THE VIEW - ALL OF CHRIST'S POST-RESURRECTION APPEARANCES WERE REALLY ONLY SUPPOSED APPEARANCES. wHAT REALLY HAPPENED WAS THIS: PEOPLE HAD HALLUCINATIONS.
THE REFUTATION
Were Christ's appearances that important?
C. S. Lewis says: "In the earliest days of Christianity an 'apostle' was first and foremost a man who claimed to be an eye-witness of the Resurrection. Only a few days after the Crucifixion when two candidates were nominated for the vacancy created by the treachery of Judas, their qualification was that they had known Jesus personally both before and after His death and could offer first-hand evidence of the Resurrection in addressing the other world (Acts 1:22). A few days later St. Peter, preaching the first Christian sermon, makes the same claim - 'GOD raised Jesus, of which we all (we Christians) are witnesses' (Acts 2:32). In the first Letter to the Corinthians St. Paul bases his claim to apostleship on the same ground - 'Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the LORD Jesus?' "
Would it matter if Christ's post-resurrection appearances were visions?
Considering Lewis' definition, if the view which regards all of Christ's appearances to have been mere hallucinations were true, then the value of the apostolic office would be nil.
If true, it means, in Gresham Machen's words, "...that the Christian Church is founded upon a pathological experience of certain persons in the first century of our era. It means that if there had been a good neurologist for Peter and the others to consult, there never would have been a Christian Church."
J. N. D. Anderson, in speaking of "the credibility of the apostolic witness...," says that it will either "stand or fall by the validity of their testimony..."
What is a vision?
Professor Wilbur Smith says, "The most satisfying definition of a vision I have seen is the one by Weiss: 'The scientific meaning of this term is that an apparent act of vision takes place for which there is no corresponding external object. The optic nerve has not been stimulated by any outward waves of light or vibrations of the ether, but has been excited by a purely inner physiological cause. At the same time the sense-impression of sight is accepted by the one who experiences the vision as completely as if it were wholly "objective"; he fully believes the object of his vision to be actually before him.' "
Were Christ's post-resurrection appearances visions?
Mere visions were not the experience of the disciples; the testimony of the New Testament totally opposes such a hypothesis.
As Hillyer Straton has said: "...Men who are subject to hallucinations never become moral heroes. The effect of the resurrection of Jesus in transformed lives was continuous, and most of these early witnesses went to their deaths for proclaiming this truth."
The hallucination theory is not plausible because it contradicts certain laws and principles to which psychiatrists say visions must conform.
Generally, only particular kinds of people have hallucinations.
They are those whom one would describe as "high-strung," highly imaginative and very nervous.
The appearances that Christ made were not restricted to persons of any particular psychological make-up.
John R. W. Stott says, "...There was a variety in mood...
"Mary Magdalene was weeping;...
"...the women were afraid and astonished;...
"...Peter was full of remorse,...
"...and Thomas of incredulity.
"The Emmaus pair were distracted by the events of the week...
"...and the disciples in Galilee by their fishing...
"It is impossible to dismiss these revelations of the divine LORD as hallucinations of deranged minds."
Hallucinations are linked in an individual's subconscious to his particular past experiences.
They are very individualistic and extremely subjective.
Heinrich Kluerer in Psychopathology of Perception cites a famous neurobiologist: "[Raoul] Mourgeu, in his fundamental treatise on the neurobiology of hallucinations, reached the conclusion that variability and inconstancy represent the most constant features of hallucinatory and related phenomena. For him the hallucination is not a static phenomenon but essentially a dynamic process, the instability of which reflects the very instability of the factors and conditions associated with its origin."
It is extremely unlikely, then, that two persons would have the same hallucination at the same time.
The appearances that Christ made were seen by many people.
Thomas J. Thorburn asserts: "It is absolutely inconceivable that as many as (say) five hundred persons, of average soundness of mind and temperament, in various numbers, at all sorts of times, and in divers situations, should experience all kinds of sensuous impressions - visual, auditory, tactual - and that all these manifold experiences should rest entirely upon subjective hallucination. We say that this is incredible, because if such a theory were applied to any other than a 'supernatural' event in history, it would be dismissed forthwith as a ridiculously insufficient explanation."
