‘For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.’ – [1 Corinthians 15:3-4 NIV]
1) The Lord’s Day. For thousands of years, the Hebrew people
had maintained their Sabbath doctrine. Then later, a group of early Christians
who were Jews changed the day of worship from the seventh day to the first day!
What could account for their deserting a tradition to which they had held so
steadfastly? The resurrection of Christ, which happened on the first day of the
week, His appearance to the disciples on the first day of the week, and the
outpouring of His Spirit on the church on the first day of the week. So on the
first day of the week, the disciples met to worship Him (see 1 Corinthians
16:2).
2) The celebration of Easter. This took the place of the
Jewish festival of the Passover. So why did the Jews, who regarded the Passover
to be the most important event in the history of their nation, forsake it in
favour of the celebration of Easter, which was the most important festival
among Christians? The salutation was, ‘Christ is risen!’ The reply was, ‘Christ
is risen indeed!’ What fact, other than that of the resurrection, can explain
the reality of the Easter celebration, which we can trace all the way back to
the era of the early church? Paul writes: ‘For what I received I passed on to
you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day…After that,
he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters’ (1
Corinthians 15:3-4, 6 NIV).
3) The Christian sacraments. The Christian sacraments point
to the death and suffering of Christ and also to His resurrection and power.
These can be traced back in uninterrupted sequence to the exact time of the
death of Jesus Christ.
4) Christian art. In the catacombs of Rome, from the period
of the persecutions, we discover etched into the walls, depictions of the
resurrection of Christ as an element of the earliest Christian beliefs.
5) The Christian church. Consider the undeniable fact of the
Christian church. Numerous people do not realise the link between the church
and the resurrection, but scholars do. The Christian church is the biggest
institution that exists or has ever existed in the world’s history. It is five
times larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest scope. In fact, more than
two billion people today acknowledge their worship of Jesus Christ as the alive
and risen Son of God. How did such an institution come into and stay in
existence? Someone quipped, ‘The Grand Canyon wasn’t formed by a person
dragging a stick.’ Neither was an institution the magnitude of the Christian
church created by the fancies of idle dreamers in days past. Historians
recognise that the Christian church can be tracked all the way back to the city
of Jerusalem in AD 30, the time of the death and resurrection of Christ.
6) You would be hard-pressed to find a time in recorded
history where someone willingly gave up their life for what they knew to be a
lie. Author Paul E. Little said, ‘Men will die for what they believe to be
true, though it may actually be false. They do not, however, die for what they
know is a lie.’ The fact that those early disciples were willing to endure such
suffering makes the foundations of Christianity unshakable.
7) Christ’s enemies went to incredible lengths to disprove
the resurrection. ‘When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a
plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to
say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were
asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy [bribe] him and
keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were
instructed’ (Matthew 28:12-15 NIV).
Think: there has never been a witness in history allowed to
testify to what transpired while he or she was asleep. And for a Roman soldier
to fall asleep on duty meant a certain death penalty. Indeed, if Jesus had
still been in the tomb, or if they had taken his body and placed it somewhere
else, why did the Jewish leaders not say so? No, they were paralysed and powerless
to do anything about it. Their only option – the one they took – was to
initiate great persecution against all Christians. But it failed then, and it
fails now because Jesus is alive!
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