The Evidence of the Empty Tomb

Before you read this chapter, let me give you a friendly warning.

If you are an unbeliever and want to remain one, don't read this chapter. Or, if you do read it, forget it as quickly as possible. Don't think about it. Whatever you do, don't follow it up by studying in detail the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

I say this because experience shows that it is a very perilous thing for unbelievers to do. Take two actual case histories, one ancient, one modern.

Two upper-class Englishmen of the eighteenth century were Lord Lyttleton and his friend Gilbert West. They were both trained lawyers. They knew how to weigh evidence and how to argue a case.

As young men they were both unbelievers. It is said that in their early days they had hopes of publishing propaganda against the truth of Christianity. At any rate, it is known that they both set their agnostic minds to work studying the evidence for and against Christs resurrection.

The same thing happened to them both. Despite their early antagonism to the Bible, despite their deepest prejudices, the sheer weight of evidence made them change their minds. West and Lyttleton published the results of their separate studies in a joint book.¹ They argued that Christ really did rise from the dead, and that Paul was converted in consequence.

If I mention this to Norman, he brushes it on one side with the remark, "Oh yes, but that was all a long time ago." This is a curious objection. Shakespeare was a long time ago, but his plays are still worth more than all the paperbacks on the station bookstall. The facts that Lyttleton and West faced are just as formidable in the twentieth century as in the eighteenth, as the following story shows.

In 1930 Frank Morrison published a very unusual book.² In his preface he stated:

"It [his book] is essentially a confession, the inner story of a man who set Out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to write another."

He explained what he meant in the first chapter, which was entitled, "The Book that Refused to be Written". When he set out to write a book he did not believe that Jesus performed miracles, nor that He rose from the dead. His book was intended to be called, "Jesus, the Last Phase". It was to be a study of the last week of Christs life. He intended to sift out the "fiction" from the gospel records, and report what was left.

So Morrison sat down to do his homework. He made a very thorough and scholarly study of all the available evidence. At the end of it all he wrote a very different book, which with irresistible logic leads up to a final paragraph:

"There may be, and, as the writer thinks, there certainly is, a deep and profoundly historical basis for that much disputed sentence in the Apostles Creed -The third day He rose again from the dead."

In other words, Morrison declared, "Having studied the evidence, I now believe what I formerly denied: Jesus really did rise from the dead."

How Do We Know?

Well, what is the nature of this evidence that convinces so many people? How can anyone possibly know whether Jesus rose from the dead or not?

There are several ways of tackling this question. One way is to begin with the broader question of what constitutes historical evidence.

How do we know any of the facts of history? For example, how do we know that the American War of Independence began in 1775 with the Battle of Bunker Hill, and that although the English won the battle the losses they suffered were disastrous?

Nobody doubts these facts, although all the people who saw the battle have been dead for more than a hundred years. We rely upon the written accounts left behind by a few of those eyewitnesses.

It is like that with the resurrection of Jesus. Four gospel writers give us a written account of it. Two of them were eyewitnesses, the others were intimate friends of eyewitnesses. Two more eyewitnesses, Peter and Paul, add their testimony in their New Testament epistles.

Don't make the mistake of looking upon the New Testament as "just a lot of books". It was the product of a group of real, live men. We saw in the previous chapter that it is difficult to read the gospels without concluding that Jesus was a real person, with real disciples, who wrote the truth about Him.

We shall see in Chapter 16 that most of the New Testament was almost undoubtedly written while people who remembered Jesus were still alive. Its authors were certainly not men of the second century writing down legends. They were men of the first century writing about their own experiences.

We must therefore treat the New Testament as the written testimony of a number of witnesses. The only question is: were those witnesses telling the truth or not?

Before attempting to answer that question, we must consider a parallel question from modern history. How do we know that Sir Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa, Tensing, conquered Mount Everest in 1953?

There were no independent witnesses of their achievement, and Hillary and Tensing might be regarded as two very biased men. Yet nobody doubts the truth of their claim to have reached the summit.

Is it possible that Hillary and Tensing were bluffing? Could they have been beaten by the last stretch of ice and rock, and then decided to cover up their disappointment with a false tale of victory and a faked photograph?

Surely not. Mountain climbers have a very strong code of honour, and it goes against all past experience to suppose that two dedicated mountaineers would behave like that.

Well, then, is it possible that they were genuinely mistaken? Could the awesome majesty of their surroundings, or the bottled oxygen they were breathing, have given them hallucinations and made them think that some lesser needle of rock was the summit?

This possibility, too, must be dismissed. These two hardened men of action were not the type to make a hysterical blunder like that.

So the world takes their word for it, and firmly believes that they really did reach the top.

Reliable Witnesses

There are equally good grounds for accepting the apostles word and believing that Jesus really did rise from the dead.

Were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul all deliberately lying?

Of course not. Men only lie when they stand to gain something from it. What did the apostles gain from their testimony to the resurrection? Imprisonment, torture and death! Men do not lie for rewards such as these. And besides, the lofty moral tone of their New Testament writings shows that they were men of high principles.

