Be Sure To Get All The Message

April 22, 2011 Leave a Comment

In Napoleon’s day, long-range signaling was done by means of semaphoring. So when news of the battle of Waterloo came in to England, a signalman on board a ship semaphored the first word, “Wellington.” Then he sent the next word, “defeated.” But after that a fog came down and prevented the ship from being seen for the next few hours. Naturally, the message “Wellington defeated” spread like wildfire through England. That, of course, was terrible news for the nation.

However, once the fog finally lifted, the signalman was able to finish sending his message. And the whole message was “Wellington defeated the enemy.” With that news, England’s gloom was turned to joy.

We might say that when the body of Christ was laid in the tomb following His crucifixion, the fog came down and the rest of the message couldn’t be seen. But on the third day the fog lifted as Christ arose victorious from the grave. On Easter Sunday we celebrate the lifting of the fog and the completion of the message. So let us never leave Christ’s body hanging dead on the cross or decomposing in the tomb. We must always be sure that the world hears ALL the message.

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Christ’s Resurrection: Study The Facts, I Dare You

April 21, 2011 1 Comment

A group of lawyers once met in England to discuss the Biblical accounts of Christ’s resurrection. They were curious as to whether or not there was sufficient information regarding the resurrection to make a case that would hold up in an English court of law. When they had finished their research, they published the results of their investigation. Their conclusion was that Christ’s resurrection was nothing less than one of the most well-established facts of history!

Along the same lines, noted Christian apologist Josh McDowell came to Christ by way of some of Christian friends in college challenging him to intellectually examine the claims of Jesus. In Christianity: Hoax or History, he writes:

Finally, I accepted their challenge. I did it out of pride, to refute them. But I didn’t know there were facts. I didn’t know there was evidence that a person could evaluate.

I guess the point I’m making is that you don’t have to check your brains at the door if you want to be a Christian. You don’t have to believe in Santa’s flying reindeer in order to also believe that Christ rose from the dead. One is fantasy, the other is history. If you doubt the historical veracity of the resurrection, I challenge you to dive into the same serious, academic study into which those lawyers and Josh McDowell dove. I mean, after all, if the claims about Christ can’t stand up to a little honest scrutiny, they aren’t worth much anyway.

But what you’ll find is that they can stand up to such scrutiny, and that simple fact will bring you face to face with a risen Savior. At that point, the decision will be yours. Will you make Him the Lord of your life or will you reject Him? Even if you do reject Him, you won’t be able to change the fact that He really was who He said He was, and He really arose just as He said He would.

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The Origins of the Easter Holiday (part 3)

April 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

Well, over my previous two posts I’ve laid the groundwork for this last one in the series. And so now, without further delay, let me relate the subject matter from those two posts to the holiday that we call Easter.

The word Easter is a derivation of Ishtar, Astarte, or Eostre. All of these were names for Semiramis, the queen of heaven. In the Babylonian cult, each year a festival for Semiramis was held in honor of her receiving Tammuz back from the dead. This festival is where the Easter holiday has it’s origins. Let me explain.

The emperor Constantine’s decree that Christianity would be the state religion of the Roman empire eventually led to the Christianizing of this yearly festival for Semiramis and Tammuz. So, the holiday changed from being about the resurrection of Tammuz to being about the resurrection of Jesus. However, even though the meaning of the holiday changed, many of its trappings didn’t.

First, during this festival, people exchanged colored eggs. They did this because Tammuz considered the egg sacred. He saw it as depicting the miracle of his resurrection and symbolic of new life. This, of course, is the origin of the idea of Easter eggs.

Second, in the forty days prior to the festival for Semiramis, the people engaged in a time of mourning. This forty-day period was held to commemorate the forty days Semiramis mourned between Tammuz’s death and resurrection. This forty-day period just before the festival of Semiramis is the origin for Catholicism’s forty-day observance of Lent during the forty days leading up to Easter.

Third, rabbits were a part of the festival held in honor of Semiramis. The rabbits, with their incredible ability to reproduce, spoke of Semiramis as a fertility goddess. This set the stage for the idea of an Easter bunny.

Continuing on with that topic, in second century Europe the predominate spring festival was a Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon goddess Eastre (Ostara). She was the Saxon version of Semiramis, and her sacred animal was a hare (rabbit).

