Imagine you’re at Easter dinner with family and friends, and someone asks you, “You don’t really believe in the resurrection of Jesus do you?” You respond, “I do believe in the resurrection of Jesus.” They press in, “Seriously. A dead person comes back to life? That’s ridiculous, right?”
What do you say to them?
One response you might have heard is, “Well, the Bible says it, I believe it, and that’s good enough for me.”
Many people might respond, “That’s not good enough for me.” I get that. While I believe in the truth of the Bible, I also think it can be very helpful to have outside, nonbiblical support for the historicity of the Bible. For Christians, the resurrection is the most important event in history, so I believe it is important to at least try to verify the resurrection.
Do we Christians have any way to verify the resurrection of Jesus? Or do we just turn off the rational part of our brains and believe it despite its scientific improbability?
If verifying the resurrection means “100% proof,” then, no, we do not have that level of verification for an event that happened 2000 years ago. But we do have evidence. Lots of evidence. Not proof, but good evidence.
What evidence do we have for the resurrection of Jesus? Join me back here on the blog this coming week as we’ll talk about the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, and how it matters.
This could be a good series of posts to invite skeptical family and friends to read. Not that the posts will convince them. I am not making any guarantees! But I do think it will provide food for thought. I will be talking about four ways people try to disprove the resurrection of Jesus, and how to respond to them. And I will be talking about four ways that provide good evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus.
Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 
One thought on “Evidence for Jesus’ Resurrection, Preview”