In this Easter season, I would like to share one of the most convincing books I have ever read concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This book was written by someone who was an atheist, a skeptic, who started looking into the resurrection claims in order to prove them wrong but ended up becoming convinced that Jesus of Nazareth did rise from the dead. Hi, church. In today’s video I am going back to our resource desk highlights. This is a book you will want to pick up for yourself, but I wanted to share a few of the highlights from it to help you if you are talking through the key point of the resurrection with other people. Now, that is only one aspect of this larger book, The Case for Christ. You see, it is a much thicker book, but from it there is also a book called The Case for the Resurrection, or The Case for Easter, which basically takes excerpts from this one. It was written by Lee Strobel. In my opinion, the backstory gives the whole book a much more convincing element, because Lee Strobel was the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune. He was a trained journalist, a Yale Law School graduate, and he was a self-proclaimed atheist. Well, his wife got saved, and he hated that. He wanted to discredit Christianity, so he took all his investigative journalism and applied it to his study against the resurrection. He was convinced that if he could knock out the resurrection, the rest of Christianity would crumble. That journey took about a year and a half, and from it came this book, The Case for Christ, where he interviews leading scholars, historians, and scientists, really trying to get to the bottom of who Jesus was and how He died. All the scrutiny he would put into stories, he applied to the Bible, the same level of scrutiny. As I said, this larger book, The Case for Christ, deals with much more than that, but especially for this Easter weekend, I wanted to highlight the main event that changed everything: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Minimal Facts Approach
He uses what is called the minimal facts approach. This is a method developed by scholars like Gary Habermas. It focuses only on the data that is so strong that even non-Christian scholars have to accept it, and he walks through five of these basically indisputable facts. Now, we declare authoritatively, just as the apostles did in the Scriptures, that Jesus died by crucifixion and rose from the dead. Those are the facts, and we declare that, we preach that. But not everybody is so convinced. So this minimal facts approach presents the facts that even skeptics have to agree with: “Well, at least that part is true. Okay, that part is true too.”
Fact One: Jesus Died by Crucifixion
Fact number one is that Jesus died by crucifixion. There are no reputable scholars of any kind who deny this. Even skeptical historians, almost none of them deny that Jesus died by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. It is confirmed by Christian sources, but not only that, by Roman historians and Jewish historians like Josephus. As Strobel explores the death of Jesus Christ in The Case for Christ, he interviews medical experts and brings in the medical evidence, and boy, it is just overwhelming. Jesus did not just faint. He did not escape. He did not survive. He did not just swoon. No, He died. Dr. Alexander Metherell, a medical doctor and an engineer, explains how Roman crucifixion was designed. It was designed to be fatal. They were experts at what they did. It was slow, it was excruciating, it was thorough. Many times the scourging alone could have killed somebody, and then there are the nails, and the suffocation, and then the spear to the side. No one walks away from crucifixion. So fact number one is that there is overwhelming medical and historical evidence that Jesus died on the cross.
Fact Two: The Disciples Believed He Rose
The second fact is that Jesus’ disciples believed He rose. The disciples did not just preach the resurrection; they absolutely believed it with all their hearts. That is evidenced by a Christian creed that dates back pretty much to the time of Christ, within years, if not months. 1 Corinthians 15 records it: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” This was a creed quoted among Christians, again, within years, if not months, of Jesus’ death. In the ancient world, that is unheard of. For comparison, the two earliest sources we have about Alexander the Great were written four hundred years after his death, and historians treat those as reliable. But this creed goes all the way back to within such a short time of Jesus’ death, so it is very, very credible. When someone says the resurrection story was added later, that it was a myth that showed up hundreds of years later, well, Strobel shows that archaeology has manuscripts dating all the way back to at least A.D. 60, perhaps even earlier. So we are talking about manuscripts within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses of Jesus’ resurrection. And again, even liberal scholars agree that the disciples genuinely believed Jesus appeared to them after His death. They cannot explain it, and they may not even believe in Jesus’ resurrection, but they believe that Jesus’ disciples believed it, and that is the key fact that matters. That is more or less the indisputable part of it.