Fifteen hundred years later, in Germany, children would await the arrival of Oschter Haws, a rabbit who would lay colored eggs in nests for children to find on Easter morning. It was this German tradition that was popularized into the American “Easter bunny” after the tradition was introduced by German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania.

Alright, now as I begin to close out this post and this series, let me say that the issue we face today is keeping a right balance on all of this. Personally, I don’t believe that we should shun Easter baskets or create a picket line in front of Easter egg hunts. Neither do I believe that we should try to ignore the holiday all together.

We can’t isolate ourselves from the world and become spiritual hermits. When our children go off to kindergarten, they want to take part in their class Easter party. When they go into Wal Mart around Easter, they want to buy an Easter basket. How can we possibly isolate them from this kind of thing? Are we supposed to say, “No, honey. Those chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs might lead you to worship the Babylonian goddess Semiramis and her son Tammuz”? I think that is taking things to a wrong extreme.

Here is a good piece of advice for any parent: Choose your stands well. Be much in prayer over what to make an issue of and what to let go. The last thing that you want to do is turn into a mean-spirited legalist who raises a child who can’t wait to get out from under your domineering thumb and try everything under the sun. Easter is such a fun time for kids. Don’t rob them of that. Instead, use Easter to teach them about the glorious resurrection of Jesus.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to read about how God is going to bring down the mighty Catholic Church during the coming tribulation period, you should read Revelation chapters 17 and 18. In those chapters the Catholic Church is called “Mystery Babylon,” for reasons I’ve explained. Chapter 17 describes the destruction of the religious power of the Catholic Church, and chapter 18 describes the destruction of the financial power of the Catholic Church.

Study those chapters, and you will see that the system of religion that was started by Semiramis way back in ancient Babylon and was ultimately merged with true Christianity will one day be brought to an end by God. For now, though, we, as Christians, must deal with the mess that was created by that merging of the Babylonian cult and Christianity. That mess includes the Easter holiday.

So, despite all of Easter’s pagan origins, let’s just stay focused on the fact that Jesus Christ really did arise from the dead. Unlike the lies associated with Tammuz, the story of Christ’s resurrection is true. We worship a living Savior, and that is definitely worth celebrating!

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The Origins of the Easter Holiday (part 2)

April 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

In my previous post, I began a short series on the origins of the Easter Holiday. That post explained the historical significance of the names “Semiramis” (the queen of heaven) and “Tammuz” as well as the idolatrous religion that was built around them. That religion began in ancient in Babylon and, over the centuries, snaked its way across the known world. Now, with this post, let’s press on further into world history and see what ultimately became of that religion.

The nation of Rome eventually rose to become the most powerful empire on earth, and the Babylonian mother-child religion (these days referred to by many as “the Babylonian cult”) became deeply entrenched in that massive empire. This is where a Roman emperor by the name of Constantine comes into the story.

As legend has it, Constantine had a vision that led him to convert to Christianity. Whether or not he actually got saved is highly debatable, but he at least outwardly professed to be a Christian. As emperor, he then began a process of making Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire. This was in 324 A.D. And here is where we start pulling some things together.

When Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire, millions of lost Romans flooded into the Christian churches. And, basically, those Romans said to the Christians, “Okay, the emperor says that we are now Christians. Show us how to do it.” Well, those Christians surely tried, but Rome’s old system of pagan religion, which was built around the mother-child idolatry of ancient Babylon, was just too ingrained in the people to go away. Just because an emperor forces Christianity onto his people, that doesn’t make those people truly Christian.

So what happened? Over a period of about four hundred years, those lost Romans, mingled in with true Christians, created a bizarre mix of Christianity and Babylonian cult paganism. This mix ultimately became what we know as the Roman Catholic Church.

Let me use four specific examples to help explain what happened. Keep in mind now that these things didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual process that played out over about four centuries. But they did happen.

Example #1 centers around the worship of the queen of heaven. When the lost Romans came into the Christian churches, those pagans looked for Christianity’s version of the queen of heaven and her son.

But they soon found out that Christians didn’t worship the queen of heaven or her son. So, rather than give up on the worship of the queen of heaven and her son, those lost Romans made Mary the queen of heaven and her son, Jesus, the equivalent of Tammuz. This is why Catholics, to this day, call Mary the “queen of heaven” and pray to her.

