I Believe in Resurrection: Ten reasons to consider…and caterpillars fly!

If you don’t believe in resurrection, here are ten reasons why you should rethink your position:

1) The New Testament Claims It

The New Testament claims that Jesus arose from the dead on Easter morning and that one day his followers will too. The New Testament has already been demonstrated to be head and shoulders above all the other Greek and Latin documents ever to come out of the ancient world. It has been subjected to the hottest fires of criticism devised by the human mind. Its history and the landslide of manuscript evidence have been filtered, sifted, researched, debated too many times to count, and by the best minds—for generations!

A short list of works include: The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by classic scholar F. F. Bruce; Can We Trust the New Testament? by world-renowned skeptic J. A. T. Robinson; Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morrison; Oxford scholar N. T. Wright’s massive work, The Resurrection of the Son of God; The Case for Resurrection, by Lee Strobel. Also, consider the work of Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne who transposed the documentary evidence of the resurrection into current probability theory, concluding that there is a 97% probability that it happened.

And there is There is A God, by the twentieth century’s most famous atheistic philosopher Antony Flew. He shocked everyone by changing his mind and even suggested that we should seriously consider the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.

2) The Early Church Didn’t Debate It

Strangely, even though the first century Christian community debated and squabbled over every aspect of the Christian faith, the resurrection of Jesus was not ever questioned. It was never the conclusion of any argument among the apostles and earliest eyewitnesses but rather the premise of all other arguments. If a topic under debate connected with the resurrection, the writers simply resolved the issue by reminding all contenders that Jesus arose from the dead. That ended the dispute simply because the resurrection of Jesus was the one established, irrefutable fact the church didn’t doubt.

3) The Alternatives Have Been Discredited

Immediately after the resurrection of Jesus, alternative stories of the empty tomb began to appear among those who hated Jesus and were horrified by the truth he had risen from the dead. His physical—not spiritual—reappearance was the last thing they wanted to hear about. Since then, other accounts have been suggested to explain why Christians mistakenly thought Jesus was still alive.

But none of the alternative explanations carries any weight (see N.T. Wright’s exhaustive work mentioned above). Each theory is more convoluted than the straightforward truth that Jesus was raised from death by God’s infinite power.

4) The Old Testament Foreshadows It

There are hints in the Old Testament that this life is not all there is. A few references are found in the book of Daniel (12:2) and the Psalms (16:10) suggesting some return of life after death. But it was unclear what that might look like.

Undoubtedly, the Jews were convinced that Enoch and the prophet Elijah were still alive in some realm. They looked forward to a future restoration of the entire creation in the New Heaven and the New Earth (Isaiah 65:17; 66:22). But only with Jesus’ arrival did they understand what a full-blown picture of everlasting physical life on an everlasting physical earth meant.

As in the case of the New Testament, the Old Testament carries weight regarding reliability. What it claims about any particular historical event, promise, or prophecy is to be given the benefit of the doubt. Regarding its history, the days of having to prove the Bible are over. If you research this, as many others have, you’ll find it true too.

5) Creation Suggests It

Most of the world believes the universe is a product of a Creator, an all-powerful force or person that brought it into existence. Very few think it all came from nothing, and for a good reason. As far as we know now, the rule in physics still holds: from nothing, nothing comes

The Bible affirms that God—the infinite, personal, intelligent God—designed and made all that is, everything is heavily laden with evidence of design. There is nothing we see around us that isn’t intended.

Everything that God made is precious to him, and he regards his creation with such great love that he takes a very dim view of anyone who tries to destroy it (Revelation 11:18). What God created he very much loves and intends to keep—forever.

We are his highest and greatest work (Psalm 8), his earthly royalty. So the good news for us is that resurrection is not just about Jesus, but also about believers who are part of God’s eternal program; and it’s not merely about us, but about everything God created (Rom. 8:18-25).

From a close study of the biblical doctrines of creation and resurrection, we discover that God is interested not in immortal souls but in immortal, physical bodies dwelling forever on an immortal, physical earth.

