The Week That Changed The World Devotional April 1
by David Joynt on April 01, 2024
Stress Test Devotional May 4
May 04, 2024
LUKE 24:1-5 | 1 But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they went in they did not find the body. 4 While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.”
Arthur Canon Doyle’s detective, Sherlock Holmes, once remarked “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Alternative explanations of the Resurrection are impossible to credit. Resuscitation is impossible since crucifixion only had one result, and the Romans were particularly adept at administering it. Mass delusion? There are no recorded instances of a shared delusion that lasts 40 days and starts global movements. Is the Resurrection a comforting myth? Myths take decades, even centuries, to develop—they don’t explode into history in a single moment. Perhaps the Resurrection was an elaborate conspiracy, an organized fabrication. But no first century Jew would fabricate an event with female witnesses or cast the soon to be major leaders in the new movement in such a terrible light. But most tellingly, the word Resurrection referred to a clearly defined event in which God would initiate a new age, and all the dead would rise. Enemies would be defeated, wars cease, diseases disappear, and peace would reign. The Resurrection of one man, without these accompanying signs was unimaginable. No grieving group of terrified followers who had been traumatized by Good Friday could have invented a whole new category of event and then organized a conspiracy around it in a single weekend. The Resurrection must be the truth.
Have you ever heard a reasonable alternative explanation for the Resurrection?
Gracious God,
Help me to build my life on the truth of Your Resurrection and continuing presence with me.
Amen.
