We will now walk with Jesus:
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- From Golgotha where He was crucified.
- To the Garden Tomb, where He was buried and from which He was resurrected.
- To the Mount of Olives where He gave His disciples the Great Commission, and where they watched Him ascend into glory, and to which He will soon return as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
- In Acts 1:3, Luke told Theophilus, the Roman official he was trying to convince that Jesus was the Christ; the Messiah:
- “Jesus presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.”
- The Greek word translated “infallible” is a technical term that described the conclusive evidence of a test or experiment – i.e., the proof of Jesus’ resurrection was “infallible”; it was without doubt or question. How?
- Luke said they saw Him, they touched Him, they talked with Him, they ate with Him – Jesus had risen from the dead, just as He said He would – He was alive – proving Himself to be the Savior God had sent Him to be.
- Even unbelievers recognize the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus as the two central events of the Christian Faith.
- Without His bodily resurrection, Jesus’ crucifixion would not have achieved our eternal salvation.
- Without the physical resurrection of Jesus, there would be no Christian Faith, and we would still be lost in our sins.
However, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, the Apostle Paul said:
- “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remains unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”
Those who deny this truth, and they are legion, claim the Lord’s resurrection is a legend started by the disciples so they could justify their faith in a dead man who claimed to be the Messiah. However, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 destroys that accusation in several ways.
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- First, Paul wasn’t one of the disciples. In fact, during the three years Jesus was on the earth, proving Himself to be the Messiah, Paul was a zealous Pharisee named Saul, doing everything he could to stop people from believing Jesus was the Messiah.
- That’s why he was on his way to Damascus to send more Christians to the lion’s den to squelch the Christian movement when the resurrected Lord Jesus appeared to him, blinded him with His glory, and convinced him of His deity.
- Think about all this man lost if he helped the disciples fabricate the legend of Jesus’ resurrection.
Writing to the Christians in Corinth, five years later, Paul said, if they couldn’t take his word about the veracity of Lord’s resurrection, there were 500 other people who saw the resurrected Lord, and at that time, he said, most of them were still alive, including Jesus’ half-brother, James, and all the other Apostles, including Peter.
For more than 2000 years, Skeptics have tried to disprove the bodily resurrection of Jesus, but have they done it?
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- They can deny it, or they can doubt it! They can even discount it as the truth we proclaim it to be, or they can disbelieve it, but they cannot disprove it.
- Those who do not want to surrender their lives unto His Lordship will believe just about anything other than the truth about our Lord’s death and resurrection.
- Even non-biblical sources conclude, Jesus was crucified publicly and buried in a nearby tomb that a rich man had prepared for himself, and it was sealed and guarded.
- Three days and three nights later, Jesus resurrected from the grave and was seen by more than 500 people at the same time, proving Him to be our Savior and Lord.
- If you haven’t come to that conclusion already, I pray you will do it today, for if you confess with your mouth: Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved from the wrath of God that is about to be revealed on those who do not believe!
- There is no middle ground when it comes to your relationship with God—either you belong to Him by your personal faith in Jesus Christ, or you do not, and so I ask you: What is your relationship with God today?
Join us tomorrow as we continue our journey “From Gethsemane to Golgotha to Glory!”