What, then, of the possibility that they were genuinely mistaken? Could they have been the victims of a great delusion?

This suggestion goes right against the facts. On their own admission the apostles all had a marked prejudice against the idea of Christs resurrection. It took time to overcome this prejudice and convince them that Jesus really had risen.

Wishful thinking might have led Mary Magdalene to mistake the gardener for Jesus, if she had been expecting Him to rise from the dead. But the record says that the opposite happened-she mistook the resurrected Jesus for the gardener.³

Wishful thinking might have led the two disciples travelling to Emmaus to mistake a stranger for Jesus, if they had wanted to believe in His resurrection. Instead of that, they mistook the resurrected Jesus for a stranger.⁴

When He appeared to His sorrowing apostles, even they thought He was a phantom-until they were invited to touch Him, putting their hands into the wound in His side, and their fingers into the holes where the nails had fastened Him to the cross.⁵

They thought they were imagining His presence-until He joined them in a meal, and they saw food disappearing into His mouth.⁶ He spent many, many hours with them, enlarging their understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures.⁷ And finally they all watched Him ascend into heaven.⁸

No, all the evidence suggests that we must treat these contemporaries of Jesus with the same respect as Hillary and Tensing. We have no reason to suspect them of lying. There are no grounds for thinking of them as poor, deluded simpletons.

There is only one view of them that fits the facts. They were honest, intelligent men, reporting a very wonderful event.

Cause and Effect

In Chapter 2 we noted a fundamental law of science, that nothing ever happens without a cause. In Chapter 6 we saw how Christianity came into existence in a most unfavourable environment.

Now these are two facts that simply cannot be denied. Even if you are not yet convinced that Jesus rose from the dead, you cannot reasonably disagree with the statements in the previous paragraph.

Put those two statements together, and immediately a question arises. What was the cause that gave birth to Christianity? Whatever that cause was it must have been something tremendous, judging by the results it achieved.

Remember, as Chapter 6 showed, what an unpopular religion Christianity was, among both Jews and Gentiles. Nevertheless quite a few Jews and Gentiles did accept it. And those few accepted it with such tremendous vigour that they changed the face of the world.

The unbelieving Jews accused the early Christian Jews of having "turned the world upside down".⁹ And from a Jewish point of view, they had. The Jewish religion was the oldest, strictest, narrowest, most self-confident religion on earth. It was a religion first given to their fathers by God Himself, and how they prided themselves on that fact!

True, they were not a united body. They had their various sects and schools of thought. But on certain things they were all agreed. These were such vital parts of the Jewish religion, and had been unchanged for so many centuries, that they clung fanatically to them. Their basic dogmas included:

1. The belief that there was only one God. In a world where every other nation worshipped many gods, this was the great distinguishing mark of the Jewish faith.
2. A superior attitude to the Gentiles. The God that the Jews believed in had no interest in the Gentiles, unless they were prepared to adopt the Jewish religion and way of life completely.
3. A fanatical insistence on keeping the Sabbath Day (Saturday) as a day of complete rest from work and a day of worship.
4. A determination not to eat those foods (such as pork) that were forbidden by the Law of Moses.
5. A deep hatred of human sacrifice.

From among this ultra-conservative people sprang the leaders of a new faith. They were not irreligious men. They were men of the very highest moral principles. Yet their teaching cut right across the cherished dogmas of the Jews.

The Christians claimed that they still believed in only one God. But most Jews regarded that claim as absurd. How could these Christians say they had only one God, when their Lord Jesus was supposed to be sitting in heaven at Gods right hand? To the orthodox Jew, such a doctrine was blasphemous nonsense; it reminded them of the deified heroes that the pagans believed in.

Then there was that question of sacrifice. To the devout Jew, sacrifice could mean only one thing. A priest would slay an animal in the temple at Jerusalem, and offer it to God in the way that Moses had prescribed. These Christians had the audacity to say that Jesus Christ, who was executed as a criminal, was really a human sacrifice for sins. "Disgusting!" said the Jews.

To the orthodox Jews the practices of the early Christians were as evil as their beliefs. They admitted Gentiles to full membership of their Church, without first making Jews of them. They dropped the Sabbath, and worshipped God on Sunday instead. They allowed people to eat whatever food they fancied.

But despite all these objections a fair sprinkling of Jews, including quite a number of priests,¹⁰ did join the early Church. What happened to cause this? What shook these people out of their deep-seated prejudices, based on a thousand years of national pride and tradition?

To produce such a staggering result, something extraordinary must have happened. What could it have been? The New Testament provides an answer. It says that Peter stood up in Jerusalem and proved that Jesus had risen from the dead; in consequence 3,000 Jerusalemites were baptised.¹¹

The New Testaments explanation fits the facts beautifully. A tremendous Act of God like the resurrection of Jesus, if clearly established, could well have overcome the prejudices of so many devout Jews. It is hard to imagine what else could have produced such a dramatic result.

