“You see, the disciples went from being afraid of associating with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane to being willing to die for proclaiming him the Risen Lord. If Jesus had just barely survived the crucifixion, he would have come to them broken and on the verge of dying. That is not the kind of appearance that would inspire a total transformation and a disregard for death. That boldness was the ethos of the early Christian movement, and without it, there would be no Christianity.”
