This talk was given for the University of Surrey Christian Union during their 2023 mission week. The transcript can be found below.
‘When you have eliminated all that is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ That is the famous way the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes described his method for investigating crimes. He reasoned that even if a certain explanation appears unlikely at the start, it is proved true once all other alternatives are ruled out. After you rule out all the wrong answers, then the last answer left standing must be true one. ‘When you have eliminated all that is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
We have all come this lunchtime to consider the question: ‘Can we really believe that Jesus rose from the dead?’ And my suggestion is that we find the answer to our question, by adopting the same method that Sherlock Holmes famously used to solve his crimes. For if we find, that after examining the evidence, the only solution left standing is that Jesus rose from the dead, then we know that we really must believe it. If all other explanations are ruled out, then however improbable the reality of the resurrection may initially seem, it is ultimately the only answer that makes sense. This lunchtime I want to ask you four questions, four questions that I believe can only be answered, can only be satisfied, with the reality that Jesus really did rise from the dead, just like the Bible claims.
1. Why was the tomb empty?
As is often pointed out, one of the reasons that Christianity is such a unique religion, is that unlike many others, you cannot visit the grave of its founder. Followers of Islam can travel to a Mosque in Medina, to view the tomb in which the body of Muhammad is said to still rest. Followers of Buddhism can go the places where Buddha’s ashes were sent in India and Nepal. And yet, Christians, followers of Jesus, have no such grave to go to. For we understand that 3 days after Jesus died, he rose again. The tomb in Jerusalem is empty. Jesus’ body is not there.
How do we know Jesus’ body did not stay in the tomb? How can we prove his grave is empty? Well, one of the clearest pieces of evidence is that the empty tomb has been an accepted fact, not just by supporters, but also by opponents of Christianity from the very start. When Jewish and Roman opponents of Christianity first tried to undermine this new faith, they did not claim there was still a body in Jerusalem. They accepted it was no longer there. The people who lived at that time, even those who rejected the resurrection, all accepted the tomb was empty.
If we think about it, this makes perfect sense. Christianity would not have first come about if there was still a body in the tomb. When the disciples stood up to preach about the resurrection to crowds in Jerusalem, only 6 weeks after Jesus died, their claims would have been easily disproved if someone in the crowd had been able to put their hand up and say, ‘Well actually I walked through that graveyard yesterday, and there seemed to be a body in the tomb!’ It would be like me coming here to tell you today that the giant stag statute at the entrance this this campus has disappeared. Even if you believed me for a moment, someone would eventually go and check and see it was still there. The people to whom the disciples preached were able to go to the grave, see the tomb, and yet none seemed to report there was still a body there. Indeed, if they had done, Christianity would never have got off the ground!
No, the tomb was truly empty. And though this is an obvious place to start, it is also crucial, for it creates a mystery that we must solve, a mystery that is far more gripping than any Sherlock Holmes story. For the fact of the empty tomb asks us a question that we cannot ignore. Why was the tomb empty? What happened to Jesus’ body? There can be no doubt that it was gone from the grave. And so, each of us must work out how we will explain this fact.
2. How was it previously predicted?
One of the most amazing things about the Bible, the authoritative book of Christianity, is the great unity it displays despite its immense diversity. If you aren’t familiar with the Bible, it is a collection of 66 books written across at least 1,500 years by 40 different authors and yet it teaches the same truths again and again. One of the great truths it teaches from beginning to end, is that that of the resurrection of Jesus. Even hundreds of years before Jesus was born, authors of the Bible were predicting that Jesus would not only die, but also rise again.
For example, in Psalm 16:10, 1000 years before Jesus was born, the Israelite King David declared that God will not abandon his Holy One to the realm of death, or let his body decay in the grave. Just let that sink in. 1000 years before it happened. That is like William the Conqueror making a prediction after the battle of Hastings in 1066, that comes true today! And you can find similar predictions made by other authors like Job, or Daniel, or Isaiah. The Old Testament often predicts that when God’s Messiah came, he would rise from the dead. These predictions weren’t added in by Christians afterwards. No, they can be found in manuscripts and fragments of scrolls that have been dated hundreds of years before Jesus was born, and are available for you to look at in museums across the world today.
It is an indisputable fact, that the resurrection was predicted long before it happened. And to make it even more remarkable, it was not only predicted by ancient Jews centuries before Jesus, but it was predicted by Jesus himself. Again and again, when you read the Gospels, the historical accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings in the Bible, you will find that Jesus regularly told his disciples that he would not only die, but that he would rise again. He even predicted the timetable, stating that it would be on the third day.
If the empty tomb is a mystery that must be solved, these predictions surely deepen the mystery, for far from being some kind of freak accident, or quirk of history, they demonstrate that the resurrection was part of a plan that had been going for hundreds, indeed thousands of years.
3. Why did the disciples die?
Of course, many possible solutions for the empty tomb have been put forward over the last 2000 years. However, perhaps the most popular has been the explanation that the Jewish leaders started to spread only a few days after Jesus’ death. When news of the empty tomb first came to Jesus’ opponents, they immediately began to spread the story that the disciples stole the body. That Jesus’ followers removed his body from the tomb to make it look like the predictions Jesus made about rising from the dead had come true. For some, the resurrection of Jesus is simply one big hoax, brought about by Jesus’ followers in order to fool millions of people to believe in him.
