A perfect Easter Sunday essay from Mark Tapscott, thankfully not paywalled.
Why Easter Is About the Single Most Important Fact in All History
How would you respond were you asked: what is the single most important fact in all of human history?
Rome fell? Roland died so Charlemagne could defeat the Saracens? The printing press? The U.S. Constitution? America beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb?
Those and many more facts have each arguably changed the course of history and could thus be cited with equal assurance of their relevance. However, there is one fact that not only fundamentally altered human history but defined reality for every person who ever has or ever will live.
That fact is the empty tomb of Jesus Christ.
Why the empty tomb? Because on Easter morning and for 40 days thereafter, Jesus was seen, touched, heard, and spoke to His disciples, then to other individuals in and around Jerusalem, and ultimately to more than 500 individuals.
The tomb was empty because Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead, thus validating everything He claimed about Himself, including “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6).
But wait a minute, you may be thinking: what if somebody stole the dead body of Jesus and then falsely claimed that He had been resurrected? Well, let’s examine that possibility.
There are only three candidate groups who logically might have had a motive for stealing the body of Jesus. First, there are the disciples themselves. Critics have long claimed the disciples stole the body and then invented the Resurrection myth.
Here’s why that claim is preposterous: the disciples scattered when Jesus was arrested. They were terrified that they would be next. Peter’s thrice denial of even knowing Jesus is indicative of the group’s cowardice.
Why is that significant? None of the disciples is known to have had any military training, yet we are to believe that this scattered crew of cowards somehow found the courage to overcome a crack unit of the Roman Legion that was guarding the tomb, or buy them off, then hide Jesus’ body where it would never be found, and afterwards go out and tell everybody that Jesus was God?
The second candidate group would be Jesus’ enemies, chiefly, the Pharisees and Sadducees who were the religious leaders of Israel. Throughout His three-year ministry, Jesus had tangled with these religious leaders who accused Him of blasphemy for claiming to be God-become-man. That’s why they demanded that Pilate order Jesus crucified.
But let’s say they did steal Jesus’ dead body because they were quite aware that He had said He would “rise again.” (Mark 9:31). Weeks after Jesus’ crucifixion and burial Peter spoke to thousands of people on the Day of Pentecost, explicitly claiming Jesus was alive. Three thousand people became Jesus’s followers that day and the Christian church was born.
But if they had stolen His body from the tomb, as soon as Peter began claiming the Resurrection, Jesus’s enemies would have rolled his stinking, rotting corpse down Jerusalem’s Main Street to prove He was dead, not alive.
Then they would likely have arrested Peter and any of the rest of the disciples they could lay their hands on and crucified them. Instead of the day it was born, Pentecost would have been the day the Christian church died.
More follows, all of it well worth a read. Got a few more Easter browser tabs open, which I’m thinking I’ll just append to this post as updates, maybe.
Update! This one seems to be making the rounds all over the place today, as well it should be.
How they lit NYC for Easter in 1956. Crosses along Lower Manhattan Skyline, New York. The Three Crosses of Calvary… pic.twitter.com/lxpCA4fNHa
— Sachin Jose (@Sachinettiyil)
How very far we’ve come since then, every step in precisely the wrong direction.
Updated update! The Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension were to the incalculable benefit of all mankind, to be sure. But some may have benefited more directly, more immediately, than others.
Pontius Pilate Sure Glad That Whole ‘Jesus’ Ordeal Is Done With
JERUSALEM — After a difficult week subduing mobs and navigating political landmines, Governor Pontius Pilate was relieved on Saturday to finally have the whole “Jesus of Nazareth” ordeal over and done with for good.“Whew, glad that’s behind me,” said Pilate as he washed his hands once more. “I’m sure this will all blow over in a week or so. I was starting to worry this ‘Jesus’ episode might end up really coming back to haunt me.”
Though Pilate disagreed with the decision to crucify Jesus, he readily admitted that Jesus’ death helped avoid a stain on his governorship that could make its way into the history books. “I really dodged a stone there,” said Pilate. “A lesser governor could have ended up with a riot on his hands, or even lost control of the populace. I could have become a cautionary tale, like a part of some creed that people repeat. Not Pontius Pilate! Totally crushed it.”
Heh. I’ll give you exactly zero (0) guesses as to where I found this one, folks.
- Entries
Christianity stands athwart history with its fists on its hips and says simply “Disprove me; nothing could be easier: habeus corpus: give us the body.
You can tear the whole religion to the ground in an instant – just produce the moldering corpse of Jesus of Nazareth (about whose actual existence there is more historical proof than for that of Julius Caesar).
Even the apostle Paul understood this pivotal and irrefutable proof within mere years of the event, with eyewitnesses of it still living when he wrote:
“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
Two millennia later, the challenge stands unanswered, and the tomb remains unoccupied.
My favorite excuse is the first one offered, by the tomb guards, suborned by the religious leaders who agitated for Jesus’ crucifixion in the first place:
“When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”
1) Under Roman law, any soldier falling asleep on guard duty was a death penalty crime. Roman soldiers – the same people who crucified prisoners – weren’t noted for their light punishments and easy forgiveness.
2) I’ll pay anyone a dollar if they can tell me what happened nearby while they were asleep. It’s the kind of testimony that would get you laughed out of any court since ever.
That fish tale is only stupid enough to be thought up by Democrats.
1956. That was the NYC Trump grew up in…