One Jew to be converted was called Paul. Nowadays no one seriously doubts that he was a real historical character, who wrote at least some of the New Testament books bearing his name. He was a brilliant man, with a phenomenal understanding of the Old Testament. (Just study his epistles if you have any doubt about that.)

Full of zeal for the orthodox Jewish position, he began life as a persecutor of the Christian Church. Yet he changed abruptly, to become the most effective of all Christian preachers, and ended his days as a martyr for Christ.

What changed him? Let him explain in his own words:

"If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain.... But now is Christ risen from the dead.... He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve; after that He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present . . . After that He was seen of James, then of all the apostles. And last of all, He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."¹²

On two occasions he explained at length how he met the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus.¹³ It was this that changed the course of his life, he said.

Either this was true, and Christ did rise from the dead. Or it was false, and we are left with a fact without an explanation. For how else can we account for Pauls conversion, or for the epistles that he wrote?

The Tomb was Empty

One thing is quite certain. The tomb in which the body of Jesus was buried was empty three days later. The dead body of Jesus was never seen again. If an unbeliever wants to dispute the resurrection story, he must take that fact as his starting point.

How can we be sure of this? Because it is obvious. The Jewish leaders who crucified Jesus would have loved to be able to say, "Look, this is the tomb, and here is the body-as dead as ever!" Had they done so, Christianity would never have been born.

But they were powerless. The tomb was empty, and so they could not disprove the resurrection story. They could only make the best of a bad job, and try to explain the emptiness of the tomb.

They put their wily heads together, and concocted the very best story they could. Matthew tells us:

" They gave large money unto the soldiers [that is, the soldiers who had been guarding the tomb] saying, Say ye, "His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we slept.".. And this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day."¹⁴

Matthews statement is confirmed by two later writers. Both Justin Martyr¹⁵ and Tertullian₁₆ were still meeting the same explanation from unbelieving Jews in the second half of the second century.

The unbelievers favourite approach today is not to offer any explanation of the facts. They prefer to dodge the main issue completely, by raising all sorts of side issues: "But how do we know that our gospels are what the apostles wrote? How do we know that changes werent made in later years? Don't the gospel writers contradict each other?"

All such questions are beside the point. They merely evade the main evidence for Christs resurrection, which is based upon the unassailable facts of history. And in any case, these questions are dealt with in Part Two of this book.

The "Theft Theory" was the very best that the men on the spot, the unbelieving Jews, could produce. It stands to reason that, after this lapse of time, no modern unbeliever is likely to produce a better theory. And yet such is human nature that various modern unbelievers have tried.

They have only managed to find three alternatives worth serious consideration. First, there is the "Wrong Tomb Theory". According to this, the disciples looking for the body in the grey light of dawn blundered into some other tomb. It happened to be an empty one. "He is risen!" they cried impetuously-and convinced the world that they were right.

Then there is the "Recovery Theory". This suggests that the bleeding body of Jesus was not quite dead when they took it down from the cross, buried it, and partially embalmed it. Then the severely wounded Jesus recovered consciousness. He managed to free Himself from the embalming cloths, break the seal on the great stone that closed the mouth of the tomb, roll its vast mass to one side, and creep past the guards unobserved.

But this tall story is not finished yet. It goes on to declare that the half-dead Jesus appeared to His disciples and managed to persuade them that He had been raised to splendid, glorious, all-powerful immortality. Then He managed to disappear for ever from the scene, so that none of them saw Him die.

Believe it or not, this improbable tale has been put forward by unbelievers time after time. Surely they must be in a bad way, if they can be satisfied with a theory like that.

Finally, there is the "Hallucination Theory". This says that disciples gathered together for a meeting, and in a religious frenzy they all imagined that the risen Lord appeared to them.

Two of these four theories can be dismissed without a second thought. The "Wrong Tomb" and "Hallucination" theories suffer from the fatal objection that the Jews would certainly have produced the dead body of Jesus, and blown Christianity to bits.

The "Recovery Theory" is so obviously far fetched that we are back at our starting point: the Jewish "Theft Theory" is the best of a bad lot. It is the only explanation worthy of further consideration.

Yet it still does not explain half the facts. It presupposes that the apostles were a bunch of brazen cheats. But they were obviously neither brazen nor cheats. They were thoroughly frightened men. On their own admission, when Jesus died they all forsook Him and fled¹⁷ and lost faith in His Messiahship.¹⁸

And they were good men. Cheats do not write sublime religious literature like the New Testament, nor suffer martyrdom cheerfully for the sake of their faith.

But worst of all, like all the unbelievers theories, it does not begin to answer the great question that unbelievers refuse to face:

What caused the sudden uprise of Christianity in an utterly hostile world? What caused a little band of devout, working-class Jews to overcome their deep-rooted religious prejudices; to challenge the religious leaders of their nation; to lay down their lives preaching an incredibly novel and unpopular faith?

It was the most extraordinary, unlikely occurrence in all history. What caused it?

Only one explanation fits the facts.

There is no need for me to tell you what that explanation is.