The Road to Easter: The Risen Lord

With the upcoming Easter Holiday approaching soon, I thought it to be proper to write this post. The most important event in history was the resurrection of Jesus. First of all, it’s important to discuss both proponents and disagreements of this to a certain degree. To make a long story short, Mary Magdalene, first witness of the empty tomb, according to the gospel of John, visited the tomb of Jesus and discovered that the tomb to be empty. She then goes out and sees a man whom she had thought to be the gardener and then discovers that it was Jesus all along.

John 20:17

Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, “I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.”

There’s no other explanation, as historians agree, for the rise of early Christianity because it’s so difficult to truly account for any other reasons. There are some who claimed that the disciples just fabricated the resurrection, but it’s so difficult to imagine people suffering for a lie, therefore, if one concludes this, can you truly answer this question:

Can a person die for a lie?

We must understand that the disciples weren’t with Jesus when he was crucified, indicating that they feared for their lives, except John who was young enough at the time for Roman Soldiers to dismiss as any kind of threat. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus were also there in Jesus’ crucifixion. What’s important is that this could not have been made up because it fits within the bounderies of what the disciples had to do. And they had to hide because if they didn’t, they would have been arrested and crucified along with their leader that day, making an old testament prophecy come true that foretells that the Messiah’s disciples will be scattered during his sacrifice.

Then 3 days later, the same disciples who were afraid for their lives were now going around the country side to say that the lord has risen and that hundreds of others would eventually see him. This sudden transformation indicates that something did happen that first Easter Sunday.

Some scholars have tried to justify their conclusions by trying to say that the disciples were just hallucinating. But, as serious logical people, confirmed with psychological studies, it’s not possible for hundreds of people to hallucinate at the same time. Why is it that there wasn’t anyone at the time who just said that they didn’t witness the risen lord speak to them?
The fact that skeptics couldn’t come up with Jesus’ body and the fact that they couldn’t prove that what these people had witnessed was not real, lends a greater drama on what truly happened that first Easter Sunday.

This is important because without that first Easter Sunday, the world that we know today would be tremendously different.

Did Jesus rise from the dead that day?

The only logical conclusion is: YES.