Paul in Athens - The Risen Lord

The Risen Christ

Finally in Acts 17:29-34 Paul calls on them to repent and turn to God. The call to believe in Christ is not an option, it is a command, for one day everyone will be called to give an account to Him.

The evidence for the Lordship of Christ is the resurrection. The resurrection was the focus of all the New Testament preaching. At this point we come to the final myth of atheism that we will consider in this series of essays. This myth is that faith is not based on evidence. Time and time again you will hear in the media the notion that faith means believing something when there is no evidence, or despite the evidence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The resurrection is based on solid evidence. The gospels record several incidents of Jesus appearing to men and women, and in various circumstances. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, tells us that on one occasion Jesus appeared to over 500 hundred people. Paul also pointed out that many of these people were still alive, so they could be asked.

There are various arguments given against the resurrection, we will look at a few of these:

It was just all nonsense

This is based on the idea that 1st century people were gullible. They knew full well that when someone died, they stayed dead. Remember also that whenever Jesus spoke about the resurrection His disciples never had a clue what He was on about. As mentioned above, the resurrection was based on evidence.

They made it up

If it was all made up, why then did the disciples risk their lives for a lie? Most, possible all, of the apostles died because of their faith. Note also that the first witnesses were women.

In the culture of their time you would not have women as the first witnesses if you were making something up.

Both the “made it up” and “nonsense” arguments run into the problem, that if Jesus was dead why did the Roman or the Jews not just point to the tomb? This would have put an end to all the talk of the risen Lord. But they did not do this because they could not do this because there was no body.

Jesus never died

This is a very weak argument. The Romans were very skilled at two things, building roads and killing people. They checked the bodies on the cross to make sure they were dead.

Even if Jesus had just “swooned”, then He would have been in a very weak state to say the least. Hardly someone to start a new movement. And it again runs into the same arguments as the “made it up” theory.

Disciples stole the body

This is equally unlikely, and again runs into the “made it up” arguments. Moreover, the Romans had guards on the tomb who risked their lives if the body was stolen.

Hallucination

This is the idea that the disciples suffered from hallucinations. This is psychological nonsenses. First there was no expectation of Jesus rising from the dead. Secondly, there were multiple appearances, in different situations, to different people.

One of the strongest arguments for the resurrection is the church itself, for otherwise it is difficult to explain the rise of the church. Remember the apostles paid a great price for following Jesus, and received little in the way of earthly gain.

One final important point is that because Jesus is the risen Lord we can know and experience Him for ourselves.

So the resurrection is not “blind faith”, but faith based on very strong evidence.

Further Reading

You can find much more on the resurrection, and the arguments I have mentioned briefly here in Andrew Warnock’s book, Raised with Christ. There are, of course, many other good books on this topic.