(Or how to destroy Christianity for good)
“For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:16-19).
Quite a number of skeptics, scholars, and philosophers over the centuries have desired to see Christianity extinguished from the world. And where some have failed to completely dismantle the religion altogether, they have instead opted to redefine and remove it from its spiritual and historical roots.
But there is actually one way to nullify Christianity once and for all, to which even the Apostle Paul testifies: that is to discover the bones of Christ Himself.
Think about this for a moment. By the time first-century Christians started running around telling the entire Mediterranean world that Christ had risen from the dead, the Jews, the Romans, or any interested person in power could have done at least two things to disabuse these evangelists from their message.
They could have given a counter-proclamation that no such person called Jesus existed (if indeed there was no historical Jesus), or they could have exhumed and produced the dead body of Jesus under their custody to dispel the Christians’ gospel.
While writing to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul summarized the Christians’ testimony regarding the resurrection, saying: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).
But at a time when writing and recording technologies were already well-established, we curiously find no evidence that the Jews and Romans disproved any of the facts claimed by the nascent church. Instead, the response of the Roman empire was not one of disputation, but of demolition.
Because Christians refused to acknowledge the Roman emperor Caesar as Lord, they were routinely arrested, tortured, and killed for their faith in a risen Savior.
However, we know that people do not willingly die for something that they know to be false.
If the punishment for possessing illegal drugs, for example, is the death penalty, no one in his or her right mind would tell everyone that he or she has illegal drugs, especially when you know that you don’t even possess any. It makes no sense.
And when we do give our lives away, we always seek to do so for something or someone true, so as to make the sacrifice meaningful.
That is why it is said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church; their thoughtful and intelligent faith in the truth of the resurrected Christ is worth dying for.
We know where Muhammad is buried, also Confucius, Buddha, and Moses. With enough effort, their bones can be exhumed.
But no one has the bones of Christ, and no one knows where they might be. This is something we must all take into account and deal with at least once in our lives. This is proof of His resurrection. And what proves His resurrection proves His deity. For only God can raise people from the dead.
No one else in the history of the word has risen from the dead, where the testimonies and the evidence therefor remain solid and unperturbed through two millennia.
That is the scary thing about Easter. It is real, and it has consequences beyond the here and the now.
The resurrection might at times be unpopular, but it has never been unproven.
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Author’s email: micahdagaerag@outlook.com
