THE TWELVE APOSTLES AND THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
Anything that is an historical fact can be investigated like any other historical fact. The exploits of Alexander the Great. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The resurrection of Jesus Christ. These things either happened or they did not happen. Believing in the resurrection is a matter of faith as far as salvation is concerned, but as far as whether or not it actually happened, it can be investigated by someone who is skeptical just like any other historical reality.
For example, consider the twelve apostles. No one who is taken seriously in academic circles denies that Jesus Christ really lived. They don’t deny that he had twelve apostles. They don’t deny that he had twelve apostles who claimed that he came back from the dead. They have all sorts of explanations for this that are naturalistic rather than supernatural, but the Bible claims, and secular history affirms, that twelve men claimed to see Jesus of Nazareth—eyewitness testimony—after he had been raised from the dead. Were they lying? Atheists and agnostics who know the facts of history claim that they were either lying or deceived in some way.
But if you choose to disbelieve the resurrection, you have to come up with some sort of reason why twelve men would get together and make up a deliberate lie. You have to do that because the only alternative would be belief. If you accept that the resurrection is a matter of objective, historical reality, then obviously you would be a fool not to be a Christian. So theories like “the apostles stole the body in order to start a new religion” are advanced. Or, “they were hallucinating.”
The reason is because these men did not claim to “hear stories from reliable people” that he was raised from the dead. They did not say “we feel in our hearts” that he was raised from the dead. They said “we saw him. We ate with him. We touched him.” So either: 1) they were telling the truth, or 2) they were lying or, 3) they saw something that they thought was Jesus but really was not. Those are the only options you have.
The hallucination theory has to be rejected outright by anyone who understands anything about basic psychology. Two people cannot have the same hallucination, much less twelve, because no two people‘s minds are exactly alike and hallucinations are a matter of something happening or going wrong in the mind. Because hallucinations happen in someone’s mind, the only way this would be a possibility is if only one person claimed to see Jesus after his resurrection from the dead. But there were far more than one.
So that leaves two options. They were lying or they were telling the truth. And just as anyone who understands anything about basic psychology will reject the hallucination theory, so anyone who understands anything about human nature will immediately reject the “lying” hypothesis. Why? Because all twelve of these men gave their lives for their testimony that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Research and study the history of the twelve apostles and how they died. They all died claiming to have seen him raised from the dead. One psychotic person might die for something that he knows is a lie. That really is almost a human impossibility, let’s grant that one person might do it. But twelve men are not going to die for something they know is a lie.
10,000 people might die for a lie if they themselves believe it is true. Consider things like the Jonestown massacre or religious extremists who commit suicide bombings believing they will be rewarded in the afterlife for doing so. Those are lies, but the people themselves believe them.
With the twelve apostles, you don’t have that luxury. Because again, they did not claim to “believe” that he was raised from the dead. They claimed to personally see him. So if they were lying, they knew they were lying and they died for a lie. This, too, is an impossibility. They got together and made up a story and not one of them recanted? In the face of death? Not to mention losing everything that they had in life before death? Impossible.
Eyewitness testimony is the most powerful testimony in the history of humanity as far as establishing fact. If one person sees you commit a crime, you are in trouble. If two people see it, you will go to prison. If twelve people see it, a trial would be a mere formality. And with Jesus, it wasn’t JUST the twelve apostles. We’re only dealing with twelve men here, but there were actually hundreds of people who died saying that they saw Jesus risen from the dead. This is the kind of evidence you cannot ignore or run away from. You can ignore it until you die, but you’re going to have to deal with it now or later.
There is more evidence for the resurrection, but the eyewitness testimony is the most important. And that’s the reason God set it up. That’s the reason there were twelve men from all different walks of life who accompanied Jesus and spent time with him the entire time he was an itinerant Jewish teacher. They were his best friends for three years, and they knew him as well as one can know anyone. So the man they claimed to see was really Jesus.
That is only scratching the surface of the evidence for the resurrection. But if I read what I just wrote for the first time, it would convince me to examine the evidence, if not convince me outright that it happened. The problem with most people is that deep down, they already know that Jesus came back from the dead. They know that that kind of story could not affect the entire world the way this one has if it was just a story. But in the cases where someone really does not know what to believe, if they are honestly seeking truth, basic evidence like this will convince them.
Dewayne Dunaway