Fact Three: Paul Was Converted
Fact number three: Paul was converted. Paul is an interesting character in Christian history. Paul did not just disagree with Christians; he was arresting and killing Christians. And then all of a sudden he changes sides. Why is that? Well, according to his own words, multiple times throughout the record, he says he saw the risen Jesus. And it is not just Paul saying this. There are six other historical sources, Luke, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and these outside sources all say Paul is a transformed person, completely different. In The Case for Christ, Strobel compares this to a modern prosecutor in the middle of a trial. If somebody changes right in the middle of something, no change that big happens unless something big happens to him. So skeptics might not like the Bible, but if they love history and examine the life of Paul, his conversion is a historical head-scratcher: “I just cannot explain that thing away.” So that is the third fact.
Fact Four: James Was Converted
The fourth fact is that James, the brother of Jesus, was converted. Now, this one is really awkward if you are trying to make Jesus look good, because during His ministry, Jesus’ own brother did not believe in Him. Mark 3 describes His family as saying He is beside Himself: “Jesus, You are beside Yourself.” But then, after the resurrection, James becomes the lead pastor of the church in Jerusalem. What happened to James, who was once a skeptic himself? Well, 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that Jesus appeared to James. This is not a story people just make up. No one making up a religion would invent a story that says, “Well, the leader’s own family rejected Him.” That would have been absolutely absurd, unless it actually happened. So because of James’s initial rejection of Jesus Christ and then acceptance of Him later on, that is one of those historical facts you have got to grapple with if you are a skeptic.
Fact Five: The Tomb Was Empty
Fact number five: the tomb was empty. There may be less consensus on this, but still about 75 percent of scholars agree that Jesus’ tomb was empty. And this is a message that started in Jerusalem. It is not some outsider information saying that way back in Jerusalem, Jesus rose from the dead. No, they are right there in the city, and if the body was still in the tomb, the authorities could just open up the tomb and say, “No, the body is right here,” and shut down that whole argument. But they did not do that. In fact, they came up with a cover story: “Well, the disciples stole the body.” Even that theory admits the tomb was empty, so that is a really big deal. The Gospels say the women were the first to witness this empty tomb, and women’s testimony was typically not considered as credible as a man’s in that ancient culture. So if someone were fabricating a story of an empty tomb, he would never write it that way. We just believe that is how it happened, and the Bible records it honestly.
What Do We Do With These Facts?
So the question is, man, what do we do with these facts? We have the fact that Jesus died, that the disciples believed He rose, that Paul, who was once a persecutor, was converted, that James, who was a skeptic, was converted, and this empty tomb. I admit those five facts do not automatically prove the resurrection, but it is a pile of evidence we have to grapple with, and there is no theory out there that accounts for all five of those facts. The stolen-body theory does not account for all five; it does not explain why Paul and James, for example, converted. Hallucinations, group hallucinations: that is one of the theories, that five hundred people hallucinated, or they really wanted Jesus to come back, and so they were dreaming together about Jesus appearing to them. Well, that does not explain all five facts. The wrong-tomb theory dies in Jerusalem. There are all kinds of alternate theories, but they all fail to account for all five of those facts. As Strobel makes the case in the book, to explain the resurrection away, you have got to stack hypothesis on top of hypothesis, and he says that takes even more faith than believing Jesus actually rose. So I think The Case for the Resurrection, The Case for Christ, is one of the most convincing works on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I would not wholeheartedly endorse everything in the book, but reading it will give you solid confidence that your faith is based not on emotion but on real historical evidence. Some would accuse us of having blind faith, but I believe it is a verifiable faith. So let me know your thoughts in the comments if you have ever read this book or the shorter version, The Case for Easter, or The Case for the Resurrection, or if you have some additional insights. If this video helped you, and these are the kinds of videos you might like more of, well, we release a new one every Monday at noon Pacific time, so if you would like to subscribe for more of these, let’s keep in touch. God bless you, church, and please grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We will see you in the next video.
