Wednesday, April 12, 2017

God raised Jesus from the dead


{KJV}John 11:25 “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Jesus’ resurrection is often used as an argument for the existence of God. And there is good reason. Jesus called himself the ‘Son of God.’ So if Jesus is the ‘Son of God’ then we could believe that there must be a ‘God’.  But some skeptics object that Jesus’ resurrection does not prove God’s existence at all. The atheist might say that, even if Jesus rose from the dead, this doesn’t prove that God exists. After all, a very powerful being  may have raised Jesus from the dead and it’s possible that something which we can’t explain scientifically took place and brought Jesus back to life......

So we could all ask the question........Are there any strong reasons to believe that someone other than God raised Jesus’ bloodless, suffocated, ripped to within an inch of death by 39 lashes body back from the dead?
First note that there is no one on the streets of history that has made the claim to have done it, and there is no evidence that someone else did do it.

Yet we do have Jesus’ very own claim that his resurrection would be evidence that he had divine authority (Mt 12:38, 16:4; Jn 2:18-21). 
On top of that we have the claim of alleged eyewitnesses who were taught by the risen Jesus and claimed that God raised him (Acts 2:24, 3:15; 1 Cor. 6:14 & 15:15).

These people, and especially Jesus, were certainly in the best possible position to identify the cause of his resurrection.  Unless the skeptic can produce stronger evidence in support of another way in which Jesus came back to life, the most sound thought or line of reasoning would be that God.......Jesus’ Father, breathed new life into His lifeless body......

On account of Jesus’ own teachings, his listeners concluded that his resurrection was an act that only God was capable of performing....

Jesus performed miracles and predicted future events, at times he read peoples’ thoughts....He lived an exemplary life. On top of that, we can read into his words that this sign; i.e. his resurrection, would be proof that He was sent by God from heaven and that God endorsed His entire life and message. Since dead men have no such capacity to act, it would certainly be reasonable to conclude that God, just like Jesus said, raised His lifeless body from the dead. And if Jesus rose, and all history proves he did in fact rise, then there is a God....and it can therefore be said of the atheists, Psalms 14:1 “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”

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