Jesus Christ Is Alive

In a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square lie the embalmed remains of Lenin.

A crystal casket in that tomb has been viewed by millions of people. On the casket it says: “For he was the greatest leader of all people of all time. He was the lord of the new humanity; he was the savior of the world.”

The tribute to Lenin is stated in past tense. What a startling contrast to the triumphant words of Christ. “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies” (John 11:25).

The basis for our belief in Jesus Christ is in His resurrection. Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian, said that without belief in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ there is no salvation.

If Christ were entombed someplace in a grave near Jerusalem where the millions who visit Israel each year could walk by a grave and worship Him, then Christianity would be a fable. The apostle Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. . . . If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:14, 17, RSV).

We usually hear a sermon about the resurrection every Easter, and that’s about all. But when the early apostles preached, the cross and resurrection were their constant themes. Without the resurrection, the cross is meaningless.

Shall Man Live Again?

Some say we are nothing but bone, flesh, and blood. After we have died, nothing happens—we don’t go anywhere. Or if we do go somewhere it is to a nebulous location, devised by the imagination to represent almost anything.

Does science help? I have questioned scientists concerning life after death and most of them say, “We just don’t know.” Science deals in formulas and test tubes; the spiritual world is beyond its reach.

Many who do not believe in life after death fill their writings with tragedy and pessimism. Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, Dalton Trumbo, and many others write with almost unrelieved pessimism. How different are the words of Jesus Christ, who said, “Because I live, you will live also” (John 14:19). We must base our hope of immortality on Christ alone—not on any longings, arguments, or instinctive feelings of immortality.

The Bible speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as something which could be examined by the physical sense. The disciples saw Him under many different conditions after He had been raised. A single disciple saw Him on one occasion, five hundred on another. Some saw Jesus separately, some together; some for a moment, some for a long time.

The disciples heard Him in conversation. They were told to touch Him to verify His physical reality. They touched Him, walked with Him, conversed with Him, ate with Him, and examined Him. This took the resurrection appearances of Jesus out of the realm of hallucination and put them into the realm of demonstrable physical fact.

Historical fact provides the basis for our belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ. We have more evidence for it than for any other event of that time, secular or religious.

What About the Other Religions?

Most of the world religions are based upon philosophical thought, except for Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. These four are based upon personalities. Only Christianity claims resurrection for its founder.

Abraham, the father of Judaism, died about nineteen centuries before Christ. There are no evidences for his resurrection.

Buddha lived about five centuries before Christ, and taught principles of brotherly love. It is believed that he died at the age of eighty. There are no evidences for his resurrection.

Muhammad died A.D. 632, and his tomb at Medina is visited by thousands of devout Mohammedans. His birthplace at Mecca sees many pilgrims each year. However, there are no evidences for his resurrection.

Evidences of Christ’s Resurrection

There is something called “the swoon theory” which says that Jesus didn’t actually die, but only fainted. Since there could be no resurrection without a death, this thought denies His resurrection. Yet the evidence for His death is strong.

The soldiers were positive Jesus was dead, so they didn’t need to induce death by shock through breaking His legs, which they did to the two thieves beside Him. It was not the friends of Jesus, but His enemies who vouched for His death. Also, they made certain when they thrust a spear into His heart.

One of the wealthiest men in the world, Howard Hughes, died recently. The events and circumstances surrounding his death are still shrouded in mystery, and yet he had an entourage of men who followed and guarded him for years.

In a city in the Middle East, however, there is more historical evidence for the death of one man, alone on a cross between two thieves, than any other in history. The great Bible student Wilbur Smith said, “Let it simply be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before, and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world.”¹

Jesus was buried. We know more about the burial of Jesus than we know of the burial of any character in ancient history. His body was taken from the cross and wrapped in fine linen with spices. Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man and a secret disciple of Jesus, mustered up his courage and asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. When his request was granted, we are told, he took Him down from the cross and wrapped Him in a linen sheet (Matt. 27:59). We are told that Nicodemus (the same religious leader who had asked Jesus how to be born again) came and brought a very expensive mixture of myrrh and aloes to wrap in with the linens, as was the custom of Jewish burial.

