The Resurrection of Jesus - Part 2

The Bible is full of prophecy - not just that which is "forthtelling" (i.e. "This is the Word of the Lord"), but also "foretelling" (i.e. predictive: "This is what is going to happen").  A study of the latter group will show that many of them have been fulfilled, although there are some that have yet to be realised.  However, one 'sub-group' that can be easily checked out, is that which comprises the claims of the Lord Jesus that he would rise from the dead.  Indeed, John Stott, in his useful little volume, Basic Christianity, writes that "Jesus Himself never predicted His death without adding that He would rise, and described His coming resurrection as a 'sign'" (my emphasis).

Think about it!  If you, or I, were to go around and inform our friends that, not only would we die a violent death, but that three days later we would rise from the dead, we would be instant candidates for a prolonged stay in an institution for the mentally unstable!  And this would be right and proper.  Only a mentally unstable person would go around talking like that unless that person knew that what was being claimed would actually take place.  Only One Who is God could speak thus, with the certainty with which Jesus spoke.

There are too many of these instances for me to give them all in a single post, but here are just a few examples:  "Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, 'Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.'  But He answered them, 'An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.'" (Matt 12:38-40; my emphasis).  "... after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." (Matt 26:32).  "... He was teaching His disciples, saying to them, "The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and when He is killed, after three days He will rise." (Mark 9:31).  ""The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." (Luke 9:22).  "Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'  The Jews then said, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?' But He spoke of the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken." (John 2:19-22).

Of course, there were also many others who testified to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus - many of them in circumstances in which it is highly unlikely that they would have been merely "making something up"!  Ignatius, who became the Bishop of Antioch, was born less than 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jeus so, while he was not himself a contemporary of the Lord, he would have known people who were alive at that time.  He was martyred by being thrown to wild beasts, in the Colosseum in Rome.  On his journey there, when he would undoubtedly have been in a most sober frame of mind, he wrote his Epistles. Referring to his Saviour, he wrote, "He was crucified, and died, under Pontius Pilate.  He really, and not merely in appearance, was crucified, and died, in the sight of beings in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth.  He also rose again in three days."

The resurrection  of Jesus, the Christ, is an event in history, every bit as much as is the Battle of Bannockburn, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, or the destruction of the Space Shuttle Columbia.  We may discuss the meaning of it - that is theology; but the historical event is a matter of looking at the evidence.  The nature of the resurrection Body of Jesus may be a mystery (although I do have my own theory!), but its disappearance from the tomb is also a matter to be decided upon by examining the historical evidence.

Until tomorrow - and Part 3!!