Example #2 centers around continuing, blood, sacrificial offerings. Such offerings were a vital part of the Babylonian cult system of worship. Those lost Romans soon found out, however, that Christianity didn’t offer up such offerings. Christianity looked to Christ’s death on the cross as the one, final, blood sacrifice that eliminated the need for any more blood sacrifices.

But rather than give up on the idea of continuing, blood sacrifices, those lost Romans devised a new interpretation for the Lord’s supper. They began to say that a miracle takes place during the partaking of the Lord’s supper. Through this miracle, the symbolism of the Lord’s supper is done away with as the bread literally becomes the actual body of Christ and the content of the cup literally becomes the actual blood of Christ. Under this interpretation, by partaking of the Lord’s supper, we sacrifice Jesus over and over again for our sins. This interpretation is now known as the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and it is why mass (the Catholic version of the Lord’s supper) is so important to Catholics.

Example #3 centers around the priests. The Babylonian cult system of worship prominently featured priests, but those lost Romans soon found out that each Christian was a priest in his or her own right. As Revelation 5:9-10 puts it, Jesus has “made us kings and priests to our God…” Instead of having priests who were in charge, the Christian churches had pastors, men who were on the same spiritual level as those in the congregations.

But rather than give up on the idea of having priests, those lost Romans made the pastors priests. They started calling them priests, and they got them to wear ornate, priestly garments. These garments were actually duplicates of the garments that were worn by the priests in the Babylonian cult system of worship. Furthermore, under the rules of the Babylonian cult, a person had to confess his sins to a priest before that person could be initiated into the religion. So those lost Romans began to confess their sins to the pastors, a practice which eventually led to the Catholic act of confessing one’s sins to a priest.

Example #4 centers around the vestal virgins. In the Babylonian cult system of worship, a special class of women were set apart for religious service. These women were the vestal virgins. Don’t be fooled by that name, though. Even though these women were supposedly dedicated to God, they, in essence, served as temple prostitutes. To understand this, you must understand that the queen of heaven was associated with fertility, and the subject of fertility brings in the act of sex.

Of course, the pagan Romans soon found out that the Christian churches didn’t have a class of women who were especially set apart in any way for religious service. But rather than give up on the idea of having a class of women set apart for religious service, those lost Romans created the order of women that we now call nuns. You see, in this case, the situation swung from one extreme (temple prostitutes who were set apart for service to God) to the opposite extreme (literal virgins who were set apart for service to God).

Alright, now as long as I am in this deep, let me go ahead and name some other examples of how the Babylonian mother-child religion was mixed with Christianity to produce Roman Catholicism. Again, these Catholic doctrines didn’t come into being overnight, but they were ultimately created:

-Example #1: The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory has its roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult, a priest would offer up prayers for a dead person to get that person into a better afterlife. But he would only do this after a large fee had been paid.

-Example #2: The Roman Catholic practice of last rites has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult, the dying were anointed for their journey into death. This anointing was done in the name of the “lord of heaven.”

-Example #3: The Roman Catholic practice of burning candles and incense to Mary has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. Remember that Semiramis had shrines to herself placed along the roads leading in and out of ancient Babylon. Worshippers stopped at these shrines and burned candles and incense to her.

-Example #4: The Roman Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult, water baptism was one part of the initiation rites into the religion. This explains why the idea of baptismal regeneration was found in places like India and Mexico before Roman Catholic missionaries ever arrived in those places.

-Example #5: The Roman Catholic doctrine of the supreme authority of the Pope has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult system, one man served as the greatest high priest. The Latin for “the greatest high priest” is Pontifex Maximus. Keep in mind now that the Roman empire was saturated with the ideas of the Babylonian cult. This was shown in the fact that each Roman emperor held the title of Pontifex Maximus.

But what happened to that title when the empire system was ended? Well, that’s when the Bishops of Rome began to claim it. Today we call the Bishop of Rome the Pope, but Catholicism properly sees him Pontifex Maximus, “the greatest high priest.”

-Example #6 (and this one will shock you): The sign of the cross has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. Believe it or not, the sign of the cross was not originally made famous by Christianity. Long before the sign ever represented Christ and His death on the cross, it symbolized Tau, which corresponds to the letter “T,” the initial for the name Tammuz. This explains why the sign has been found on many altars and temples that were built long before the time of Christ.

