Resurrection - Fact or Fiction?

Since the world has been hit by the Coronavirus pandemic, people have been searching for an answer to death and suffering.

What could make sense of this tragic loss of life?

And where can we find hope in the midst of such despair?

For many, Jesus looks like the last place to look for those answers. 

Jesus made some big claims and stirred up hopes and dreams.

And then he died. 

His body was put in a tomb. 

Hope was extinguished. 

It was over.

Mark 16:6

“You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.”

First-century people knew just as well as twenty-first century people that dead men do not rise from the dead. And yet, in the space of a few weeks, the disciples were proclaiming to crowds of people that Jesus was alive. Their witness testimony ended up turning the world upside down. And many of them were eventually killed for holding to their firm conviction that Jesus was alive.

So what changed? What caused this huge paradigm shift?

Jesus gave them, and gives us, proof that it is really him, really risen. 

He speaks. He eats. He appears to many. He carries the scarred nail-marks. 

The events of Easter are the events of history, backed up by evidence that the eyewitnesses were willing to die to corroborate.

The resurrection of Jesus gives us hope. 

It means that, with Jesus, the worst thing is never the last thing. 

It means that those who put their trust in him have a certain hope for the future, based on true events in the past. 

And that really is the best news ever.

What difference would it make if Jesus really did rise from the dead?

What do you make of the evidence for the Resurrection?