,” he said.

Graham added that this is “opening doors for all kinds of discrimination and loss of religious freedom that we hear about daily in the news.”

Graham’s message remains true today, as we celebrate another Easter season.

Christians in our own country have been targeted and made to feel that we must put aside our religious beliefs in order to accommodate actions and behaviors that violate those beliefs.

LGBT forces and corporate super powers are try to stop a Georgia bill that would protect pastors from performing same-sex marriages.

— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) March 23, 2016

With the United States that is more divided than ever before, it is critical that Christians come together to stand up for our values.

These are the same values that our country was founded on, and the same values that have contributed to the continued prosperity of this great land.

The post 2 Years Ago Franklin Graham Delivered Chilling Easter Message… It’s Still Powerful appeared first on Conservative Tribune.