The body of Jesus was placed in Joseph’s own tomb, which was located in the garden. This burial procedure shows that it was the body of Jesus which was buried, not His spirit. Spirits are immaterial and cannot be buried.

After Jesus was buried, a huge stone was placed against the face of the tomb and a seal placed upon that. Anyone trying to move the stone from the entrance to the tomb would have had to break the Roman seal and face the consequences of the harsh Roman law.

To make sure that His disciples didn’t steal His body, a Roman guard was then placed in front of the sealed stone. The enemies of Jesus didn’t want to take any chances that the prophecy about His resurrection would take place.

What about the Roman guards? These men weren’t cowards. Their discipline was so severe that the punishment for quitting their post, or even falling asleep on the job, was death.

Historians say there were probably four guards on watch at the tomb, all of them outfitted with strong weapons and shields. No chances were taken that this Jesus would be removed from the tomb.

The empty tomb. It was the third day, the day Jesus said He would arise. Around the tomb the earth began to shake, and along with it the armor of the Roman soldiers must have clattered wildly. And then an angel of the Lord came from heaven and easily rolled away the stone and sat on it. He didn’t even have to say, “Hi, fellas!” The guards just looked at him and became like dead men. The angel spoke to Mary Magdalene and Mary, too, but the Bible says that they took action and ran to tell the disciples that He had risen.

When Peter and John came running to the tomb, John peeped in and saw the linen clothes Christ had been wrapped in lying there empty. Peter, who, true to his character, blundered right in, saw that Jesus’ body was missing. He was gone.

The bodily resurrection was a fact attested to by hundreds of eyewitnesses. We have records of thirteen different appearances of Jesus under widely different circumstances. His body was both similar and dissimilar to the one nailed to the cross. It was so similar to an ordinary human body that Mary mistook Him for the caretaker of the garden by the tomb when He appeared to her. He could eat, speak to people, and occupy space.

However, His body was not like a normal body. He could pass through closed doors or vanish in a moment. Christ’s body was physical, and also spiritual. Why should this be surprising? Paul said to King Agrippa, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8, KJV).

Over and over again the Bible affirms the fact of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Luke says it very directly in the book of Acts.

He reports that Jesus “presented Himself alive after His suffering, by many convincing proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days” (Acts 1:3).

In speaking about those “convincing proofs,” C. S. Lewis says, “The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. If they had died without making anyone else believe this ‘gospel’ no gospels would ever have been written.”²

The Resurrection Essential

There is a series of events that form links in a chain from eternity to eternity. These include the incarnation of Jesus, His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and return. Any missing link and the chain is destroyed.

All of Christianity as a system of truth collapses if the resurrection is rejected. As Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).

In addition to breaking the chain of redemptive events, if the resurrection were not essential, then the good news of salvation would be flat, lifeless, and negative. Resurrection is central to the gospel. Paul said: “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).

In my book World Aflame, I told the story about Auguste Comte, the French philosopher, and Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist. Comte said he was going to start a new religion that would supplant the religion of Christ. It was to have no mysteries and was to be as plain as the multiplication table; its name was to be positivism. “Very good, Mr. Comte,” Carlyle replied, “very good. All you will need to do will be to speak as never a man spake, and live as never a man lived, and be crucified, and rise again the third day, and get the world to believe that you are still alive. Then your religion will have a chance to get on.”

Today many “new religions” are springing up, like toadstools after a summer rain. I wonder how many could meet the criteria that Carlyle told his friend?

We have been emphasizing throughout this book the experience of being born again. A personal salvation experience is directly related to belief in the resurrection. Paul gave the formula for saving faith and showed that it centered in this belief: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation” (Rom. 10:9-10).

