The Single Most Important Question
There are many important questions in life that we are wise to investigate and ponder: Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Does God exist? How should I live? What happens after we die? And there are others. But there is one question that I believe trumps them all, largely because if the answer to this question is yes, then we have the answers to all the others. If the answer is no, then we can eliminate the largest religion in the world as a contender for truth and finally put to rest its many exclusive claims. That question is, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?1
While Christians alone believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead, virtually all scholars of all religious views who have studied the life of Jesus and the early church agree that:
(1) Jesus died by crucifixion*
(2) Jesus was buried
(3) The tomb where Jesus was buried was empty just a few days later*2
(4) Jesus' disciples lost all hope
(5) Jesus' disciples believed they saw the risen Christ*
(6) Jesus' disciples were transformed from cowardly doubters to bold apostles who proclaimed Jesus' death and resurrection
(7) Jesus' disciples risked and often gave their lives to proclaim this message
(8) Jesus' resurrection from the dead was the central message in the early church
(9) Jesus' resurrection was proclaimed in Jerusalem, where the events had occurred just a short time before
(10) Sunday became the primary day of worship to align with the day of the resurrection
(11) James, a skeptic, became a believer when he believed he saw the resurrected Jesus*
(12) Saul of Tarsus, an enemy and persecutor of Jesus' followers, also became a believer after he believed he saw the resurrected Jesus* (13) The church grew rapidly
The evidence for each of these facts is astounding, which is why most scholars - whether atheist, agnostic, skeptic, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or other - agree on them.3 If we can trust scholars of all different beliefs who have devoted their lives to studying this topic and have come together in agreement on the facts above, what is the best explanation for what happened in Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago? What accounts for the disciples', skeptics', and enemies' belief that they saw the risen Jesus after he was crucified? What accounts for the rapid growth of the early church in and around Jerusalem, where the entire movement could have been squelched by simply presenting the body of Jesus which had been carefully guarded by Roman soldiers in order to avoid this very scenario? What led a group of cowardly Jewish men who already believed they were God's chosen people to put their lives on the line to boldly proclaim that Jesus was God incarnate and had risen from the dead?
In the words of one of my favorite agnostics, "Something happened!"4 Actually, that's the answer you'll get from most informed non-Christians. Why? Because there exists no reasonable naturalistic explanation for what happened!
Over the years skeptics have proposed various explanations to try to account for this event that changed the world, but to date every single one of them has been disproved or dismissed by skeptics themselves, and for good reason. It's not hard to discover why baseless and unrealistic theories of mass hallucinations, embellishments over time, borrowed myths, deception, theft, a visit to the wrong tomb, aliens, or an apparent-but-not-real death have been dismissed.5 What you will be hard-pressed to discover, however, is a plausible theory that accounts for all the facts, other than the most reasonable conclusion by far, that Jesus actually rose from the dead.
"But that requires a miracle!", you might hear. Yes, but it wouldn't be the first or the greatest miracle known to man. That honor belongs to the creation of the universe. After all, whether you believe that no one created something out of nothing or that someone created something out of nothing, the fact remains that it is a miracle that something exists rather than nothing.6
Given the existence of the universe and all that is in it - from the simplest one-celled amoeba which contains the informational equivalent of one thousand complete sets of encyclopedias,7 to the most complex planetary system containing hundreds of billions of stars - is it really all that impossible to believe in a resurrection?
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* Denotes the five details used by Habermas and Licona to make their "Minimal Facts Argument" in The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
[1] Unlike other religions, Christianity is not primarily about a collection of teachings that can be followed apart from its founder. Christianity centers around the person of Jesus, and it falls apart if he wasn't who he said he was. As the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19, "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."
[2] According to Gary Habermas, roughly 75% of scholars on the subject accept the empty tomb as historical fact, whereas nearly 100% of scholars accept the other facts listed here
[3] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2004); Gary R. Habermas. The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ. (Joplin: College Press Publishing Company, 2016)
[4] This quote is from a personal conversation I had with a friend who diligently studies alternative theories to the resurrection in hopes of dissuading people from believing Jesus rose from the dead. "Something happened" is the best explanation he has found so far.
[5] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2004), 84-150.
[6] Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2004), 94.
[7] Ibid., 116.
