It is a few days after Easter and the march of events hasn't changed. Death, destruction, wars and rumors of wars, life and birth and new births are moving us forward. So, what difference does the Resurrection make anyway?
Think on these short quotes.
"Jesus loved the world that God had made - and especially he loved its living creatures. He did not live like someone with one foot in the spirit world. He loved people of all kinds, and he went to all kinds of parties. People who believe in resurrection are like that - they love God's creation and relish life in the body." Tim Stafford, Surprised by Jesus (InterVarsity, 2006)
The next quote come from one of my favorite books from the past. As a doctoral student I was buffeted on all sides by scoffers sceptics and scoundrels who moonlighted as professors, anti-war radicals and intellectuals. As a country boy I felt insecure and frightened that my knowledge and grasp of the academic world was less than adequate. This book helped me feel more secure.
"Personally, I am convinced that no body of men or women could persistently and successfully have preached in Jerusalem a doctrine involving a vacancy of that tomb [of Christ], without the grave itself being physically vacant. The facts were too recent; the tomb too close to the seething center of oriental life. Not all the make-believe in the world could have purchased the utter silence of antiquity or given to the records their impressive unanimity. Only the truth itself, in all of its unavoidable simplicity, could have achieved that." Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone? (Zondervan, 1971)
One time a supposedly erudite and sophisticated anti-Christian attacked me and my belief in the virgin birth. He stated that the farmers, fishermen and shepherds of the First Century were simply confused about how babies were produced. My childhood was spent with farmers of every stripe. We knew little about obstetrics but we bred animals every year. We had flocks of chickens, hogs, cows, horses and sheep. Believe me, we were ignorant about many things but reproduction was not one of them. The attackers are often so arrogant that they never think about what they are saying.
The tomb was empty and no one could find the body. Do you think Peter, James and John could have preached about the Resurrection one single time without a horde of local hunters going out to prove them wrong? These were very practical Jewish people who would have been loathe to accept such a far fetched notion that a dead man came back to life. But they could not find the body and there was no robbers' shallow grave out in the desert. Jesus was gone!
He is Risen!
He is Risen indeed!
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