However, there are several problems with this explanation. The biggest probably being the fate that each of Jesus’ disciples went on to face. Of those 12 men, history suggests that 11 of them were executed in various brutal ways for preaching the message of Jesus’ resurrection. And the 12th disciple, John, didn’t get off any lighter, for he was tortured by being plunged into boiling oil, and when he miraculously did not die, was sent to live in exile on a remote island. Jesus’ disciples suffered in unimaginable ways for believing in and teaching about the resurrection. And yet, there is no record or evidence of any one of them recanting or retracting their story. Each of them held resolutely to the reality of the resurrection no matter how much they had to suffer for it.
And this fact surely eliminates the possibility of the disciples being the great masterminds behind a resurrection hoax. As it has often been said, we rarely die for something we know to be a lie. Their deaths demonstrate that they were not trying to deceive others. For your life is too precious a possession to throw away for what you know is a lie. These 12 men, along with hundreds of other men and woman at the time, claimed to not only see the empty tomb, but to speak with, walk with, spend whole days with the risen Jesus Christ. And we know they were not lying, for they held to it even when it meant dying.
4. What has changed people’s lives?
Before I started to work for a church, I spent several years practicing law as a solicitor, considering the evidence behind different allegations and preparing cases for court. And from that, I can tell you that while evidence like DNA, or digital data, or paper records, or CCTV, carries the greatest weight in a trial, there is still amazing power in personal testimony. There is something compelling about a witness on the stand telling you what they saw, heard or experienced. And this is also true when we come to the reality of the resurrection. For no matter whether you believe that Jesus rose from the dead or not, you must admit that that belief has changed many people’s lives.
You can think of the disciples again. On the night Jesus was arrested, they fled before the authorities, spent the next few days hiding away trying to keep a low profile. And yet, after seeing the risen Jesus, hearing that he had defeated death, they were transformed. The same men who cowered in fear before the resurrection, afterwards were found preaching the truth of the resurrection before thousands.
Or you can think of the Apostle Paul. He at one time was energetically persecuting Christians for claiming that Jesus was the Messiah. And yet, he became the most famous Christian of all time and wrote most of the New Testament […]. What produced this sudden transformation? Well, if you put Paul on the witness stand by reading his personal testimony in the Bible, he claims it was because he was confronted by the risen Jesus. Paul claimed the resurrection changed his life. And that has been true for millions of others throughout history. Not only in the past, but also the present.
If you have come along today because a Christian friend invited you, why don’t you ask that friend how Christianity, these truths about Jesus’ death and resurrection, has changed their life. How has it provided them with peace and forgiveness, purpose and joy, hope and confidence? It is indisputable that Christianity has changed people’s lives, indeed changed the lives of many even in this room. And that should make you pause to consider it more closely. For there is surely something behind this transformation, some kernel of truth underneath this change.
And the Bible declares that this truth is none other than the resurrection. For Christianity stands or falls on the reality of the resurrection. A dead Saviour saves no one. The Apostle Paul admits this when he writes in 1 Corinthians 15, that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, Christianity is useless, worthless, futile and pointless. And yet, remarkably, millions of people have found Christianity to be very the opposite. They have found Christianity to change their lives, to be a source of hope and peace, comfort and joy. Surely that means there is something here that is at least worth investigating. Surely this is part of the evidence proving the resurrection really did happen, for it still changes lives today.
This lunchtime I was asked to consider the question, ‘Can we really believe Jesus rose from the dead?’ However, I trust that you are now starting to see that that is really the wrong question. For having considered the evidence, a far better question is, ‘How can we really believe that Jesus did notrise from the dead?’
As Sherlock Holmes puts it: ‘When you have eliminated all that is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ And as we have started to see, when you consider the facts, no other explanation seems to fit the evidence. Why was the tomb empty? How was it previously predicted? Why did the disciples die? What has changed so many people’s lives? Each of these questions can only be satisfactorily answered by the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. Indeed, even if we had even longer to consider other possible explanations that have been proposed over the years, we would see that for the last 2000 years no one has found a better explanation of the facts that the one that Christians have believed and proclaimed from the very beginning: that Jesus really did rise from the dead.
And yet, as I close, I want to highlight that the resurrection is not simply an interesting problem, an intellectual puzzle, like some kind of difficult crossword or another Sherlock Holmes novel. No, for Christianity teaches that the believing in the resurrection it is quite literally the difference between life and death. Indeed, that is what Jesus himself said. For in John 11:25, commenting on his power to overcome death and the grave, Jesus declared: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die..."
It is clear that one day each of us will die. Like Jesus we too will be placed in a grave. Christianity teaches that this is a result of sin, the effect of all the ways we’ve failed God, the consequence of crimes against our Creator. And yet as we’ll be considering at our event tonight, death is not the end, for the just right punishment we deserve for our crimes is an eternal sentence. Death is a doorway to an eternity of suffering and punishment because of our sin. That is the bad news of Christianity. And yet, the good news of Christianity, the Gospel, is that just as Jesus rose from death to life, we too can experience the same, we too can rise from death and enjoy life forever. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ suffered the punishment for sin on the cross for all who turn from their sin and trust in him, so that all who believe in him, all who follow him, can live with him forever. For Christians, death is not the doorway to eternal suffering, but rather is the gateway to eternal life, a forever of joy and peace, to a never-ending relationship with our good God and heavenly Father who loved us and sent his Son to save us.
Friends, believing in the resurrection is not merely an intellectual rubex cube, a puzzle to be solved, no it is the difference between eternal death and eternal life. As Jesus declared: ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die..."And so, I urge you to believe in the resurrection, to believe in Jesus, so that you too may experience that life as well.
ALEXANDER ARRELL