Throughout the ages, people have turned to religion to seek answers to questions about the meaning and purpose of life. And now more than ever—with governmental authority gone awry with mass purveyance of deception, with culture adrift and postmodernism now giving way to transhumanism—Americans are increasingly turning to religion to find answers.
World religions have different founders, prophets and teachers going back thousands of years. But only one of them, Christianity, has a founder who professed to be the Messiah—the son of God—who provided irrefutable proof of who he was by conquering death through resurrection. Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.
Christ is also the only person in history who was pre-announced starting a thousand years before he was born, with eighteen different prophets from the Old Testament between the tenth and the fourth centuries BC predicting his coming birth, life, and death. Hundreds of years later, the details of Christ’s birth, life, betrayal and manner of death validated those prophecies in surprisingly accurate and minute detail. One thousand years BC, David prophetically wrote about the crucifixion of Christ, at a time when crucifixion was unknown.
Every other consequential person of history came into the world to live. The death of other religious leaders—such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Mohammad, or Confucius—brought an anticlimactic end to their lives. But Christ came into the world as God’s son in order to die and pay the price for man’s sin. His sacrifice was the ultimate climax of his life and opened the way to eternal life in heaven for all who believe.
Of the four major world religions built on personalities, only Christianity claims that its founder is still alive, having overcome death through resurrection. No Jew ever believed that, after Abraham died and was interred, his tomb ever became empty. After Buddha died, no disciple ever claimed that they saw or spoke to him again. As for the founder of Islam, Mohammed, there is no trace of this founder appearing to his followers after he had died at age sixty-one. His occupied tomb is located in Medina and is visited by tens of thousands of devout Muslims every year.
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Christ was unique in that he gave up his life as a sacrifice in order to fulfill why he came into the world. Christ set the absolute highest standard of love possible, both in his teachings and also in making the ultimate sacrifice—giving his life to rescue and save mankind. And then to provide “seeing is believing” evidence, God brought Jesus back from being dead in a tomb to being alive—resurrected—so that people would have living proof of who he was.
The New Testament provides accounts from multiple sources who witnessed Jesus firsthand after the resurrection. In fact, Jesus made ten separate appearances to his disciples between the resurrection and his ascension into Heaven—a period of forty days. Some of those appearances were to individual disciples, some were to several disciples at the same time, and once even to five hundred at one time. It’s noteworthy that there were no accounts or witnesses who disputed these appearances, or called it a “hoax,” not even one.
While there are skeptics of the Biblical account of the entirety of Jesus, there’s actually far more reliable historical evidence for his life, teachings, miracles, death and resurrection than there is evidence for any other historical figure of ancient times. Consider for instance that the authenticity of Alexander the Great, who was born some 350 years before Christ, is based on two original biographical accounts of his life by Arrian and Plutarch, which were written some 400 years after Alexander died. The manuscripts of Virgil and Horace, both of whom lived within a generation of Christ, were written more than four centuries after their deaths. The copy of works by Livy and Tacitus on Roman history and the works of Pliny Secundus on natural history were written on average some 700 years after the time of the original account. Yet no one doubts Virgil and Horace lived and authored great poetic masterpieces. Nor do we hear questions about the authenticity and accuracy of accounts of Livy and Tacitus in chronicling the events of the Roman Emperors Augustus, Claudius, Nero or Tiberius.
Looking at the big picture there are about one thousand times more manuscripts preserving the deeds and teaching of Jesus in the New Testament (about twenty-five thousand) than there are preserving other classical ancient works of historic figures who lived at approximately the same time, with the exception of Homer, whose Iliad is backed by eighteen hundred manuscripts. But that is still less than one-tenth the number of ancient manuscripts that back the authenticity of the New Testament.
We know the historical Jesus mainly through four different accounts known as the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—not written hundreds of years later, but within a generation or two of Jesus’s life. Apostles Matthew and John provide eyewitness accounts from their years of walking with Jesus as disciples. Mark also had eyewitness experience, although he was only a teenager when Jesus began his public ministry. Luke, the doctor, learned about Jesus from his friend Paul, the Apostle who wrote most of the Letters of the New Testament.
Because of their experience with the resurrected Jesus, the apostles were in a unique position to have certainty about Jesus being truly the Son of God. They had been present for the life, ministry, miracles, death of Jesus. If the claims about Jesus were a lie, the apostles would have known it. That’s why their commitment to their testimony was so powerful and compelling. Additionally, the apostles’ willingness to die for their claims has tremendous evidential value—and confirms the truth of the resurrection.
No one will die for something they invented or believe to be false. Seeing, talking to, and touching the risen Jesus transformed the apostles, who then committed the rest of their lives to educate and advocate for the truth about the message of salvation through Christ. With the exception of John, who was banished to and died on the island of Patmos for his testimony of Jesus, the other eleven apostles—including Matthias who replaced Judas, the betrayer of Jesus—died as martyrs for their beliefs in the divinity of Christ.
It turns out that Easter, which has its ultimate meaning through the resurrection, is one of ancient history’s most carefully scrutinized and best attested events. The resurrection is real and changes everything. Easter is the commemoration and celebration of the single event that transformed the world forever.
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