MAX ON LIFE

10. Every Easter our family has the same argument: Did Jesus come back from the dead? My dad calls the resurrection a fable, I disagree. How can we know?

No one questions the existence of Jesus. Historically, he lived; he preached; he stirred a following and then was killed. No one questions these facts.

And no one questions the existence of a resurrection story. They may not buy it, but they don't question it exists. Skeptics may chalk it up as a legend or hoax, but everyone believes that the early followers proclaimed that Jesus was raised from the dead.

So the remaining question is this one: "Is the tomb empty?"

There are those who say he never died. Instead, they say a soldier mistakenly lowered his body from the cross, and those who loved him mistakenly put him in the tomb. Honestly. After a whipping that could have killed him, after six hours on the cross, after a spear in his side, could this frail and beaten Jesus spend two nights in a tomb and, on the third day, shove back the rock, overpower the soldiers, and encounter the disciples with such vigor that they believed he was raised from the dead? I don't think so.

Some teach that Jesus' body was stolen by his enemies, the religious leaders of Jerusalem. If so, why didn't they produce it? They cold have killed Christianity in its cradle! But they didn't. There are those who say the disciples took the body. Maybe the followers of Jesus staged the resurrection. There is only one problem: the disciples spent the rest of their lives proclaiming the resurrection. Some died for their belief. One might die for a truth, but one will never die for a lie.

What is left? The empty tomb is left.

You don't have to toss common sense out the door to embrace the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, it's just as challenging, or more so, to disprove the resurrection as to prove it.

By: Max Lucado