Theodore Christlieb, cited by Wilbur Smith, says: "We do not deny that science can tell us of cases in which visions were seen by whole assemblies at once; but where this is the case, it has always been accompanied by a morbid excitement of the mental life, as well as by a morbid bodily condition, especially by nervous affections. Now, even if one or several of the disciples had been in this morbid state, we should by no means be justified in concluding that all were so. They were surely men of most varied temperament and constitution. And yet, one after another is supposed to have fallen into this morbid condition; not only the excited women, but even Peter, that strong and hardy fisherman who was assuredly as far from nervousness as any one, James, the two on their way to Emmaus, and so on down to the sober, doubting Thomas, aye, and all eleven at once, and even more than five hundred brethren together. All of these are supposed to have fallen suddenly into some self-deception, and that, be it noticed, at the most different times and places, and during the most varied occupations (in the morning by the grave; in conversation by the wayside; in the confidential circle of friends at work on the lake); in which their frames of mind most assuredly have been very varied and their internal tendency to visions most uneven. And could they, all of them, have agreed to announce these visions to the world as bodily appearances of the risen Christ? Or had they done so, could it have been true self-deception and intentional deceit? Surely, some one or other of them must afterwards seriously have asked himself whether the image he had seen was a reality. Schleiermacher says most truly, 'Whoever supposes that the disciples deceived themselves and mistook the internal for the eternal, accuses them of such mental weakness as must invalidate their entire testimony concerning Christ and make it appear as though Christ Himself, when He chose such witnesses, did not know what was in man. Or, if He Himself had willed and ordained that they should mistake inward appearances for outward perceptions, He would have been the author of error, and all moral ideas would be confounded if this were compatible with His high dignity.' "
According to two noted psychiatrists, L. E. Hinisie and J. Shatsky, "[An illusion is] an erroneous perception, a false response to a sense-stimulation...
"...But in a normal individual this false belief usually brings the desire to check often another sense or other senses may come to the rescue and satisfy him that it is merely an illusion."
The appearances that Christ made could not have been "erroneous" perceptions:
Wilbur Smith writes of Luke's observations. He describes him as "a man accustomed to scientifically considering any subject which he is studying. Luke says at the beginning of his second book, the Acts of the Apostles, that our LORD showed Himself alive after His Passion 'by many infallible proofs,' or more literally, 'in many proofs.' "
Smith continues: "...The very kind of evidence which modern science, and even psychologists, are so insistent upon for determining the reality of any object under consideration is the kind of evidence that we have presented to us in the Gospels regarding the Resurrection of the LORD Jesus, namely, the things that are seen with the human eye, touched with the human hand, and heard by the human ear. This is what we call empirical evidence."
W. J. Sparrow-Simpson says that "the Appearances of the Risen Master may be analyzed according to the human senses to which they appealed, whether the sense of sight, or of hearing, or of touch. The different phenomena may be conveniently grouped together under these divisions".
Sparrow-Simpson continues: "And first as to the sense of sight. This is naturally first, as the initial form of gaining their attention. It is described in the Gospels by various expressions:
" 'Jesus met them.'
" 'They saw Him,' but this seeing included those who doubted.
" 'They knew Him'
" 'They supposed that they beheld a spirit.' Matthew 28:9
" 'See...My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye behold...Me having. And when He had said this He shewed unto them...His hands and His feet.' Matthew 28:17; Luke 24:31,37,39
"Similarly also in the fourth Evangelist:
'I have seen the LORD.' John 20:18
" 'He shewed unto them His hands and His side.' John 20:20
" 'They saw the LORD.' John 20:20
" 'Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails.' John 20:25
" 'Because thou hast seen Me.' John 20:29
" 'And none of His disciples durst inquire of Him, Who art Thou? knowing that it was the LORD.' John 21:12
" 'Appearing unto them by the space of forty days.' Acts 1:3
"Appeal is made by the Risen LORD in these Appearances to the marks of the wounds inflicted in the Passion.
"St. Luke speaks of the hands and the feet. Luke 24:29-40
"St. Matthew mentions neither.
"St. John mentions 'His hands and His side.' " John 20:20-25,27
"The appearances of the risen Christ are reported also as appeals to the sense of touch.
"By far the most emphatic words in this respect are those in St. Luke: 'Handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold Me having...' Luke 24:39
" 'And they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish. And He took it, and did eat before them.' " Luke 24:42-42
Professor Thomas Thorburn says:
"...The 'hallucinatory' vision at the tomb in Mark has an auditory experience: the angel tells the women to go and announce the fact to the disciples. Mark 16:5-7
"Similarly in Matthew (who drew largely from the same sources as Mark) the women both see and hear Jesus, and also touch Him." Matthew 28:9,10
Hallucinations are usually restricted as to when and where they occur.
