John MacArthur

“You see, it makes all the difference to the soul of man whether or not life is more than just the cradle to the grave, whether or not life is only a gleam of consciousness somewhere between birth and death or whether in fact there is something after death.

And men have, since the beginning of man, longed to understand what there is out there in that immortal life.

“The resurrection is everything to Christianity.

The crucifixion loses its meaning without the resurrection.

The life of Christ is a waste without that resurrection.

Without the resurrection, the death of Christ becomes the heroic death of a noble martyr.

Or it becomes the execution of a fraud. Or maybe it becomes the pathetic death of a deranged madman.

But with the resurrection, it becomes the death of the atoning Son of God.

You see, it wasn't His teaching, and it wasn't His miracles, and it wasn't His dying that accounted for the church and accounted for Christianity.

It was His resurrection. There would be no church if He had not risen.”