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(#26) The Totality of the Arguments Would Be Compelling

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Del Tackett Del Tackett
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If Jesus Rose from the Dead, then (#26) the Totality of the Arguments Would Be Compelling [audio]

We have now travelled halfway on our journey from Resurrection Day to Pentecost. Up to this point, we have examined a lot of evidence concerning the central apologetic claim of Christianity: that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead after being executed by crucifixion. It was a real and tangible event that occurred in the early part of the 1st Century in the city of Jerusalem. He appeared to many after His resurrection. If you had been there at that time you would have been able to physically witness the life of Jesus. You would have been able to hear His voice and watch Him teach. You would have been able to see His miracles. You could have been healed by His touch. You would have been able to witness His arrest and trial before Pilate. You would have been able to watch as He was crucified and as His dead body was wrapped for burial according to Jewish custom. And, if you were one of the women or disciples or one of the 500, you would have been able to physically see and hear Him after He had risen from the dead.

It was a real event, in the reality of human history. It really happened.

However, this central event in Christianity has come under attack from that Sunday until now and each day of our journey so far has pressed a defensive argument against that attack. On their own, each of those arguments should be sufficient to cause the skeptic to take serious pause. But when considered together, they form a compelling mosaic—one that, under a reasonable level of historical and intellectual honesty, is deeply compelling.

Such is the nature of a cumulative case. Like the strands of a rope, the strength is found not in any one fiber, but in their whole. We have slowly added strand to strand as we have looked at numerous interlocking historical events like the earthquake, the testimony of the women, the retreat of the guards, the empty tomb, the collapsed grave clothes and the numerous appearances of Jesus. These were then joined with other strands like the transformation of the disciples, the early polemic, the early creed, and the rise of early Christian worship centered on a crucified and risen Messiah. All of these strands, when viewed as a whole, create a powerful and compelling case. They converge, intertwine and fit together like Joseph’s coat of many colors. It is a beautiful tapestry that brings our minds to Luke’s statement:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught (Luke 1:1-4).

For those of us who are in Christ, the tapestry of all these things provides a “certainty” of the risen Lord Jesus. For those who are not, we can only pray that God will give them eyes to see and ears to hear, for the evidence is overwhelmingly powerful and convincing, if one is not predisposed to reject it.

Let’s now add a final, important element to this already compelling tapestry. There are some who would argue that the resurrection of Jesus is simply borrowed from pagan myths or Jewish expectations and hopes. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Most Greeks and Romans believed in immortality of the soul, not resurrection of the body. The body was often seen as a prison—something to be escaped, not resurrected. Plato taught that the soul was good, but the physical body was bad. “Resurrection” of a dead body was unthinkable to them—almost grotesque. To say someone had been resurrected was not just weird—it was foolishness. At Mars Hill (Acts 17), Paul’s mention of the resurrection caused the philosophers to mock—not because they were shocked, but because they thought it absurd.

Among the Jews during the time of Jesus, beliefs about resurrection of the dead were divided. The Pharisees believed in a future bodily resurrection of the righteous at the end of time (Daniel 12:2; Job 19:25–27). The Sadducees denied the resurrection entirely (see Acts 23:6-8). The Essenes believed in some form of soul immortality but were vague on bodily resurrection.  So, there was a category for resurrection—but it was expected to happen at the end of the age, not to one person in the middle of history. 

Further, the Messiah was not expected to die nor rise. The prevailing Messianic hope was for a political/military savior who would conquer Rome, not be killed by them. A crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms. So Jesus’ resurrection wasn’t just shocking—it was outside their existing theological categories.

Why does all of this matter?

Because in both Jewish and Greco-Roman worldviews, no one was expecting what happened that Sunday morning. The Jews believed the resurrection was a future group event. The Greeks didn’t believe in it at all. Yet the disciples claimed it happened in one man, in real time, in a real physical body. 

It shattered worldviews. It reshaped history.

We need to pause at this point and think about the weight of this. In the context of both Jewish and Greco-Roman thought, the resurrection of Jesus was not just unexpected—it was nearly unthinkable. The very idea of someone physically rising from the dead would have been seen as absurd, even offensive. And yet, this is precisely what the early Christians proclaimed: that Jesus had risen bodily, tangibly, and triumphantly. It didn’t fit into anyone’s expectations. There was no cultural context from which a myth or legend would arise. It was something radically new. Something real. And it changed everything.

