Is there any real proof of the Resurrection?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Have you read the story lately, Dale?

Your interpretation of Pilate’s interaction with the Jews is quite different from mine.

Pilate sought to release Jesus and was blackmailed into his situation by threat.

As my pastor explained recently in a sermon, one of Pilate’s allies had recently and severely fallen out of favor with the emperor and his position was less secure than it had been.

Also, giving the body to Joseph was likely contrary to what most of the ruling council wanted. They wanted the body thrown on the trash heap as was common with the accursed victims who had been hung on a tree.

John 19 Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. 3 They kept coming up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and striking him on the face. 4 Pilate went out again and said to them, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him.” 5 So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!” 6 When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.” 7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”

8 Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever. 9 He entered his headquarters[a] again and asked Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 Pilate therefore said to him, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?” 11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” 12 From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”

13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat[b] on the judge’s bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew[c] Gabbatha. 14 Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, “Here is your King!” 15 They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.” 16 Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

Look at verse 6, for example. Pilate knew the Jews did not have the right to impose the death penalty, and he was rubbing their noses in it.

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43

I would agree with you. He was passive aggressively saying that he didn’t agree with the crucificion. And also did not want to give the rabble rousers additional reason to cause trouble.

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One of my favorite fairly recent discoveries is the Latin anagram that answers Pilate’s question:

Quid est veritas? “What is truth?”
Est vir qui adest: “It is the man who is here.”
 

(No, I didn’t derive the anagram. :grin:)

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For what it is worth, the resurrection is the confirmation of everything else that he is, and confirms that we can trust what he taught. If he had not risen, we wouldn’t be here talking about who he is, or the salvation he showed or taught us about.

But I think Paul would argue that Christ’s resurrection itself was integral, and inseparable, to how Jesus showed us “salvation”, no?

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And 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.

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46

Jesus’s death is my literal death. It was me on that cross being killed for my sins. It was me in Christ going through death, judgement and resurrection. It was me who was raised up to life with Christ.
Through the cross my old nature was killed and by His resurrection I was born again, I became a new creation. A new spirit now lives in this body, born by the Father’s will.

THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS!

God revealed Himself throughout time and at the proper time He sent Jesus to deliver us from the power of sin. We have been translated from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God’s Son. Through Jesus I have been crucified to the world and the world to me. Jesus is my Lord, not Satan, sin or anything thing or anyone else. For freedom sake Christ has set us free. What the Law was powerless to do, God did through His Son. Those who have put all their confidence in Christ are strangers and sojourners in this world, we long and look for a city who’s builder and maker is God. We are in the world but not of it. Christ in us, the hope of Glory.

What great love the Father has shown toward us that we should be called the Sons of God. By His mercy (unmerited favor) He has united those who place all their trust in what He did on the cross, with Himself.

CHRIST IN US, THE HOPE OF GLORY!

Not just a religion but the Sovereign Ruler of all things. The Lord of Heaven and Earth. Our Salvation, Redeemer, The Truth and our very Life. Run to Christ, for He alone can save from sin and God’s just vengeance and judgement on all who continue in sin. If we turn our backs on what Jesus did on the cross, we are without hope in this life or the next.

There is only one name in Heaven and earth by which men can be saved, JESUS!

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Resurrection is not “improbable”. It is impossible. I think it is not smart from atheists to “demonstrate that men cannot rise from the dead”.
The problem is that Jesus was not only a man, but God incarnated.
They do not believe it so the conclusion for them is obvious, we do not need great explanations…
I think that Resurrection is the logical step necessary for the origins of christianity, I can’t prove it, no problem, I just trust the Apostles.

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Isaiah 53 foretells the death and resurrection and what it would do. Fulfilled prophecy, 100 percent proof.

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Mr Cody,

Thank you for your note. Its’ a good place for discussion. If you read the commentaries (conservative ones), they acknowledge that Isaiah 53 refers to local happenings at the time of the writer.

How do we know that it refers to something far in the future? How do we know it is Messianic (other than from the New Testament, saying that it is?) Would reading this note in the time of Isaiah and knowing it refers to a happening at that time, make us automatically think that a Messiah would also come that parallels what happened then?

