“The meaning of the resurrection is a theological matter, but the fact of the resurrection is a historical matter; the nature of the resurrection body of Jesus may be a mystery, but the fact that the body disappeared from the tomb is a matter to be decided upon by historical evidence.” – Wilbur Smith
Today many Filipinos and other communities around the world that have some knowledge about Christianity commemorate Christ’s resurrection. And as majority of the world’s population throw many arguments about who this influential and controversial Man who claimed Deity while He walked this earth more than 2,000 years ago, about His death and about His claims that He would be raised from the dead, one thing that is undeniable is the huge amount of evidence available to provide illumination for skeptics who are sincerely seeking answers.
The fact or the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection can’t be denied by unbiased researchers. Based on vast mass of literature, the place of His resurrection is of geographical definiteness. The man who owned the tomb, Joseph of Arimathea, was a man living in the first 50 years of the first century and that tomb was hewn out of a rock in a hillside near Jerusalem. These available information were not composed of some mythological cloud-dust but of geographical importance. The guards who were assigned to guard that tomb were not mythological beings. The Sanhedrin was a group of men meeting frequently in Jerusalem. Jesus, was a living person, a man of history. Christ’s historicity is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. The disciples who scattered to preach the risen Christ were men among men – men who ate, drank, worked, slept, suffered and died. The resurrection of Jesus is an event in the world’s history wherein God acted in a definite time-space dimension.
Source: Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Josh McDowell
