The True Meaning of Easter
David Jeremiah
Every year thousands of people travel to the Italian Alps to ascend a mountain which passes through the “stations of the cross.” Eventually they come to the foot of an outdoor crucifix, and there they meditate on their faith. One day a tourist noticed a trail leading away from the cross. Determined to find out where it would lead, he fought through all the thicket that surrounded the path; and to his surprise, he came to the next shrine—a shrine that symbolized the empty tomb. But the brush had grown up around it; it had been neglected. Almost every visitor that passed through had gone as far as the cross—but there they stopped.
The same is true for many in our world today. Even people who go to good churches where the Bible is taught and where they believe in Jesus have come to believe that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the key element in the story of the Gospel. Not to diminish the cross, because the cross is critically important, but if Jesus Christ simply died and was buried and did not come back from the grave, then He could not be the Savior of the world any more than you or I can. But if Jesus came back from the grave, He has made a statement worth listening to.
I was invited to attend a dinner that was being hosted in our area for people who wanted to know more about the Gospel and about Jesus Christ. The speaker at that dinner happened to be one of my professors, a man by the name of Haddon Robinson. I went to the dinner expecting him to talk about the crucifixion and the death of Christ; but to my surprise, he made a presentation of the Gospel looking at the cross through the open tomb. He spent the entire evening giving evidence for the Risen Christ. And for the first time it dawned on me: If a person doesn’t understand the Resurrection, or doesn’t believe in the Resurrection, it’s very difficult to come to grips with the power of the Gospel.
So the issue at hand is this: How do we know the Resurrection is a credible event that actually happened? And can it be supported by evidence?
As we journey through the account of the Resurrection as found in the Gospels, we’ll identify seven crucial signs demonstrating that Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead.
Easter bursts in with the message that Jesus conquered death, and by faith in Him, we can be “more than conquerors” through Him who loved us. But can historians prove that Jesus of Nazareth literally, bodily rose from the dead 2000 years ago?
The Scottish Enlightenment skeptic David Hume opined that Jesus could not have risen from the dead because dead men don’t rise from the dead. Well, generally, they don’t. That’s why the Easter story is so significant.
The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead was so momentous it ended up changing the world. The very year you were born is indirectly tied to that event. Time is measured by the birth of Jesus because His coming was so significant.
The resurrection is so significant because if it is true, it means all the other claims of Christ are true – that He was the Son of God, that He died for sinners, that He will one day judge us all. Every beat of the human heart is dependent on Jesus. Even the most hard core skeptic draws every breath he draws courtesy of Christ. We all have a vested interest to know what happened on that first Easter morning.
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