Is it just another day?

Sunday is Easter. But what makes it more important than any other day of the year? Did Jesus really rise from the dead and if He did, so what? When Paul wrote in First Corinthians 15, he gave six specific consequences if Jesus never rose from the dead:

• Our preaching is useless (v14)
• Our faith is useless (v14)
• We are false witnesses of God (v15)
• We are still in our sins (v17)
• All of our loved ones who have already died have perished (v18)
• We are of all men most to be pitied or to be seen as fools (v19)

Each of the four Gospels records an account of the resurrection (Matthew 27:57-28:15; Mark 15:42-16:14; Luke 23:52-24:12; and John 19:38-20:31). It really should not have been a surprise to anyone that had listened to Jesus’ teaching. He claimed on numerous occasions that he would die and rise again. Read these words for yourselves in Matthew 16:21; 17:9, 22, 23; 20:18, 19; 26:32; Mark 9:10; Luke 9:22-27; and John 2:18-22.

Even secular history records the fact that the tomb of Jesus was found empty. Outside of a resurrection, how could this be explained? Many skeptics have tried. Some have claimed that the tomb was not really empty. These theories include:

The Unknown Tomb theory = The executioners cast the body into an unknown burial plot. This theory does not match the teachings of Scripture or the writings of history.

The Wrong Tomb theory = The women and the disciples mistook the wrong tomb, an empty tomb, to be Christ’s tomb. This could not be true because the women had seen the burial and knew the right location (Mt 27:61). The mistaken claim could have easily been proven false by the Jewish leaders simply taking everyone to the right tomb and showing them the body

The Legend theory = The accounts of the resurrection of Jesus did not crop up until many years later. Obviously this is not true as immediately the religious leaders bribed the guards at Jesus’ tomb to lie saying that His disciples stole His body.

The Spiritual Resurrection theory = Christ’s resurrection was spiritual. His body still lay in the grave. Again, to prove this all one needed to do was to show the body of Jesus.

The Hallucination theory = All Christ’s post-resurrection appearances were hallucinatory hoaxes. This is impossible. Many saw the resurrected Christ including a group of 500 at one time. It is simply not possible for more than one person to see the same hallucination at the same time. Why? Because hallucinations occur inside of a person’s mind. This was not a hallucination. Jesus really did rise from the dead.