They usually are experienced:
In a place with a nostalgic atmosphere.
Or at a time which particularly brings the person to a reminiscing mood.
The times of Christ's appearances and their locations did not conduce the witnesses to hallucinate. No fancied events were dreamed up because of familiar surrounding.
John R. W. Stott remarks that "...the outwardly favourable circumstances were missing..."
Stott continues: "If the appearances ahd all taken place in one or two particularly sacred places, which had been hallowed by memories of Jesus..." and if "...their mood had been expectant..." then "...our suspicions might well be aroused."
Stott concludes: "If we had only the story of the appearances in the upper room, we should have cause to doubt and question. If the eleven had been gathered in that special place where Jesus had spent with them some of His last earthly hours, and they had kept His place vacant, and were sentimentalizing over the magic days of the past, and had remembered His promises to return, and had begun to wonder if He might return and to hope that He would, until the ardour of their expectation was consummated by His sudden appearance, we might indeed fear that they had been mocked by a cruel delusion."
W. Robertson Nicoll, cited by Kevan, says: "Let it be remembered that the disciples thought not only that they saw Christ, but that they conversed with Him, that the interviews were held in various circumstances, and that there were many witnesses."
James Orr considers the time factor, saying that the appearances "were not fleeting glimpses of Christ but 'prolonged interviews' " [The Resurrection of Jesus, p. 145 (cited by Ramm)].
Consider the great variety of times and places:
Matthew 28:9,10 - The early morning appearance to the women at the tomb.
Luke 24:13-33 - The appearance on the road to Emmaus one afternoon.
Luke 24:34; I Corinthians 15:7 - A couple of private interviews in broad daylight.
John 21:1-23 - By the lake, early one morning.
I Corinthians 15:6 - On a Galilean mountain by 500-plus believers.
Indeed, there is almost a studied variety in the times and places of Christ's appearances - a variance that defies the hypothesis that they were mere visions.
Hallucinations require of people an anticipating spirit of hopeful expectancy which causes their wish to become father of the thought.
The following principles are characteristic of hallucinations. Professor William Milligan states that the subject of the vision must be characterized by "belief in the idea that it expresses, and excited expectation that the idea will somehow be realized."
"In order to have an experience like this, one must so intensely want to believe that he projects something that really isn't there and attaches reality to his imagination."
Professor E. H. Day observes that "...the seeing of visions, the perception of exceptional phenomena subjectively by large numbers of persons at the same time, necessitates a certain amount of 'psychological preparation,' extending over an appreciably long period."
Paul Little writes: "For instance, a mother who has lost a son in the war remembers how he used to come home from work every evening at 5:30 o'clock. She sits in her rocking chair every afternoon musing and meditating. Finally, she thinks she sees him come through the door, and has a conversation with him. AT this point she has lost contact with reality."
In the case of His post-resurrection appearances, Christ's followers were:
Caused to believe against their wills.
W. J. Sparrow-Simpson writes: "The phenomena, therefore, suggest that the Appearances were rather forced upon the mind's attention from without rather than created from within."
Alfred Edersheim says that "...such visions presuppose a previous expectancy of the event, which, as we know, is the opposite of the fact."
Professor E. H. Day writes in objection to the hallucination theory: "...We may recognize the slowness with which the disciples arrive at a conviction to which only the inexorable logic of facts led them."
Concerning the absence of "psychological preparation," Day observes:
"The first appearance of the LORD found the various disciples in very various mental attitudes, but the states of expectancy, anticipation, or preparedness to see Him are conspicuously absent from the category."
And that "...the faith of all had been shaken by the catastrophe of the shameful death, a death recalling so vividly the word of the Jewish Law, 'He that is hanged is accursed of GORD' (Deut. xxi. 23). The theory of subjective visions might seem a plausible one if there had been among the disciples a refusal to believe the worst. But the hopes of the disciples were so far shattered that recovery was very slow."
Paul Little explains that the general disposition of Christ's followers was not like what one would find in victims of an hallucinatory experience: "Mary came to the tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning with spices in her hands. Why? To anoint the dead body of the LORD she loved. She was obviously not expecting to find Him risen from the dead. In fact, when she first saw Him she mistook Him for the gardener! When the LORD finally appeared to the disciples, they were frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost!"