So, as we bring this first half of our fifty-day journey to a close, and before we transition into the contemplations of the implications of the resurrection, there is one more thought for us to consider. It is most likely that this question has already arisen in the mind of many readers, especially as we dealt with the collapsed grave clothes:

“What are we to think of the Shroud of Turin”?

Let’s look at it.

The Shroud of Turin entered the public eyes in the 14th Century AD. It is named for the city in which it is held, Turin, Italy. The Shroud is a linen cloth that is around fourteen feet long and three and a half feet wide. Mysteriously, an image of what appears to be a crucified man is imprinted upon the linen. It shows markings at the hands and feet that would be consistent with a crucifixion and wounds on the head, back, legs and side that would be similar to what we have recorded for Jesus.

Is this the image of Jesus?

I will offer my thoughts, and you can form your own opinion. The Scripture tells us that the body of Jesus was wrapped with strips of linen and 75 pounds of aloe and myrrh. Further, the head was wrapped with a different material than the body and it was wrapped separately, such that after the resurrection, this head cloth was detached from the body wrappings. The Shroud of Turin does not appear to match this at all. It is merely a single linen cloth that covered the body like a clam shell.

So, I am quite skeptical.

But there is something more important here. I am convinced that one of the reasons Jesus came into the world at the time He did (and I would fully agree that this is most likely a very minor part of all of the reasons God chose this particular time) is that there were no cameras to record His image, no microphones to record His voice, no video equipment to capture His miracles and movements. Even though there were statues and carved images well before Jesus came, He entered a culture of Judaism that viewed these things as abominations. God had clearly given the command that prohibited the creation of representations of God or anything in the heavens above or the earth or sea below:

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God… (Exodus 20:4-5)

So, Jesus came into a world at a time in which they couldn’t, nor wouldn’t, craft a likeness of Him—no photos or videos or images. Nor does it seem possible that God would have left an image of Jesus when He clearly forbade it. Jesus is the divine creator of the universe, the infinite and Holy God. He would be demeaned by an image that might be worshipped, rather than worshipping Him in “spirit and in truth” as we hear Jesus speaking to the woman at the well:

"But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth" (John 4:23-24).

In God’s perfect will and design, we are to be a people who walk by faith, not by sight. When Thomas doubted and then believed because He had seen and touched the risen body of the Lord, Jesus told him that those who do not see and yet believe are blessed:

Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

The resurrection of Jesus has more than enough evidence to overwhelmingly confirm its reality, again for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. We do not need a Shroud of Turin to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. The Scripture has given us all we need to be assured that Jesus fulfilled His own prophecy that He would be crucified and then rise again. He left us compelling evidence in the grave clothes and His appearances and everything that we have walked through together in our first 25 days. 

So, it is now time to look forward. Our question: “If Jesus Rose from the Dead” led us to look at the apologetic answers first. We now need to turn from the defense against the outsider to the edification and growth of the insider. We might even phrase our question this way: 

“Okay, Jesus rose from the dead… so what? What does that mean for me”?

It is easy, and more comfortable, to build a road of facts to simply assure us of the Truth. It is another thing to then continue on the more difficult path, to contemplate what those facts imply in our own life and how we should walk in that life—how we think and act and love our neighbor. If we stop at the end of the factual road of the resurrection and never walk on the next pathway, we’ve missed the whole point. The resurrection is not merely a fact to be established; it is a force that reshapes reality. The first 25 days were written to help us see that it is intellectually responsible to believe the resurrection happened. The next half is written to help us contemplate the radical change that this event personally calls us to.

Because if Jesus truly did rise from the dead, then everything he said about God, about us, about life, death, judgment, and the kingdom of heaven demands our full attention (John 11:25–26). The resurrection doesn’t simply ask us to revise a few ideas—it calls for reorientation of our lives. It challenges our loyalties (Matthew 6:24), comforts (Luke 9:23–24), fears (Matthew 28:4-6), and ambitions (Philippians 2:3). It is this reality that we see in the early church as they joyfully gathered together in homes for the first 250 years, filled with the consistent thought that Jesus was alive and that God had chosen to dwell within them. This reality brought about a vibrant, organic gathering and movement that was turning the world upside down.

So this is where we now turn. Having examined the case for the resurrection, we must now consider its implications and pray that the reality of those implications will bring a radical change in our own lives.

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If Jesus Rose from the Dead, then... (#0)
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