The resurrection of Jesus Christ is without a doubt a central doctrine of Christianity. If Christ didn’t raise from the dead then Christianity is dead. But if the resurrection took place, as described in the Bible, then Jesus is the only way to be restored back to God. Thus, the implications of the resurrection are truly monumental. It guarantees all who trust in Christ eternal life and those who reject Him eternal doom.
I can think of nothing more important than the truthfulness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ – for your eternal destiny rests upon it. But to put one’s faith in something as important as the resurrection – with its eternal implications – we should want there to be compelling evidence for its reliability. Fortunately, from any and every angle you examine the resurrection there is no event in history that has more evidence to support its veracity. From eyewitness accounts, to transformed lives, and to the laws of logic, the resurrection had to have taken place.
I challenge you to read the following quotes and decide for yourself why the evidence for the actuality of the resurrection is so compelling. I don’t know about you but if I am going to be asked to place and maintain my faith in something as consequential as Christianity I would want compelling evidence to substantiate the resurrection.1
“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world – and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.” ― Charles Colson
“I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.” – Thomas Arnold
“There is an important difference between the apostle martyrs and those who die for their beliefs today. Modern martyrs act solely out of their trust in beliefs that others have taught them. The apostles died for holding to their own testimony that they had personally seen the risen Jesus. Contemporary martyrs die for what they believe to be true. The disciples of Jesus died for what they knew to be either true or false.” – Gary Habermas
“One of the most amazing facts about the early Christians belief in Jesus’ resurrection was that it originated in the very city where Jesus was crucified. The Christian faith did not come to exist in some distant city, far from eyewitnesses who knew of Jesus’ death and burial. No, it came into being in the very city where Jesus had been publicly crucified, under the very eyes of its enemies.” – William Craig
“I came to be an historian. My approach to Classics is historical. And I tell you that the evidence for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history.” – E. M. Blaiklock
“If the Resurrection had not occurred, why would the apostle Paul give such a list of supposed eyewitnesses? He would immediately lose all credibility with his Corinthian readers by lying so blatantly.” – Norman Geisler and Frank Turek
“Christianity rises or falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If this event is historically true, it makes all other religions false, because Jesus Christ claimed to be the one and only way to God the Father. To prove this, He predicted He would come out of the grave alive three days after He was executed. And He did.” – Randy Alcorn
“What did the Jewish New Testament writers have to gain by making up a new religion? By insisting the Resurrection occurred, they got excommunicated from the synagogue and then beaten, tortured, and killed. Last I checked that was not a list of perks.” – Frank Turek
“If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the reality of the Christian church and its phenomenal growth in the first three centuries of the Christian era? Christ’s church covered the Western world by the fourth century. A religious movement built on a lie could not have accomplished that….All the power of Rome and of the religious establishment in Jerusalem was geared to stop the Christian faith. All they had to do was to dig up the grave and to present the corpse. They didn’t.” – Henry Schaefer
“If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the sepulcher of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was buried, was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy, or archaeology that would disprove this statement.” – Paul Maier
“Raking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it.” – Brooke Westcott
“As Paul stood on trial for preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he asked those present a pointed question: “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead (Acts 26:8)?” Many unbelievers find it too difficult, too incredible, that God would or could raise a dead man (Jesus) back to life. And yet, many of these same people have no problem believing that God exists and that He created the heavens and the earth. This is astonishing to me! Think this through with me. If God could create the universe with all its billions of galaxies, and millions of kinds of living creatures from nothing, it certainly seems within the bounds of reason to believe that He could raise Jesus’ body back to life. As it has often been said, if you believe Genesis 1:1, you should have no problem believing Matthew 28:6: ‘He has risen, just as he said.’” – Charlie Campbell
“In 56 A.D. [the apostle] Paul wrote that over 500 people had seen the risen Jesus and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6ff.). It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians could have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by producing the body of Jesus.” – John Warwick Montgomery
“Why would the apostles lie [about the resurrection]?…Liars always lie for selfish reasons. If they lied, what was their motive, what did they get out of it? What they got out of it was misunderstanding, rejection, persecution, torture, and martyrdom. Hardly a list of perks!” – Peter Kreeft
“People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they’re true, but people won’t die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false. While most people can only have faith that their beliefs are true, the disciples were in a position to know without a doubt whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead. They claimed that they saw him, talked with him, and ate with him. If they weren’t absolutely certain, they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that the Resurrection had happened.” – Lee Strobel
1 All of these quotes are from: Charlie H. Campbell, Apologetics Quotes (Carlsbad, California: The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry, 2020).
Here’s the problem in dealing with the atheist using the reasoning, logic, and eye witness accounts of these quotes. The man, Jesus, may have risen from the dead but that doesn’t make him God anymore than Lazarus, The widow of Zarephath’s son, The Shunammite woman’s son, The man raised out of Elisha’s grave, The widow of Nain’s son, Jairus’ daughter, Tabitha, Eutychus, and resurrections that occurred en masse at the resurrection of Christ. Unbelievers have no problem believing someone could rise from the dead. After all, they say we live in a chance universe where anything could happen.
What did Jesus think about using the resurrection as an apologetic when reasoning with an unbeliever? Luke 16
“I beg you, father, to send Lazarus to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”
It’s always about the truth of God’s Word. When men like Geisler, Turek, and Craig make claims in their lectures and debates that we don’t start with the Bible but we can reason our way to faith using natural law, you wind up making the unbeliever the judge who is in control of the evidence. As CS Lewis said, this puts God in the dock, on trial rather than the unbeliever who is judged for his sin and told his need for repentance. The God of Christianity is not a “god” that you can reason to, He is THE God that we can’t reason without.