Resurrection Evidence 1

The accepted historical facts indicate that, as unlikely as it seems, Jesus actually rose from the dead. Some of the evidence is subtle, some is the result of the process of elimination, some is just common sense.

Minimal historical facts

Let us look first at four minimal, historically verified facts, that appear to be accepted by both believers and skeptics alike. These are taken verbatim from J. Warner Wallace’s Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (p. 41).

1. Jesus died on the cross and was buried.

2. Jesus’s tomb was empty and no one ever produced his body.

3. Jesus’s disciples believed that they saw Jesus resurrected from the dead.

4. Jesus’s disciples were transformed following their alleged resurrection observations.

Any explanation must deal with all four historical facts.

Many explanations other than the actual resurrection of Jesus, some quite elaborate, have appeared over the years to explain these facts. There is one explanation, however, that is simple and elegant: Jesus actually did rise from the dead, appeared to his disciples and in so doing transformed them into the bold evangelists we know from history. This simple explanation accounts for the four facts and has profound implications for all of us today.

The Gentile Mission of the Church

One of the subtle and yet powerful evidences for the resurrection of Jesus is the Gentile mission of the church. This argument is put forth in detail by Daniel P. Fuller in his book, Resurrection Faith: Understanding Luke’s History of Jesus (2016). In Fuller’s words, “we also note Luke’s argument that God’s present working in the Gentile mission is the fulfillment of the resurrection, which depends for its validity upon what actually occurred in the inauguration of this mission” (2016, p. 209). Fuller’s (and Luke’s) argument hinges on the character and experience of the Apostle Paul.

My reader may be unfamiliar with the Apostle Paul, previously named Saul. From his own writings and from Luke’s account, we know that Saul was a zealous persecutor of the church prior to his conversion to Christianity. We might use the word “terrorist” to describe him:

According to Paul himself, as he was on his way to Damascus to imprison and further persecute Christians there (Damascus was a city some distance from Saul’s headquarters in Jerusalem), the resurrected Jesus appeared to him. “Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?” the Lord said. The risen Jesus gave him a commission to tell Gentiles, “all people,” the good news of Jesus’s resurrection (Acts 22:1-21). Saul, who later was called Paul, repented of his campaign of terror against Christians and himself became a follower of Jesus, dedicated to the mission of bringing all peoples (a Jewish code phrase for non-Jews, as in Daniel 7:13-14) to faith in the risen Jesus.

While Paul continued to be a loyal and devoted Jew (Romans 9:3), he suddenly stopped destroying the church and started reaching out to Gentiles to bring them to belief in the resurrection of Jesus, while at the same time not ignoring his brother Jews. He in fact identified with them. Luke records in the book of Acts the Jewish church’s extreme reluctance to embrace Gentiles as brothers in Christ. (Romans 9:3).

How can we account for Paul’s leadership in the Gentile mission of the church? Fuller discusses the contradiction posed by Saul’s/Paul’s sudden conversion. After his persecution of the church ended, we see Paul’s continued loyalty to orthodox Judaism; we see the Jewish leadership’s hatred of the Gentile mission (see, for example, Acts 11:2; 13:45, 50); and we see Paul’s testimony that he carried out this Gentile mission because of a commission received directly from the risen Jesus.

We see two historical facts:

1) Immediately following the death of Jesus, Christianity was for all appearances a Jewish sect. Virtually all followers of Jesus were Jews. First-century Jews had a great antipathy toward associating with Gentiles, much less welcoming them directly into the newly-forming church without them first becoming Jewish.

2) Within the first few years, though, the church grew explosively among Gentiles. How was it possible for this Jewish sect to grow explosively among non-Jews? How is it possible that there would even be a Gentile mission in the newly-founded church, much less that it would be so successful? Luke’s answer is that it is a direct result of an appearance of the resurrected Jesus to the devoutly-Jewish terrorist Saul.

This explanation appeals to me because it is grounded in two, apparently contradictory historical facts, and because it satisfies what is portrayed as God’s longing to draw “all

peoples” to himself.

Next: Resurrection Evidence 2

This post is an excerpt from my book, Is Jesus Real?

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