If Christ Be Not Raised... (Part 1 of 2)

The resurrection is one of the most important doctrines in the Christian faith. The whole of Christianity hinges on this singular event. For this reason, the resurrection is under much scrutiny. Many false religions attack the resurrection because without it Christianity falls short of anything more than another religion containing interesting stories and good morals.

What if Christ didn’t rise from the dead? Where would that leave us in Christianity? Would there be any reason to our beliefs? The Apostle Paul didn’t seem to think so in 1 Corinthians 15:14.


If Jesus died on the cross and stayed dead what does that say about Him? It certainly doesn’t say that He is the Lord of all, more powerful than death itself. But in fact Jesus did rise from the dead proving He is God and is powerful enough to conquer sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:20)!

Since Christianity completely falls apart if Jesus did not rise from the dead, many false religions try to deny the resurrection. Because many people try to explain away the resurrection, I think it very important to understand those arguments and know how to refute them.

Q: Why would anyone believe in the resurrection anyway? People don’t just die and come back to life.
A: The empty tomb is great evidence for the resurrection. In fact, the empty tomb is a necessary fact to the resurrection. No empty tomb, no resurrection. In this two part series we will look at 6 possible explanations for the empty tomb after Jesus’ burial (3 in this post and 3 in the post to come).

Before we get into those possible explanations there are 3 important facts that suggest the empty tomb and 8 events surrounding the death, burial, and resurrection that you must understand.

3 Important Facts That Suggest the Empty Tomb

1. Enemies of Christ admitted the tomb was empty
2. 6-7 weeks after Jesus’ death the resurrection was being proclaimed
3. It would have been irrational for the Gospel writers to accept the claim of the resurrection if the tomb were not empty.

8 Events Surrounding the Death, Burial, and Resurrection

1. Jesus was crucified
2. Jesus was buried in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb
3. Jesus’ disciples were doubtful and disappointed after Jesus’ crucifixion
4. The tomb was discovered empty within 3 days
5. Jesus’ disciples saw Christ alive
6. Jesus’ disciples became bold proclaimers of the death and resurrection
7. The message of the resurrection was preached in Jerusalem within 6-7 weeks causing churches to spring up
8. Jesus’ disciples suffered and died for their message

Now, let’s begin examining the first three possible explanations for the empty tomb!

The Women Went to the Wrong Tomb

The idea of this explanation is quite simple and evident from the title. This is the assumption that the women who reported the body missing mistakenly went to the wrong tomb when they brought spices to anoint Jesus’ body (Mark 16:1).

If we follow this argument to it’s logical conclusion then that means the disciples that ran to the tomb to verify the women’s claim (Luke 24:12, John 20:3-8) also went to the wrong tomb. Further more, This also means that the religious leaders AND the Roman Guard ALSO went to the wrong tomb. The likely hood of all these people going to wrong tomb and no one ever going to the correct tomb is next-to-none.

Let’s just say that the women DID go to the wrong tomb. We’ll even give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the disciples that ran to the tomb also went to the wrong tomb. If the resurrection-claim were merely based on a mistake of the location of the tomb, the religious leaders would have lost no time going to the CORRECT tomb and producing the body of Jesus. However, that never happened. The religious leaders never produced the body because the tomb Jesus was buried in WAS in fact empty!

The Disciples Were Hallucinating

This is the attempted explanation that the women, the disciples, and the other 500 people were simply hallucinating when they allegedly had an encounter with the risen Jesus.

The problem with this explanation is that most of the time when Jesus appeared to people after His death, He appeared to more than one person at a time (He appeared to over 500 people at the same time; 1 Corinthians 15:6). This contradicts this theory because hallucination, by definition, are not shared experiences. There is no such thing as a crowd of people seeing the same vision. Visions are only seen by one person and they are unique to that person. This person is usually expecting what they see in the vision. However, the disciples did not expect Jesus to rise from the dead as evidenced by their despair at the time of the crucifixion. Some the the disciples (Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, John, and two other disciples) went back to their previous occupation as fishermen. Even when the disciples saw the risen Lord they didn’t believe it was really him at first (Luke 24:37). The fact that they weren’t expecting Jesus to rise from the dead makes the theory hallucination improbable, and the fact that Jesus appeared to several people at a time (over 500 people at one time)  makes the theory of hallucination impossible.

Again, even if all 500 people saw the exact same hallucination at the exact same time (which is impossible), the religious leaders would have simply went to the tomb and produced the body of Jesus silencing these crazy delusional people. However, the religious leaders were not able to produce the body because the tomb WAS in fact empty!

It Was a Legend That Developed Over Time

This explination assumes that over a long period of time people started saying that the tomb was empty and Jesus rose from the dead. Because this supposed legen developed over time it was too late to prove anything (according to this explination).

This argument does not hold up simply because historically the resurrection was being proclaimed all over Jerusalem within only 6-7 weeks. Again, if this were merely a legend that people were lying about the religious leaders would have simply went to the tomb, got the body of Jesus out, and paraded it around the city, thus, silencing the “lies” about the resurrection. That never happened because the tomb WAS in fact empty!

Part Two Preview

In this first post of the two part series we examined three possible explanations for the empty tomb (They Went to the Wrong Tomb, The Disciples Were Hallucinating, It Was a Legend That Developed Over Time) and followed these arguments to their logical conclusion. In doing this we have concluded that these three explanations are simply not possible and there must be some other explanation for the empty tomb. In If Christ Be Not Raised… (Part 2 of 2) we will examine the possibility that the disciples stole the body, Jesus wasn’t really dead, or Jesus actually rose from the dead. We will again follow each one to it’s logical conclusion and discover what the explanation for the empty tomb could be and how to refute false claims.

Testifying to the gospel of the grace of God,
Robbie
Acts 20:24

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If Christ Be Not Raised... | Part 1
If Christ Be Not Raised... | Part 2