In ancient Babylon, a cross was placed on coins. In other places, different variations of the cross appeared. Sometimes the cross had a small circle on the top of the cross. That circle identified Tammuz with the sun. Other times a full circle was drawn around the entire cross. This, again, identified Tammuz with the sun. The symbol of the cross was even used on the garments of the priests of the Babylonian cult.

So, to sum up, by the year 700 or so, true Christianity had been dwarfed by an unholy mix of paganism and Christianity. This mix dominated Europe into the Middle Ages. It wasn’t until the age of the Protestant Reformation (led by Martin Luther) that any dent was made in the religious and political machine that the Roman Catholic Church had become. And today we still deal with the fallout of a world that has been deceived and confused by Catholicism.

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The Origins of the Easter Holiday (part 1)

April 17, 2011 Leave a Comment

On the holiday that we call Easter, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must admit, though, that questions surround this holiday. What do eggs have to do with an empty tomb? What does a bunny have to do with a risen Savior? Over my next few posts, I’m going to explain how the resurrection of Jesus Christ came to be celebrated with the holiday that is now known as Easter. I’ll also explain how some of the trappings of the holiday, things such as eggs and bunnies, became associated with it. My goal here is not to try to give the first and last word on this subject. I simply want to give you the core basics of it.

Now, to get us started, we need to read Genesis 10:8-10:

Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.” And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

(For the record, the land of Shinar ultimately came to be known as the kingdom of Babylon. Today we call that land Iraq.)

Now, what you need to know is that Nimrod had a wife. Her name was Semiramis, and she was the first high priestess of idolatry. Her story is not found in the Bible, but it is certainly found in the ancient records of the history of this world. According to the story, Semiramis gave birth to a son. His name was Tammuz. Semiramis claimed that Tammuz was conceived in her womb by a sunbeam. In other words, she claimed that he was conceived miraculously. This claim led to the worship of both Semiramis and Tammuz. Semiramis became known as “the queen of heaven,” and Tammuz became known as a miraculously conceived, Savior-like figure.

As the story continues, when Tammuz grew up he was killed by a wild boar. Semiramis then wept for her dead son for forty days, after which he reportedly arose from the dead. This was a lie, of course. Either Tammuz wasn’t killed by a wild boar or he didn’t rise from the dead. But people believed the lie. This furthered the purported divinity of both mother and child, and the worship of them grew.

The primary symbol of this mother-child religion was the scene of the motherly Semiramis holding the infant Tammuz in her arms. Semiramis had these images set up as worship shrines along all of the major highways running in and out of Babylon. Worshippers stopped at these shrines and burned candles and incense to her.

Many Bible scholars now refer to the mother-child religion as the Babylonian cult. Whatever we call it, one thing is clear: From its very inception, it was Satan’s master counterfeit to the true story of Jesus. Make no mistake, there is a reason (and not a godly one) why Semiramis and Tammuz interchange so easily with Mary and Jesus.

Well, over the next one thousand years, the religious system (cult) that began in ancient Babylon spread it’s influence through the known world. Would you believe that archaeologists have uncovered mother-child images from ruins as far as ancient China? These ruins date back to several centuries before the birth of Jesus.

And as the Babylonian cult system of worship spread across the known world, it took on new facets and details. For example, the names of Semiramis and Tammuz were changed to fit the languages of the various cultures. Some of the other names for Semiramis, the queen of heaven, were: Isis, Astarte, Ashtoreth, and Ishtar. Tammuz became known by names such as Baal and Adonis. Still, though, despite the frequent cultural changes and the changing of the names, the fundamentals of the system of religion remained the same.

Sadly, even the nation of Israel, God’s chosen nation, eventually succumbed to influence of the Babylonian cult. In Jeremiah 7:17-18, Jeremiah relates what God had said to him:

Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger.

Then, in Jeremiah 44:15-18, we see more of this same kind of thing:

Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a great multitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”

As you can see, the worship of the queen of heaven, Semiramis, eventually became common practice in Israel. The people even attributed their abundance and blessing to her!

Next, let’s read Ezekiel 8:13-14. Here Ezekiel says of God:

And He said to me, “Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.” So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD’s house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

Remember that, according to the legend, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar, after which Semiramis wept for forty days. Those forty days ended with Tammuz’s resurrection from the dead. In honor of his resurrection, those who followed the mother-child religion observed an annual forty day period of mourning and weeping for Tammuz. That mourning and weeping is what Ezekiel saw those women of Israel doing.

(More to come next post.)