Alfred Edersheim comments: "...Such a narrative a that recorded by St. Luke seems almost designed to render the 'Vision-hypothesis' impossible. We are expressly told, that the appearance of the Risen Christ, so far from meeting their anticipations, had affrighted them, and that they had thought it spectral, on which Christ had reassured them, and bidden them handle Him, for 'a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold Me having.' "
Continuing, Edersheim says: "Reuss well remarks, that if this fundamental dogma of the Church had been the outcome of invention, care would have been taken that the accounts of it should be in the strictest and most literal agreement."
C. S. Lewis says that "...any theory of hallucination breaks down on the fact (and if it is invention it is the oddest invention that ever entered the mind of man) that on three separate occasions this hallucination was not immediately recognized as Jesus (Luke xxiv. 13-31; John xx. 15, xxi. 4). Even granting that GORD sent a holy hallucination to teach truths already widely believed without it, and far more easily taught by other methods, and certain to be completely obscured by this, might we not at least hope that He would get the fact of the hallucination right? Is He who made all faces such a bungler that He cannot even work up a recognizable likeness of the Man who was Himself?"
Writing of Jesus' manifestation to His disciples, T. J. Thorburn relates, "...If it had been mere subjective imagination, originating a similar train of equally unreal conceptions in the others, tradition would surely have given us a more highly elaborated account of it..."
Hallucinations usually tend to recur over a long period of time with noticeable regularity.
They either recur more frequently until a point of crisis is reached, or they occur less frequently until they fade away.
Notice the following observations concerning Christ's appearances:
Professor C. S. Lewis writes: "All the accounts suggest that the appearances of the Risen Body came to an end; some describe an abrupt end six weeks after the death...A phantom can just fade away, but an objective entity must go somewhere - something must happen to it."
He concludes: "If it were a vision then it was the most systematically deceptive and lying vision on record. But if it were real, then something happened to it after it ceased to appear. You cannot take away the Ascension without putting something else in its place."
He concludes: "If it were a vision then it was the most systematically deceptive and lying vision on record. But if it were real, then something happened to it after it ceased to appear. You cannot take away the Ascension without putting something else in its place."
Hastings' Dictionary of the Apostolic Church records that "the theory is inconsistent with the fact that the visions came so suddenly to an end. After the forty days no appearance of the Risen LORD is recorded, except that to St. Paul, the circumstances and object of which were altogether exceptional. It is not thus that imagination works. As Keim says, 'The spirits that men call up are not so quickly laid.' "
Professor Kevan asks, "But if the visions of the risen Saviour were hallucinations, why did they stop so suddenly? Why, after the Ascension, does one not find others still seeing the coveted vision? By the law of development, says Dr. Mullins, 'hallucinations should have become chronic after five hundred had been brought under their sway. But now hallucination gives place to a definite and conquering programme of evangelisation.' "
WHAT CONCLUSIONS CAN WE DRAW?
John R. W. Stott writes: "The disciples were not gullible, but rather cautious, sceptical and 'slow of heart to believe.' They were not susceptible to hallucinations. Nor would strange visions have satisfied them. Their faith was grounded upon the hard facts of verifiable experience."
Hallucinations have never, writes T. J. Thorburn, "stimulated people to undertake a work of enormous magnitude, and, while carrying it out, to lead lives of the most rigid and consistent self-denial, and even suffering. In a word,...we are constrained to agree with Dr. Sanday, who says, 'No apparition, no mere hallucination of the senses, ever yet moved the world.' "
That the Women, and Subsequently Everyone Else, Went to the wrong Tomb
THE VIEW
Professor Lake says: "It is seriously a matter for doubt whether the women were really in a position to be quite certain that the tomb which they visited was that in which they had seen Joseph of Arimathea bury the LORD's body. The neighborhood of Jerusalem is full of rock tombs, and it would not be easy to distinguish one from another without careful notes...It is very doubtful if they were close to the tomb at the moment of burial...It is likely that they were watching from a distance, and that Joseph of Arimathea was a representative of the Jews rather than of the disciples. If so, they would have had but a limited power to distinguish between one rock tomb and another close to it. The possibility, therefore, that they came to the wrong tomb is to be reckoned with, and it is important because it supplies the natural explanation of the fact that whereas they had seen the tomb closed, they found it open...
