How Do We Know The Early Christians Were Right?

David Hume was an eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher known today as the "Father of Skepticism." He suggested six criteria by which we should judge those who claim to have witnessed a miracle. 

How do the eyewitnesses to the risen Christ fare by them?

Such witnesses should be:

1. Numerous: over five hundred saw the resurrected Lord (1 Corinthians 15:6).


2. Intelligent: as the books the early Christians wrote make clear, they were smart.


3. Educated: the Apostle Paul was trained by Gamaliel, the finest scholar in Judaism (Acts 22:3).


4. Of unquestioned integrity: the early Christians held strongly to their beliefs in a risen Savior. 


5. Willing to undergo severe loss if proven wrong: this was proven by their martyrdoms.


6. And their claims should be capable of easy validation: this was witnessed to by the empty tomb anyone could view (cf. Acts 26:26: "It was not done in a corner").

So, the witnesses were credible. 

But is there objective evidence for their claims? 

Objective Evidence For Early Christians

It is a fact of history that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and buried, and that, on the third day, his tomb was found empty. Skeptics have struggled to explain his empty tomb ever since.

On strategy claimed that Jesus' disciples stole his body while the guards at the tomb slept (Matthew 28:11–15). But how would sleeping guards know the identity of these thieves? How could the disciples convince five hundred people that the corpse was alive? And why would these disciples then die for what they knew to be a lie?

A second approach claims that the women stole the body. But how would they overpower the guards? How would they make a corpse look alive? Why would they suffer and die for such fabrication?

A third explanation is that the authorities stole the body. When the misguided disciples found an empty tomb, they mistakenly announced a risen Lord. But why would the authorities steal the body they had stationed guards to watch? When Christians began preaching the resurrection, wouldn't they quickly produce the corpse?

A fourth approach is the wrong-tomb theory: the grief-stricken women and apostles went to the wrong tomb, found it empty, and began announcing Easter. But the women saw where he was buried (Matthew 27:61); Joseph of Arimathea, the owner of the tomb, would have corrected the error (Matthew 27:57–61); and the authorities would have gone to the correct tomb and produced the corpse.

A fifth strategy is the "swoon theory": Jesus did not actually die on the cross. He or his followers bribed the medical examiner to pronounce him dead, then he revived in the tomb and appeared to be resurrected. But how could he have survived the spear thrust into his side or the burial clothes that would have smothered him? In his emaciated condition, how could he have shoved aside the stone and overpowered the Roman guards? How could he have appeared through walls (John 20:19, 26) and then ascended to heaven (Acts 1:9)?

There is only one reasonable explanation for the empty tomb, the changed lives of the disciples, and the overnight explosion of the Christian movement upon the world stage: Jesus Christ rose from the dead. 

He is therefore the person he claimed to be: our Lord and God. 

He was justified in making the most stupendous claim in human history, one repeated by no other individual in all of recorded history: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28:18).