CONSIDER THIS: Are These The Seven Best Evidences for Jesus’ Literal Resurrection?

There is no doubt that the single most important claim of Christianity — whether you are a follower, a skeptic or apathetic about it all —  is that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead three days after His death on the cross, thereby providing convincing proof of His claim to be God-made-flesh.

According to the New Testament, Jesus Christ’s tomb was found empty on Easter Sunday and He subsequently appeared to more than 500 people before ascending back into Heaven from whence He came. Is that an historical fact, on a par with the reality of George Washington, Martin Luther and Julius Caesar, or just another fairy tale?

If that claim about Jesus’ literal resurrection is not true, then Christianity is based on a lie and, as Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:14-19, anybody who believes it is among the most foolish of all people who ever lived:

“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

^“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope^[a] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

But if the resurrection is an historical fact, then everything Jesus said about Himself must be true, including especially His claim at John 14:6 that He is “the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me.”

So this resurrection issue is among the most important things you will ever consider. This will come as a shock to many, but the evidence is massive and credible for the conclusion that the resurrection did literally occur as described in the Gospels.

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston is the author of “Body of Proof: The Seven Best Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection and Why It Matters Today,” a new compilation a decade in the making of an amazing body of facts and logic.

Here’s how Johnston is described on his Amazon author’s page:

“Dr. Johnston completed his doctoral residency in Oxford in partnership with Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and received his Ph.D. from Middlesex University (United Kingdom), with commendation. He has Masters Degrees from Acadia University (Canada) and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (US). He has lectured throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

“Dr. Johnston serves as the founder and president of Christian Thinkers Society, a resident institute at Houston Baptist University, where he also serves as associate professor of Early Christianity. Christian Thinkers Society produces live events, media productions, conferences, and publications to teach pastors and Christians to become thinkers, and thinkers to become Christians.”

In the following video, which at 1 hour and 16 minutes is easily the longest video ever posted on HillFaith, Johnston details his seven reasons in a pointed conversation with  Sean McDowell, the Professor of Apologetics at Biola University and son of the great Josh McDowell, author of “More Than A Carpenter.”

McDowell immediately challenges Johnston’s first reason – that the resurrection transformed the disciples who then led a movement that transformed society everywhere it was planted, with a result that blessings such as hospitals, concern for human rights and even the development of science followed in its wake.

Why is the positive impact of Christianity on society persuasive evidence for the literal resurrection, McDowell asks. A fairy tale can have positive effects on its hearers, so why not the fairy tale about Jesus’ resurrection?

In response, Johnston points out something that most Americans today do not know – there was a point right after the Crucifixion of Jesus that His movement, like His body, was dead, as described at Luke 24:13-24:

“It would take a lot more faith to believe that [fairy tale] scenario because the Christian movement had died. The disciples on the way to Emmaus said ‘we had hoped He was the resurrection but He’s not.’ Jesus Christ was thought to be a failure like many other Messianic pretenders and contenders had died out.

“And why shouldn’t it? Their savior had quote unquote died on a Roman cross as an enemy of the state. But this one fact alone separates the Christian movement from all others. And they didn’t feel like it, they didn’t want to experience this. This was not some kind of wish-filled thinking, they had left, they had departed, they had apostasized if you will.”

In other words, the Christian movement at this point had people leaving it for whom nothing less than the literal appearance of the risen Christ would be sufficient to convince them to reverse course, to not give up but to rejoin the movement and help it spread the word of the resurrected savior.

Johnston offers much more evidence on this first of his seven points, as well as a great deal of the evidence for his other six reasons. I don’t want to give away too much, here, so I strongly encourage you to give yourself the time to sit down and listen to this interview and think seriously about the evidence Johnston presents:

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