01.02. The Resurrection Of Christ
Chapter 2 - The Resurrection Of Christ
"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;"
"And that He was seen of Cephas; then of the twelve;"
"After that, He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep."
"After that He was seen of James ; then of all the apostles."
"And last of all He was seen of me also, as one born out of due time."
"Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead ?" (1 Corinthians 15:3-12).
Thus Paul first proves that there is such a thing: as resurrection from the dead. Just now he is not concerned with your resurrection or mine, but with resurrection itself as a historic fact.
It is for this reason he brings forward the resurrection of Christ. If He arose from the dead, then resurrection cannot be denied, nor can the caviller longer say, "We know nothing of the next life, for no one has ever come back to tell us about it." Nor is it a little singular that his first witness to the resurrection of Christ should be the Holy Scriptures. Some apologists would have presented this last as a kind of appendage, if they had considered it at all. Affrighted by the charge of "reasoning in a circle," they would have marshalled every material fact before drawing on one of so spiritual and "impractical" a character. But to the inspired apostle this was of the chiefest importance. And in so far his example confirms what was said about the relation of the Christian evidences to spiritual life. Present the living word of the Living God to the soul first, and when that soul has been quickened by it, then is he able to appreciate its confirmation in other ways. But the mystery deepens when we consider that the Scriptures Paul speaks of are those of the Old Testament! The New Testament (the Gospels, at least) was not then in circulation, nor had it attained the distinction of such a title.
"Where does the Old Testament speak of the resurrection of Christ ? How difficult for the average student, to say nothing of the casual reader of the Bible, to discover such a revelation there ? And yet the second psalm testifies to His resurrection, and the sixteenth psalm, and the prophet Isaiah (53), and the prophet Hosea (6), and how many more we cannot say.
Oh, how we should like to have been with the disciples on that first day of the week, when Christ opened "their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, ’Thus it is written, and thus it behove Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day’" (Luke 24:45-46). But the resurrection of Christ having thus been proven by the Scripture revelation that it would take place, it is in order to corroborate that revelation by the testimony of historic fact, and in so doing the apostle produces no less than 514 witnesses!
These are Cephas, or Peter; the whole apostolate; five hundred brethren at once; James, and lastly, Paul himself.
One man may be deceived, or even two or three, or a score let us say, but five hundred! This is unlikely. And especially so, when the appearances were not limited to a passing moment or even a single day, but when they covered many days, six weeks in fact, and were in the daylight as well as in the night.
It is to be remembered also that the most gracious intimacy was accorded several of these witnesses; who were permitted to eat and drink with Jesus, to walk and talk with Him, to observe the print of the nails in His hands and in His feet, and as in the case of Thomas, to thrust their hand into the wound of the spear in His side. And who were these witnesses? Consider the competency of men like James the brother of our Lord, and the eleven apostles who were not only qualified by their long and close acquaintanceship with Jesus, but by their great intelligence as well. We speak of them as humble fishermen and the like, but we forget that they were able by their preaching to turn "the world upside down," the world of the proud Augustan period; and that their writings still five as the most potent in the history of mankind. These were not ordinary witnesses. And the time at which their testimony was borne is of great importance, since it was practically contemporaneous with the event. It was a hundred years after Mohammed died before any miracles were claimed for him, and about as long after the death of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. Paganism was equally careful to affirm no wonders of its saints until a sufficient period had elapsed to render the detection of a fraud impossible. But not so in the case of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. "The greater part of the five hundred brethren are still alive," says Paul to the Corinthians; "you can easily discover them and cross-examine them as to the things they saw and heard." And Paul is offering this challenge to a church in which there existed a party that contested the truth of which he spake. Think you not they would have improved this opportunity to ascertain the facts if they doubted them? As answering that question, we do not read that Paul, or any of his fellow-apostles ever discontinued their preaching of the resurrection. They proclaimed it almost daily even unto the end of their earthly life. They stood accused at the bar of justice for it. They made long, hazardous and manifold journeys on its account. They mentioned it in their letters and private conversation. They defended it. They suffered for it. They died for it. "Were such men as these either deceived or deceivers?" To doubt all this evidence, and much more that might be named, is to annul the whole science of history. As a modern apologist says: "Once admit that witnesses of the character and discernment of the apostles could be repeatedly, and in good faith, so grossly deceived about an event so easily determinable as the resurrection of Jesus, and any sophist will be able in the same way with ease to get rid of any fact of history that he finds convenient."