The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Resurrection

by Lee Strobel

“It began after the Last Supper,” he said. “Jesus went with his disciples to the Mount of Olives—specifically, to the Garden of Gethsemane. And there, if you remember, he prayed all night. Now, during that process he was anticipating the coming events of the next day. Since he knew the amount of suffering he was going to have to endure, he was quite naturally experiencing a great deal of psychological stress.” I

“The gospels tell us he began to sweat blood at this point.

“This is a known medical condition called hematidrosis. It’s not very common, but it is associated with a high degree of psychological stress.

“We know that many people would die from this kind of beating even before they could be crucified. At the least, the victim would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock.”

hypovolemic shock means the person is suffering the effects of losing a large amount of blood,”

“The Romans used spikes that were five to seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point. They were driven through the wrists,” Metherell said, pointing about an inch or so below his left palm.

“And it’s important to understand that the nail would go through the place where the median nerve runs. This is the largest nerve going out to the hand, and it would be crushed by the nail that was being pounded in.”

“The pain was absolutely unbearable,” he continued. “In fact, it was literally beyond words to describe; they had to invent a new word: excruciating. Literally, excruciating means ‘out of the cross.’

Think of that: they needed to create a new word because there was nothing in the language that could describe the intense anguish caused during the crucifixion.

“This fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy in Psalm 22, which foretold the crucifixion hundreds of years before it took place and says, ‘My bones are out of joint.’”

“Once a person is hanging in the vertical position,” he replied, “crucifixion is essentially an agonizingly slow death by asphyxiation.

This eventually leads to an irregular heartbeat. In fact, with his heart beating erratically, Jesus would have known that he was at the moment of death, which is when he was able to say, ‘Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit.’ And then he died of cardiac arrest.”

“The spear apparently went through the right lung and into the heart, so when the spear was pulled out, some fluid—the pericardial effusion and the pleural effusion— came out. This would have the appearance of a clear fluid, like water, followed by a large volume of blood, as the eyewitness John described in his gospel.”

This fulfilled another Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah, which is that his bones would remain unbroken.”

“In 1968 archaeologists in Jerusalem found the remains of about three dozen Jews who had died during the uprising against Rome around AD 70. One victim, whose name was apparently Yohanan, had been crucified. And sure enough, they found a seven-inch nail still driven into his feet, with small pieces of olive wood from the cross still attached. This was excellent archaeological confirmation of a key detail in the gospels’ description of the Crucifixion.”

Jesus could not have come down from the cross alive.

“So,” I said, “when someone suggests to you that Jesus merely swooned on the cross—” “I tell them it’s impossible. It’s a fanciful theory without any possible basis in fact.”

Jesus knew what was coming, and he was willing to go through it, because this was the only way he could redeem us—by serving as our substitute and paying the death penalty that we deserve because of our rebellion against God. That was his whole mission in coming to earth.”

“So when you ask what motivated him,” he concluded, “well . . . I suppose the answer can be summed up in one word—and that would be love.”

The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:17 that the resurrection is at the very core of the Christian faith: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”

The resurrection is the supreme vindication of Jesus’ divine identity and his inspired teaching. It’s the proof of his triumph over sin and death. It’s the foreshadowing of the resurrection of his followers. It’s the basis of Christian hope. It’s the miracle of all miracles.

INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM LANE CRAIG, PH.D., D.TH.

For one thing, the burial is mentioned by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3–7, where he passes on a very early creed of the church.”

Since Craig was going to be referring to the creed, I opened the Bible in my lap and quickly reviewed the passage: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures . . .” The creed then goes on to list several appearances of the resurrected Jesus.

“Matthew doesn’t say the guards are Romans. When the Jews go to Pilate and ask for a guard, Pilate says, ‘You have a guard.’ Now, does he mean, ‘All right, here’s a detachment of Roman soldiers’? Or does he mean, ‘You’ve got your own temple guards; use them’?

most scholars recognize that according to early Jewish time-reckoning, any part of a day counted as a full day. Jesus was in the tomb Friday afternoon, all day Saturday, and on Sunday morning—under the way the Jews conceptualized time back then, this would have counted as three days.7

“Women were on a very low rung of the social ladder in first-century Palestine. There are old rabbinical sayings that said, ‘Let the words of the Law be burned rather than delivered to women’ and ‘Blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female.’ Women’s testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren’t even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of law.

Read Mark 15:42–16:8, the earliest account of Jesus’ burial and empty tomb. Do you agree with Craig that it is “stark in its simplicity and unadorned by theological reflection”?

Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality.

Mark 16:7 says, ‘But go, tell his disciples and Peter, “He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”’

Michael Martin observed, ‘A person full of religious zeal may see what he or she wants to see, not what is really there.’”10

‘Christians believe because they want to, but atheists don’t believe because they don’t want to!’

prominent theologian and historian Carl Braaten: “Even the more skeptical historians agree that for primitive Christianity . . . the resurrection of Jesus from the dead was a real event in history, the very foundation of faith, and not a mythical idea arising out of the creative imagination of believers.”11

the main reason why Christians became sure of the resurrection in the earliest days was just this. They could say with assurance, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ They knew it was he.”12

what happened in 1995, when his wife, Debbie, slowly died of stomach cancer.

‘At a time like this, aren’t you glad about the resurrection?’

“I believe that with all my heart. If there’s a resurrection, there’s a heaven. If Jesus was raised, Debbie will be raised. And I will be someday too.

If Jesus overcame the grave, he’s still alive and available for me to personally encounter. If Jesus conquered death, he can open the door of eternal life for me too. If he has divine power, he has the supernatural ability to guide and transform me as I follow him. As my Creator who has my best interests at heart, he rightfully deserves my allegiance and worship. Unsure what to do, I turned to a Bible verse I had encountered earlier. John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

If Jesus really is the Son of God, then your eternity hinges on how you respond to him. As Jesus said in John 8:24, “If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”

He offers complete forgiveness, his leadership and guidance, and an open door to heaven to all who put their trust in him.

“Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, tenth in the descent from Ezra, was very specific: ‘A day and a night are an Onah [“a portion of time”] and the portion of an Onah is as the whole of it’” (J. Talmud, Shabbath 9.3 and b. Talmud, Pesahim 4a).

J. N. D. Anderson, The Evidence for the Resurrection