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No Church Today

January 31, 2010 Leave a Comment

We had to cancel church today due to our second big snow in six weeks. Whereas the December storm dumped a foot on us, this one only gave us six or seven inches. I suppose we should be grateful that the weather guys missed the forecast a little. We were supposed to have gotten a foot again.

I really do hate cancelling church. The fact is, I could get there. I have not one but two all-wheel-drive vehicles and am pretty good at driving on snow and ice. I could get the parking lot scraped too. My brother-in-law, Ben, has a big blade on his jeep and volunteers to handle that job for me.

So why cancel? I do it because I don’t want anybody getting hurt by trying to get to church on a wintry morning. If one car ended up in a ditch, I’d feel terrible. If one elderly person slipped and broke a hip while getting in or out of a car, I’d feel terrible. If one mother’s feet gave way and she went down while holding her child, I’d feel terrible. I know that we are not supposed to live in fear of what could happen, and I’m really not a “doom and gloom” person. But I don’t think God wants us to completely abandon common sense in some misguided, fanatical zeal about never missing a church service.

As I listened to the church closings on our local radio station this morning, it became obvious that 95% of the pastors took the same cautious approach I did today. No church was having regular services. One was only having an 11:00 worship service. A couple were having one 2:00 service this afternoon. But 95% just cancelled everything.

For me, a Sunday morning without church is like a basketball court without goals. It’s just not right. I’m not one of these people who secretly cheers when church gets cancelled. (Seriously, if you are such a person, you need to do some soul searching and figure out why getting to “legally” skip church excites you.) And it’s not just the fact that I want to preach. It seems like I’m always preparing sermons or preaching them. The thing is, I really do miss the fellowship and community of church. I enjoy being around my brothers and sisters in Christ. I enjoy them being a blessing to me and me being a blessing to them.

Oh well, my prayer on days like today is that cancelling services will help the members realize how much they enjoy coming to Disciples Road Church. It’s the old “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing. I don’t ever want church attendance to become rut or ritual to them. I don’t even want it to become mere ”religion.” Christianity got off track when it became a religion. It was always supposed to be a relationship, a relationship between the believer and Jesus. And as a integral part of that relationship, the believer is supposed to attend church on Sunday, the first day of the week, as a way of celebrating Christ’s resurrection on that Sunday morning so long ago. Yes, Christians are supposed to do that celebrating every Sunday, not just Easter Sunday.

On a completely different note, I did get one bit of good news this morning. My scales weighed me at 187 pounds. So, I’ve lost 14 pounds in 20 days since I started my diet and exercise program. If you want to know the specifics of how I’m doing it, go back and read the post entitled “It’s Diet Time Again.” 

My goal is still to get somewhere between 175 and 180 pounds. From there I’ll just be trying to maintain. I’ve been in that range before, and I’ve even held it for a couple of years, but it doesn’t happen naturally. What naturally happens is me drifting back up over 200 pounds. Since I know that full well, maybe I can prevent it from happening this time and stay at my ideal weight. Now if I can just figure out a way to safely have church after a big snow on Saturday. That one is a little more problematic.            

Filed under Christ's Resurrection, church, Church attendance, dieting, Easter, Personal Tagged with , , , ,

7 Evidences For Christ’s Resurrection

April 12, 2009 Leave a Comment

Certain legal minds have studied the case of Christ’s resurrection and concluded that an honest jury would be forced to conclude that Jesus really did rise from the dead. It is with this in mind that I want to present seven evidences for this resurrection.  I wouldn’t call this an exhaustive list, but I do believe it’s a good one. 

Evidence #1: The actions of the Roman soldiers who guarded Christ’s tomb: Scholars say there could have been as many as sixteen soldiers in the guard that was assigned to Christ’s tomb. Roman soldiers were the best soldiers in the world. They were highly trained and incredibly disciplined. They feared nothing except the penalty that would befall them if they were negligent in their duty. And yet, on the morning of the resurrection, that group of Roman soldiers shook with fear (Matthew 28:4), fainted (Matthew 28:4), and abandoned their posts (Matthew 28:11). Roman soldiers simply didn’t act this way. Those soldiers even had to be bribed to say that Christ’s disciples had stolen His body (Matthew 28:11-15).   