"It if were not the same, the circumstances all seem to fall into line. The women came in the early morning to a tomb which they thought was the one in which they had seen the LORD buried. They expected to find a closed tomb, but they found an open one; and a young man...guessed their errand, tried to tell them that they had made a mistake in the place. 'He is not here,' said he, 'see the place where they laid him,' and probably pointed to the next tomb. But the women were frightened at the detection of their errand, and fled..." (Kirsopp Lake, The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ).
THE REFUTATION
The women's visit to the empty tomb on Sunday morning is one of the best attested events in the New Testament narratives. Kirsopp Lake's theory assumes its historicity.
Frank Morison, the British lawyer, says, "The story of the women's adventure is in the earliest authentic document we possess, the Gospel of St. Mark. It is repeated by St. Matthew and St. Luke, it is confirmed so far as Mary Magdalene herself is concerned by St. John, it is in the Apocryphal Gospel of Peter; and, perhaps even more significantly, it is in that very ancient and independent fragment, preserved by St. Luke in chapter xxiv., verses 13-34, the journey to Emmaus."
Professor Lake accepts the visit as historical, but he is wrong in his speculations as to what happened at the tomb.
These women had carefully noted where the body of Jesus was interred less than 72 hours before:
"And Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the grave" (Matthew 27:61).
"And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses were looking on to see where He was laid" (Mark 15:47).
"Now the women who had come with Him out of Galilee followed after, and saw the tomb and how His body was laid" (Luke 23:55).
So you think that you or I or these women or any other rational person would forget so quickly the place where a dearly loved one was laid to rest just 72 hours earlier?
The women reported what they had experienced to the disciples, and later Peter and John also found the tomb empty.
"And so she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, 'They have taken away the LORD out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.' Peter therefore went forth, and the other disciples, and they were going to the tomb. And the two were running together; and the other disciples ran ahead faster than Peter, and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. Simon Peter therefore also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he beheld the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth, which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. Then entered in therefore the other disciples also, who had first come to the tomb, and he saw, and believed" (John 20:2-8).
Is it to be argued that Peter and John also went to the wrong tomb?
Paul Little remarks, "...It is inconceivable that Peter and John would succumb to the same mistake..."
Furthermore, an angel, sitting here on a stone said, "Come see the place where the LORD lay" (Matthew 28:6).
Did the angel make a mistake, too?
Wilbur Smith says, "someone has suggested, in trying to force this theory of the mistaken tomb, that the angel's words really meant, 'You are in the wrong place, come over here to see where the LORD's body was place.'
"Well, in nineteen hundred years of the study of the New Testament, it took our modern, sophisticated age to find that in the Gospel records, and no trustworthy commentary on any of the Gospels entertains such a foolish interpretation as that."
If the women went to the wrong tomb (an empty sepulchre), than the Sanhedrin could have gone to the right tomb and produced the body (if Jesus did not rise). This would have shut the disciples up forever!
The high priests and the other enemies of Christ would certainly have gone to the right tomb!
Even if the women, the disciples, the Romans and the Jews all went to the wrong tomb, one thing is sure:
As Paul Little says: "...Certainly Joseph of Arimathea, owner of the tomb, would have solved the problem."
The narrative in Mark reads: "And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, 'Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid him' " (Mark 16:5,6).
Professor Lake's citing of Mark 16:6 is incomplete. He quotes only part of what the young man said and ignores the key part of the narration. The phrase, "He has risen," is conspicuously absent in Lake's citing of the verse. Notice the following comparison:
| Lake's Version | Actual Version |
|---|---|
| "...He is not here, see the place where they laid Him..." | "...He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him." |
If the text is quoted correctly, then Lake's theory cannot stand!
Anderson points out another problem for those who hold to the Lake theory: When the women went back to the disciples, these men would have done one of two things:
They would have gone to the tomb to verify the women's report;
Or they would have immediately begun proclaiming the resurrection.
Such preaching, however, does not occur until seven weeks later.
Anderson says: "I cannot see any possible motive for Christian writers to have invented that seven-week gap. So we're asked to believe that the women didn't tell the apostles this story for quite a long time. Why not? Because the apostles had supposedly run away to Galilee."
Concerning this point, Frank Morison says that the "interdependence of the women upon the men very seriously embarrasses Prof. Lake's theory at its most vital point." Morison concludes the major problems:
"Prof. Lake is compelled to keep the women in Jerusalem until Sunday morning, because he firmly believes that they really went to the tomb.
"He is also compelled to get the disciples out of Jerusalem before sunrise on Sunday because he holds that the women kept silence.