6) Nature Illustrates It

The year’s seasons illustrate the cycle that God intends for all he made. Things die in the fall and winter but come back to life in the spring. Dead things come back to life.

Nothing is so dead as a seed lying in a jar for thousands of years. Have you ever wondered what would happen if a seed were put in a jar and kept for the next two thousand years, then planted by someone who discovered it in, say, 4013? Happily, we already know the answer.

In 1963 archeologists working around Herod’s Temple in Masada came across an ancient jar containing the seeds of the kind of palm tree whose branches were used in Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (Jn. 12:12-13) two thousand years ago. Out of curiosity, they planted one of the dead seeds in 2005. To their astonishment, it grew! An extinct tree species came back to life and lives as the Methuselah Tree.

7) It Is Confirmed in Life Experience

God knows how hard it is for mortals to believe in something they’ve never seen or experienced. So, fortunately, he gives us experiences of many “little resurrections” along the way to prepare our minds for the great restoration at the end. These take the form of extraordinary deliverances, surprising turns of events, answered prayer, healings, rescue from certain death, and so forth.

After a lifetime of seeing God’s repeated interventions on our behalf and saying, “Wow! I could never have imagined that,” it becomes much easier to believe and expect the final resurrection and brilliant eternal life he promises us.

8) A Universal Conviction That Death Isn’t The End

Most are convinced that death is not the end of everything. Look at every belief system you can find in the ancient or modern world, East or West, a small village or great city, and you’ll find that people seem to have an inborn sense that this world and this life are not all there is.

This doesn’t validate any or all beliefs about it, but it does suggest that we seem to have built into our being a knowledge of the eternal. We’re hard-wired to expect something more.

9) Resurrection was the Opposite of the Expected

When Jesus arose from the tomb on Easter morning and appeared to his disciples (as well as to his skeptics) in a physical body, he did something that no one was prepared for. If it was a deliberate hoax, it was pulled off in a manner that was the least expected and convincing.

It didn’t conform to any of the expectations or paradigms of the pious Jews, the disciples of Jesus, or the pagan philosophers. It had no connection whatsoever with the “immortal soul” of the culture or any of the models of Jewish theology.

Women were the first witnesses, the last to be regarded in their culture as reliable testimony. And Jesus emerged in a transformed, physical body, at least as physical as the one that entered the tomb on Good Friday, but with capabilities far beyond it. This was entirely new and unlike anything imagined in the Old Testament. And it took Jesus six weeks after his resurrection to demonstrate and explain the astoundingly impossible to his disciples. As expected, they had many questions. Jesus took all the time required (remember Thomas?) to present a different order of things and a completely new cosmology from what they always believed.

10) Caterpillars Fly

The reason why caterpillars morphed into flying machines doesn’t impress us much is that it happens every day. It’s too common to get our attention. But what if it had never happened before? Imagine you are hearing the story for the first time. Someone is explaining to you that a slow-moving, fuzzy bug crawled into a little sleeping bag looking something like a burial shroud and several days later emerged as an exotically painted flying flower!

“I don’t believe it!” might be your first reaction. And it should be. Think of the massive reorganization of molecules required to produce such a thing. It might be compared to an RV (motor home) driving into a large garage, wrapped in a white tarp, and left alone and untouched for several days. Then, when the tarp is removed, you see that the vehicle had mysteriously been transformed into a sleek Lear jet.

Personally, I think that God gave us this wonderful butterfly example of his handiwork to get our minds thinking in the right direction. Even if you don’t accept the Bible’s explanation of life, you can still read the book of nature and develop good clues about its majestic Creator.

Christian history tells us that God gives us as much as we need to have confidence that we’re on the right path. God loves to give enough evidence to satisfy every honest inquirer and even the doubter. This God invites us to come and spend time reasoning in his presence (Isaiah 1:18).

Thanks be to God for his love, graciousness, and patience toward us. This Easter, may the power of Jesus’ resurrection infuse and transform your life. Whatever despair, darkness, or doubt that is holding you back from living life to the fullest, may they all be replaced by his hope, light, and the confidence life in him alone brings.

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