Evidence #2: The tomb’s broken seal: The Bible says that Christ’s tomb was “sealed” (Matthew 27:66). A Roman seal of this sort wasn’t impressive in appearance. It was basically just two globs of wax and a cord. One glob was placed upon the circular door to the tomb. The other glob was placed upon the tomb itself. One end of the cord was fastened into the first glob, and the other end was fastened into the second. It’s likely that a signet ring was used to make an impression in the wax. So what was it that made such a seal so intimidating? It was the fact that the seal carried with it the authority of the Roman government. Anyone who broke such a seal was crucified upside down. Because of this, no one would have dared break that seal on Christ’s tomb. It was broken, though.

Evidence #3: The stone door was rolled away: Jesus was buried in a very expensive tomb. It had been constructed for Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man who had become a follower of Christ (Matthew 27:57-60). The tomb was a small cave that had been cut out of the rock. Just in front of the tomb’s opening was a trench. In this trench was a massive circular stone that served as the door to the tomb. This stone weighed over a ton. According to an ancient note that has been discovered, it took more than twenty men to move the stone. Remarkably, however, John used the Greek word airo to describe what happened to that stone (John 20:1). This specific word describes much more than the stone being merely rolled back in the trench. It indicates that the stone was actually picked up and moved quite a distance. How could this be? The Bible says that an angel descended from heaven, rolled the stone away, and sat down on it (Matthew 28:1-2). This angel is what scared those Roman soldiers to the point of passing out.         

Evidence #4: Jesus appeared alive to hundreds of witnesses: A handful of devout women saw the risen Savior that resurrection morning (Matthew 28:1-10; Mark 16:1; Luke 24:10; John 20:11-18). Cleopas and another unnamed follower saw Him later that same day (Luke 24:13-32). Peter saw Him as did the other ten disciples (1 Cor. 15:5; John 20:19-29). Over five hundred people saw Him at once (1 Cor. 15:6). Finally, He was seen by His earthly half-brother James (1 Cor. 15:7) and Paul (1 Cor. 15:8). Imagine a trial in which over five hundred reputable people each took the witness stand and said, “I know that Jesus arose from the dead because I saw Him in His resurrected, glorified body.” Talk about compelling evidence!     

Evidence #5: The coming of the Holy Spirit: Before Jesus was crucified He said to His disciples, “It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper (God the Holy Spirit) will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you” (John 16:7). Later, in Acts 2:1-13, the Holy Spirit’s coming is described in detail. Obviously, Jesus had to resurrect and ascend back to heaven in order to keep His promise to send the Holy Spirit.

Evidence #6: The change in the chosen twelve: Immediately following Christ’s crucifixion the chosen twelve, which was eleven after Judas’suicide (Matthew 27:5), went into hiding. They must have assumed that the same authorities who had arrested Jesus and killed Him would be coming for them next. But something happened that emboldened and empowered those eleven men to “turn the world upside down” (Acts 17:6) in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. Something happened that caused them to spend the rest of their lives preaching that Jesus had arisen from the dead. Something happened that caused most of them to die martyrs’deaths rather than deny that resurrection. What was it? It was their experience with the risen Christ. The change that came over them cannot be explained any other way. They knew that Jesus was alive! By the way, think about this: Those men began their proclaiming of Christ’s resurrection in Jerusalem of all places. That was the last place they would have begun if they knew it was all a lie. It would have been too easy for the city’s citizens to go to Christ’s tomb and refute the lie. 

Evidence #7: The fact that Christ’s body was never discovered: Although a popular tourist site is strongly considered to be the tomb of Christ, there is still some debate about the actual location. However, the people of Christ’s day knew exactly where He was buried. It was common knowledge. Anybody could pay a visit to the tomb and check for a body. Needless to say, the Roman officials and the Jewish religious leaders went and checked. But no body was ever recovered. You see, all that was required to stamp out the fledgling religion of Christianity was a corpse. One was never found, though. This in itself is incredibly strong evidence that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead.

Well, there they are, my seven evidences for Christ’s resurrection. As long as I’m on the subject, though, let me give you one more for free: Jesus has changed my life. I’m like the fellow who said, “I know Jesus is alive. I talked to Him this morning.” I do more than talk with Him each morning; I walk with Him each day. He has made me a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17). That couldn’t have happened if death had held Him. He’s alive I tell you. His tomb is empty. You can dispute His resurrection if you want, but the evidence is against you.

Filed under Christ's Resurrection, Easter Tagged with , , ,

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