WHAT DID JESUS DO AFTER EASTER?

In 1963 the body of 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, one of four African-American girls tragically murdered in a church bombing by white racists, was buried in Birmingham, Alabama. For years family members kept returning to the grave to pray and leave flowers. In 1998 they decided to move the body to another cemetery.

But when workers went to dig up the body, they returned with a shocking discovery: The grave was empty.

Understandably, family members were terribly upset. Cemetery officials scrambled to figure out what had happened. Several possibilities were raised, the main one being that Addie Mae's tombstone had been erected in the wrong place.

In all of the discussion, however, one explanation was never proposed: Nobody suggested that young Addie Mae had been resurrected to walk the earth again. Why? Because by itself an empty grave does not prove a resurrection.

It's one thing to conclude that Jesus' grave really was empty on Easter Sunday (see chapter 8). While I knew that this was important and necessary evidence for Jesus' resurrection, I was also aware that a missing body is not conclusive proof by itself. If I were going to believe that a dead person came back to life, I'd want more evidence.

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Even the persistent myth that Elvis is still alive wouldn't have gained any momentum without the occasional report of an Elvis sighting. What I needed to know was, were there any Jesus sightings after his death? And if so, were they any more believable than the Elvis sightings reported in those tabloids you find in the checkout lane at Target?

500 EYEWITNESSES

The sighting witnessed by the greatest number of people at one time is reported by the apostle Paul, who wrote this in a letter to the church in Corinth:

What I received I passed on to you. And it is the most important of all. Here is what it is. Christ died for our sins, just as Scripture said he would. He was buried. He was raised from the dead on the third day, just as Scripture said he would be. He appeared to Peter. Then he appeared to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than 500 believers at the same time. Most of them are still living.

What catches my attention is that last sentence: "Most of them are still living." (You can read it for yourself in 1 Corinthians 15:3--6, NIrV.) Paul either knew some of these people or else he was told by someone who knew them that they were still walking around and willing to be interviewed.

Now stop and think about it: Would you include a statement like that if you weren't absolutely certain that these guys would confirm that they really did see Jesus alive? I mean, Paul was basically inviting people to check it out for themselves. Would he have said this if he wasn't confident they'd back him up?

EXAMINING THE ALTERNATIVES

All the evidence in the Gospels and Acts--incident after incident, witness after witness, detail after detail--was extremely impressive. But couldn't there be some plausible alternatives that could explain these apparent encounters with the risen Jesus?

Possibility 1: The Sightings Are Legends

If you've ever gone off on some adventure and come back with stories to tell, you know how those stories can grow bigger and better with each retelling--especially if there were a lot of people involved to add their own variations. The rapids you encountered on a whitewater rafting trip, for example, in memory seem more treacherous, the paddling more heroic, and your tumble out of the raft positively death-defying.

Maybe that's how the reports of Jesus' resurrection appearances got going. Maybe the accounts are merely legends that grew up over time.

One argument in favor of this possibility is the fact that the accounts become more numerous throughout the Gospels: Mark records no appearances; Matthew has some; Luke has more; and John has the most.

Possibility 2: The Sightings Were Hallucinations

Maybe the witnesses were sincere in believing they saw Jesus. Perhaps they accurately reported what they saw. But could they have been seeing a hallucination that convinced them they were encountering Jesus when they really weren't?

The biggest argument in favor of the hallucination theory, as far as I'm concerned, is that hallucinations are more common than resurrections. It's generally easier to believe that someone is hallucinating than that someone came back to life.

Possibility 3: Wishful Thinking

You probably know people who almost always manage to see what they want to see, to spin a situation to suit what they already believe. Like the guy who's convinced he's God's gift to women: a girl can walk past him without so much as a glance in his direction, and he'll turn to you and say, "She wants me!" Or the group that thinks their band is on the verge of breaking into the big time, even though they've never gotten a gig outside their own garage.

Maybe Jesus' followers were so set on seeing Jesus rise from the grave that they talked themselves--and one another--into believing it had happened. People who accept this possibility will tell you that stranger things have happened in the name of faith.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

If you're into logic, or history, or theology, you probably find all these lists of eyewitnesses and arguments for and against Christ's resurrection pretty gripping.

But if you're not into any of those things, you may be wondering, "What difference does it really make whether Jesus showed up and proved he was alive to a bunch of people who are now dead themselves?"

And that's a good question.

Because if Jesus' resurrection doesn't have anything to do with life today, does it matter whether he rose from the dead or not?

Encounters with Jesus 2,000 years ago may be the stuff of theology, but encounters with Jesus today--now that could make me sit up and take notice! And that's exactly what a professor named J.P. Moreland claims to have experienced.

We were bantering about football and whether his team (the Kansas City Chiefs) or mine (the Chicago Bears) had any chance of making it to the Super Bowl (probably not) when Moreland casually mentioned, "You've forgotten a whole category of encounters with Christ, you know."

After taking a second or two to shift gears from football to evidence for Christ's resurrection, I finally said, "I give up. What encounters do you mean?"

"It's the ongoing encounter with the resurrected Christ that happens all over the world, in every culture, to people from all kinds of backgrounds and personalities," he said. "They all will tell you that more than any single thing in their lives, Jesus Christ has changed them."

Moreland leaned forward for emphasis. "To me, this is the final evidence--not the only evidence, but the final confirming proof--that the message of Jesus can open the door to a direct encounter with the risen Christ."

"I assume you've had an encounter like that," I said. "Tell me about it."

"I was a cynical chemistry major at the University of Missouri when I was confronted with the fact that if I examined the claims of Jesus Christ critically but with an open mind, there was more than enough evidence for me to believe it.

"So I took a step of faith in the same direction the evidence was pointing, by receiving Jesus as my forgiver and leader. And I began to relate to him--to the resurrected Christ--in a very real and ongoing way.

"In three decades since then, I've had hundreds of specific answers to prayer, I've had things happen that simply cannot be explained by natural explanations, and I have experienced a changed life beyond anything I could have imagined."

"Wait a minute," I protested. "Lots of people in other religions experience life change, too. Isn't it dangerous to base a decision on an experience you can't prove?"

"Let me make two things clear," Moreland said. "First, I'm not saying, 'Just trust your experience.' I'm saying, 'Use your mind calmly and weigh the evidence, and then see whether your experience confirms that evidence.' Second, if what this evidence points to is true, the evidence itself begs for an experiential test."

"An experiential test?" I repeated. "Define that."

"The experiential test is, 'He's alive, and I can find out by relating to him.' If you were on a jury and heard enough evidence to convince you of someone's guilt, it wouldn't make sense to stop short of the final step of convicting him. And for people to accept the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and not take the final step of testing it experientially would be to miss where the evidence is leading."

Which, of course, leads to the obvious question: are you open to taking that step?

**

Taken from "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel and Jane Vogel, copyright 2001, Youth Specialties/Zondervan. Used by permission. Order the book here.
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