In this article, I will share five reasons I believe Jesus' resurrection actually took place.
You can remember these five reasons with the acronym:
R.I.S.E.N.
The first reason I believe Jesus' resurrection is a fact of history is…
1. The RISE of Christianity in Jerusalem
It is an accepted historical fact that the Christian faith (a religion built upon the preaching of its leader's resurrection) originated in approximately A.D. 32, right in the very city of Jerusalem, where Jesus had been publicly crucified and buried. Historical sources outside the Bible have verified this. Now, this in itself is a good piece of evidence that the resurrection actually occurred. Why?
A message calling people to repent and put their faith in a risen man could never have gained any substantial following amongst the Jews if the tomb had not actually been empty and had the Jewish people not seen Jesus alive after His crucifixion.
'The message of a risen man could not have been maintained a moment in Jerusalem if the grave was still occupied,' Josh McDowell, A Ready Defense, 232.
Remember that Jesus' disciples did not run off to Athens or Rome to preach that Christ rose from the dead, where the facts could not be verified. They returned to Jerusalem, where they would have been quickly exposed and disproved—if what they were teaching was false. The critics could have exposed the disciples as liars, and Christianity would never have got off the ground. The local authorities could have said, “Hey! Here is the grave and the body!” and squashed the whole movement.
But that never happened! Not only did Christianity originate in Jerusalem, but it also thrived there!
Luke, whose writings have been confirmed by numerous extrabiblical writings and archaeological discoveries, tells us that 3,000 people believed the first post-resurrection sermon preached a few minutes’ walk from the tomb, Acts 2:41. Later in the same chapter in Acts 2, Luke says that the church was growing daily, Acts 2:47. By Acts 4:4, Luke declares there were 5,000 believers comprising the early Christian church in Jerusalem. By Acts 6:7, Luke just says the number of disciples “continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem". He was apparently losing count!
Not only did Christianity originate and flourish in Jerusalem, but it also triumphed over several competing ideologies and eventually overwhelmed the entire Roman Empire.
By the early fourth century, when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, historians say there were around thirty million Christians, Rodney Stark, The Triumph of Christianity, 156; Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity, 297.
Here's a question for you. Is it reasonable to suppose that thousands of people within those early days following Jesus' death were actually deceived into believing a man rose from the dead? I don’t think so.
The best explanation for the immediate rise of the early church, right amid a community that had not only been hostile to Jesus but that demanded His crucifixion, is the resurrection. People had seen Jesus! Acts 1:3 says that Jesus “presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over forty days and speaking of the things concerning the kingdom of God.”
The resurrection catapulted New Testament Christianity into existence. So, the first reason I believe in Christ’s resurrection is the rise of Christianity in Jerusalem.
2. The INCREDIBLE Persecution and Deaths Endured by the Disciples
When Jesus was arrested and led away to be crucified, the Gospels tell us that His disciples…
• fled in fear (Matthew 26:56)
• went into hiding (John 20:19)
• lost hope (Luke 24:21)
A short time later, we read that something amazing happened. These same fearful men went through a dramatic transformation. Within a few weeks of Jesus' crucifixion, these same men were standing face to face with the people who had crucified their leader, preaching that Jesus was alive, telling people that they needed to turn from their wicked ways and know that Jesus was both Messiah and Lord, Acts 2:36-38.
To prevent this belief from spreading, the same authorities who had Jesus crucified…
• threatened the disciples
• flogged them
• beat them
• imprisoned them
• and forbade them to speak the name of Jesus see Acts 4:16-18, 5:28.
So, what did the disciples do? They returned and said to the Jewish leaders, “We must obey God rather than men, Acts 5:29.”
After saying, “We must obey God rather than men,” they went on “rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. Every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ, Acts 5:41-42.”
But their boldness had a cost.
Flavius Josephus, Eusebius, Tertullian, and other independent extrabiblical sources record for us that many of Jesus’ earliest followers, including the apostles, suffered intense persecution and even death for their ongoing belief and preaching that Jesus was Lord and had risen from the dead. These extrabiblical sources tell us that...
- Matthew was slain with a sword in a city in Ethiopia
- Mark died in Alexandria, in Northern Egypt, after having been cruelly dragged through the streets of that city.
- Luke was hung upon an olive tree in the land of Greece
- John was tortured and banished to the Isle of Patmos, Revelation 1:9
- James, the brother of John, was beheaded in Jerusalem, Acts 12:2
- James the Less, as he’s called in Mark 15:40, was thrown from a pinnacle of the temple
- Philip was hung up against a pillar at Heiropolis in the province of Phrygia
- Bartholomew was flayed alive
- Andrew was bound to a cross and left to die
- Jude was shot to death with arrows
- Matthias, the apostle chosen to replace Judas, was first stoned and then beheaded
- Barnabas was stoned to death by the Jews at Salonica
- Paul, after a variety of tortures and imprisonments, was finally beheaded in Rome
- Thomas was run through the body with a spear in east India
- Peter was crucified upside down in Rome
All of this is very sobering, isn't it?
Here's a question for you. Were these men lying?
I find it very difficult to believe these men “made up a story” about Jesus and then spent years enduring persecution, imprisonments, and such, only to die these kinds of painful deaths. Nobody lies to get themselves into these kinds of predicaments! People lie to get out of these kinds of things!
Well, the fact that these men laid down their lives, unwilling to recant or admit falsehood in the face of beatings, stonings, and torture, is another reason I believe the resurrection actually took place.
