DAY 1: First Reason to Trust the Resurrection

John 20:1-3
Luke 24:1-12

Arthur Canon Doyle’s detective, Sherlock Holmes, once remarked “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbably, 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 last 40 days and started lasting global movements. 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?

Tags: resurrection, devotional, encountering, restoration