"Finally, to harmonize this with the fact that they did subsequently tell the story, with all its inevitable and logical results, he finds it necessary to keep the women in Jerusalem for Several weeks while the disciples returned to their homes, had certain experiences, and came back to the capital."
John R. W. Stott mentions the attitude of the women. They were not blinded by tears of remorse, but had a practical purpose for their early morning visit.
Stott says: "They had bought spices and were going to complete the anointing of their LORD's body, since the approach of the sabbath had made the work so hasty two days previously. These devoted and business-like women were not the kind to be easily deceived or to give up the task they had come to do."
This was not a public cemetery, but a private burying ground. There was no other tomb there which would allow them to make such a mistake. Wilbur Smith, in commenting on this point, says: "The whole idea is so utterly fantastic that Professor A.E. J. Rawlinson, no conservative, in his epochal commentary on St. Mark's Gospel, felt compelled to say of Lake's suggestion, 'That the women went by mistake to the wrong tomb, and that the attempt of a bystander to direct them to the right one was misunderstood, is rationalization which is utterly foreign to the spirit of the narrative.' "
Merrill Tenney says, "Lake fails to explain why the 'young man' [Mark 16:5] would have been present either in a public cemetery or in a private garden at such an early hour."
He asks, "What conceivable motive would have drawn a stranger there?
"If He were not a stranger, but one of the disciples making an independent investigation, why should his presence have frightened the women?"
Tenney further comments that "Mark's account, on which Lake relies, states that he was seated inside the tomb (vs. 5), so that he could scarcely have meant that they were at the wrong place..., but that Jesus was no longer there; they could see where He had been laid, but the body had vanished."
Some identify the "young man" as a gardener. However, Frank Morison says that "...this theory, despite its appearance of rationality , has one peculiar weakness."
"...If it was so dark that the women accidentally went to the wrong tomb, it is exceedingly improbable that the gardener would have been at work. If it was late enough and light enough for the gardener to be at work, it is improbable that the women would have been mistaken. The theory just rests upon the synchronization of two very doubtful contingencies. This is, however, only part of the improbability and intellectual difficulty which gathers around it."
Also, if the "young man" was the gardener, as some people assert, why didn't the priests secure his testimony as evidence that Christ's body was still in the grave?
He was not the gardener, but was an angel from heaven (Matthew 28:1-10).
Everyone knew that Christ's grave was empty - the real issue was how did it get that way?
What are we to think of Professor Lake's theory that the people went to the wrong tomb?
George Hanson says: "If I had any doubts about the Resurrection, Professor Lake's book would provide a most salutary counteractive to my scepticism. After reading it I am more than ever of the opinion expressed by De Wette in his 'Historical Criticism of the Evangelical History' (p. 229): 'The fact of the Resurrection, although a darkness which cannot be dissipated rests on the way and manner of it, cannot be doubted.' "
Wilbur Smith cites the verdict of the British scholar, Professor Morse: "Their theory that that the women were approaching the wrong tomb arises, not from any evidence, but from disbelief in the possibility of the supernatural emptying of our LORD's tomb."
CONCLUSION: HE IS RISEN, HE IS RISEN INDEED
John Warwick Montgomery says: "The earliest records we have of the life and ministry of Jesus give the overwhelming impression that this man went around not so much 'doing good' but making a decided nuisance of Himself.
"The parallel with Socrates in this regard is strong: Both men infuriated their contemporaries to such an extent that they were eventually put to death. But where Socrates played the gadfly on the collective Athenian rump by demanding that his hearers 'know themselves' - examine their unexamined lives - Jesus alienated His contemporaries by continually forcing them to think through their attitude to Him personally. 'Who do men say that I the Son of man am?...Who do you say that I am?' 'What do you think of Christ? Whose son is He?' These were the questions Jesus asked."
Christ made it very clear who He was. He told Thomas: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (John 14:6).
The apostle Paul said that Christ "...was declared with power to be the Son of GOD by the resurrection from the dead..." (Romans 1:4).
Simon Greenleaf, famous Harvard professor of law, says: "All that Christianity asks of men...is, that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat its evidences as they treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals. Let the witnesses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if it were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to rigorous cross-examination. The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth."
As G. B. Hardy has said, "Here is the complete record:
Confucius' tomb - occupied
Buddha's tomb - occupied
Mohammed's tomb - occupied
Jesus' tomb - EMPTY."
The decision is now yours to make; the evidence speaks for itself. It says very clearly -
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