It couldn’t be clearer in the Scriptures. Yet there are churches where ministers say they believe in the resurrection, but that this means Jesus immediately rose from death into spiritual life with God. They say they believe in a “spiritual” but not a “physical” resurrection. This is what some modern preachers proclaim on Easter morning—though I am thankful they are diminishing in number.

No wonder there are many who sit in some churches week after week, year after year, without hearing the whole gospel and knowing what it is to be born again. They hear a gospel which is incomplete, and consequently not good news at all. The resurrection was not disembodied; it was physical. Eyewitnesses said, “We saw His glory;” “You will see Him;” “He appeared;” “I have seen Jesus the Lord.”

Within the short span of three days both events, the death and resurrection, took place bodily and not symbolically—tangibly, not spiritually—watched by men of flesh and blood, not fabricated by hallucination.

The resurrection was also the pledge and the promise of our own resurrection.

To understand this we need to see that, in the Bible, death affects both personality and body. (Remember the three dimensions of death?) The body, too, has to be retrieved from condemnation. Only by resurrecting the body could God make a complete conquest of death. He started with the body of Jesus, but He will also work in a similar manner with the bodies of all who believe. As the judgment of death was total, so salvation from its penalty is total, involving the physical, spiritual, and eternal.

Obviously our resurrection bodies will be recognizable, but they can’t possibly be the exact bodies we have here. However, they must be like Christ’s resurrected body. He had the nail prints and the wound in His side, and yet He could pass through closed doors. When it was time for Him to go to heaven, He was able to ascend.

What a promise this is! “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus” (1 Thess. 4:14).

Jesus staked everything upon His rising from the dead. By His resurrection He would be judged true or false.

What Does the Resurrection Mean to Us Today?

Christ lives with every person who puts his trust in Him. The resurrection means the presence of the living Christ. He said, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20, KJV). This is Christ’s own guarantee: Life has a new meaning. After the crucifixion, the disciples were in despair. They said, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21, RSV). They were full of anguish because they thought of Christ’s death as such a tragedy. Life had lost its meaning for them. But when He rose from the grave, they saw the living Christ, and life took on purpose once more.

We can also claim the prayers of the living Christ. The Bible says, “Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us” (Rom. 8:34). We don’t have to think that our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. The living Christ is sitting at the right hand of God the Father. God the Son retains the same humanity He took to save us, and is now living in a body that still has nail prints in its hands. He is our great High Priest, interceding for us with God the Father.

The resurrection presence of Christ gives us power to live our lives day by day and to serve Him. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father” (John 14:12).

The resurrected body of Jesus is the design for our bodies when we are raised from the dead also. No matter what afflictions, pain, or distortions we have in our earthly bodies, we will be given new bodies. What a glorious promise of things to come! “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).

Thousands of people today are excited about Bible prophecy. The revelation of what the Bible says about events past, present, and future has become more prominent in the themes of books, sermons, and conferences. The Second Coming of Christ is becoming a closer and closer reality for those of us who study the Bible and the world scene.

The entire plan for the future has its key in the resurrection. Unless Christ was raised from the dead, there can be no kingdom and no returning King. When the disciples stood at the place Jesus left this earth, which is called the place of ascension, they were given assurance by angels that the Christ of resurrection would be the Christ of returning glory. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11).

The resurrection is an event which prepares us and confirms for us that future event when He will return again.

Yes, Jesus Christ is alive.

Obviously Christ’s physical resurrection is an essential part of God’s plan to save us. Have you given yourself to this living Christ?

A woman wrote us this: “Last evening I was alone and watching television. I had no TV Guide. Something urged me to turn the dial to the station where the gospel was being preached. I had been really wrestling with a great problem. I was and am facing death, and may or may not be helped through surgery. I had been putting off the operation because I was afraid I had been cut off from God.

“I began to really seek the Lord. The message I heard was God’s way of speaking to me and answering my prayers. Now I feel entirely at peace in my soul.”

If you trust the resurrected Christ as your Lord and Savior, He will be with you when you die, and will give you life with Him forever. Because of the resurrection, you can be “born again.”