I’ve always struggled with that. I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

Thanks for your discussion.

Sincerely, Randy

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My answer to that is that there can be more than one fulfillment of some prophecies. “The day of the Lord” for example.

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If you are referring to commentaries that say that Isaiah 53 can be the then current nation of Israel, one that I just read also said that the Jewish nation was a type of Christ.

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Yes, but there’s no indication in Isaiah that this will also be repeated in the future. Typically, a prophecy unless specifically indicated in the story, fulfills only once. The appropriation of this prophecy for another fulfillment is then a wrench that, at not only the risk of appearing to play fast and loose with the facts, loses its proof power.

It’s a common intertestamental (second temple) method of interpreting the Scripture in the Jewish tradition, but that doesn’t seem to me to help with the proof, does it?

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“Proof” of any prophecy’s fulfillment is not likely to be forthcoming, since the language is typically metaphorical. Isaiah 53 is accepted by Messianic Jews as being fulfilled in Jesus – it works pretty well for me, too.

(I have an unconventional little theory about Daniel 2, as well.)

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(Do you want prophecies to have a future dated timestamp as proof? :grin:)

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would like to hear it!

of course! but my understanding was that this was a time specific prophecy, not merely metaphorical. That’s not my bailiwick at all, but I do have a Counterpoints on the “New Testament Use of the Old Testament” that I wish was not so over my head, and also Pete Enns has some good commentary at his site.

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Have you read Isaiah 53 lately?

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Forget the commentaries, just read Isaiah 53 and tell me who the individual is that is being spoken off.
Isaiah 53 doesn’t stand alone, the prophecies start in the garden when God foretells that the seed of the woman will be bruised by the serpent but He (the seed) would crush the serpent’s head.
There are so many things in the Law and the Prophets that point to Jesus.

A good place to start from to know God, is to look at ourselves and to honestly see and acknowledge the depth of our depravity without God in us. From that humbling foundation we can see more clearly Christ in the Law and the Prophets and understand the necessity of His death and resurrection. We will see and understand the things that God foretold about His coming and the work He would do.

The good news that Jesus preached and what He accomplished is not some cleverly devised story, it is what mankind needs to be delivered from their slavery to sin. Who Jesus is and what He did reveals to us the depth of God’s wisdom.

2 Cor 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Gal 6:14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.

1 Cor 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Jesus’s death on the cross and raising from the dead and ascending into Heaven was necessary for mankind to become a new creation, delivered and separated from the power of sin. Christ in us is our salvation from Satan, sin, death, condemnation and wrath.

This was God’s plan and He brought it to completion. Faith in this is not some made up belief, it is a confidence in what God foretold and accomplished. Only those who understand the depth of their depravity will see the wisdom in God’s plan and only they will fall before the Lord and put all their trust in the work of the cross of Christ.

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Extremists in what regard? There is no evidence from the early Church and any of its reach until it was institutionalized and became violently anti-Semitic. Until it got the upper hand. Wherever it did, it was always appallingly institutionally violent, due to missing the point of Jesus. Christian terrorism is a post-Enlightenment phenomenon. Christianity was always extremist in its fantasies inherited from Judaism. It still is. Here.

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Another issue with prophecy though is that for those who never saw it , it requires faith. Someone who does not believe will simply say that the story of Jesus was wrote to reflect the prophecy. Same as we could write a fictional biography about someone and write it to match these stories.

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There are several reasons for believing that the resurrection happened.

  1. The fact that a bunch of disheartened and frightened men who denied having ever known their leader, suddenly turned into an intrepid band that wandered to the farthest reaches of the globe carrying the message he taught them.
  2. The empty tomb. A tomb, guarded by a disciplined Roman contingent is robbed in the night.
  3. Several people,500 together at one time, apart from the apostles saw the risen Christ.
  4. Christ himself predicted his resurrection. Would a person, even assuming he was not God, as truthful and spiritual as him, tell lies?
  5. The conversion of Saul the persecutor of Christians to Paul, the fervent evangelist.

But finally, it is faith that makes us believe

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61

Exactly so.