Feb
24
Confidence
Filed Under Devotional
Why do we all believe that John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln? Don’t worry, this isn’t a trick question. We believe this because a large crowd of people heard the shot and watched him jump from Lincoln’s box to the stage. We believe this because those people told other people who then reported it in the newspaper and wrote it down in the history books. We believe it because it would have been easy to find witnesses disagreeing with the claim if it weren’t true.
What is one of a plethora of reasons we believe Jesus rose from the dead?
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-6
Many people saw Him crucified. Many people saw Him risen. It would have been easy to find witnesses that could point to His body or deny that the events had occurred if they had not. The Pharisees had to come up with an alternative explanation for the empty tomb because they could not deny that it was empty.
There are far too many reasons to have confidence in these accounts and far too little reason to discount them.