What things?
Jesus was well and truly dead. He had been thoroughly scourged before being nailed to the cross - that is, repeatedly beaten and whipped with a 3-lash scourge that had pieces of bone or metal attached to the ends, tearing into the skeletal muscles to set the stage for circulatory shock. A crown of thorns had been pushed hard down on his head. Crude nails that were between 5 and 7 inches long and almost half an inch square had been hammered through his wrists and feet. The cross had been lifted upright such that his full weight had him hanging from it. Then after some time, when the soldiers decided he was dead, just to be certain they speared him through the ribcage, his right lung and pericardal sac and heart pierced releasing both blood and pleural fluids. Doctors tell us that just that wound in itself would have been fatal. Most unusually, his legs were not broken - but there was no need to do so as he was already undeniably dead.
Pilate required, and was given, official assurance that Jesus was dead. Any assumptions that Jesus was not dead after all that, and had only just swooned, fly right in the face of modern medical knowledge.
Later his body was embalmed in up to 100 pounds of spices and bound in bandages, these hardening as the spices and pastes dried. Even had he only swooned as some have suggested, and then woken up in the tomb, he was firmly encased. After an ordeal like that, who would have the energy to break out anyway? He was stuck!
The tomb had a huge stone weighing up to 2 tons rolled across its entrance on a carved downward track, a seal fixed across it, and a Roman guard set in place. The seal served to prevent any duplicity by the guard such that he might help in surreptitious removal of the body. Roman guards were beaten if they fell asleep on the job, even executed, and dead men for certain if they quitted their post. Everything possible was done to prevent a resurrection - Jesus coming out of the tomb - as the rumours of the prophecy (and the words of Jesus himself) had already circulated that such was going to happen.
But on the third day afterwards, the seal was found broken, the stone moved and the tomb empty except for the grave clothes. Opponents of Christ at the time have not disputed that fact. When the disciples proclaimed the resurrection, and the message of the Christians grew bolder and spread further, their oponents could have easily silenced them by producing the body - had they stolen the body. Indeed, a number of points refute the claim that the body was stolen, not least of them being the great number of witnesses to the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, a total of over 500 people in various situations and groupings, people of integrity and where there is no evidence to undermine their testimonies, and also disbelieving hostile witnesses who were subsequently convinced it was Jesus.
Examine the evidences yourselves and try to refute them. Click here.
“What things?” asked Jesus of the two down-hearted disciples trudging the road to Emmaus. Find out here.
Easter Sunday, the day of Resurrection! Time to grab the Easter Bunny and eat all those eggs! Well, isn’t that how we celebrate? That is how a geat many folks prefer to think of Easter, rather than be faced with the real story of what this day is about. Will you dare to look at the evidence concerning the events of around 2,000 years ago and consider the absolutely massive ramifications that they have… or will you just munch on the chocolate instead?
