How History Proves The Resurrection

There were many would-be messiahs, both before and after Jesus. The Romans arrested them, killed them, and in doing so crushed their followers. All of these so-called messiahs stayed dead. Their followers disappeared.

For a while, that’s what everyone, including the disciples, thought would happen with Jesus. The disciples weren’t expecting the resurrection. After Jesus’ death, they scattered. They were crushed. They hid in an upper room in Jerusalem and waited for their doom.

After the resurrection, the disciples were transformed.

In Acts 2:22-24, we read how Peter, who denied Jesus because he was afraid of a servant girl, later proclaimed to thousands that Jesus had come back from the dead.

“Fellow Israelites, listen to this,” he said. “Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.”

No one said in response, “I don’t know what this fellow is talking about; I never saw any signs or miracles.”

No one said, “I’ve never heard of Jesus.”

Instead, history shows that three thousand people responded by becoming followers of Jesus Christ. They knew Peter spoke the truth. They knew the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection and why those things had taken place in their midst.

Theologian John R.W. Stott said, “Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection, because it is entirely uncontrived.”[1]

What happened in that room? What was it that changed a band of frightened, cowardly disciples into men of courage and conviction? What was it that changed Peter? What was it that enabled

Peter to risk his life by saying he had seen Jesus risen from the dead? What was it that changed Thomas’ doubt and skepticism into a confident faith?

There’s only one answer: Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead.

The Evidence of Fulfilled Prophecy

During my skeptical months of study, the evidence of fulfilled prophecy proved most troublesome. I realized I had no answer when faced with the scores of Old Testament predictions that had been fulfilled, all of them verifiably written hundreds of years before Christ’s time.

Here are some of the prophecies about Jesus’ death and resurrection that were fulfilled:

He would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. — Zechariah 9:9; John 12:13-14
He would enter the temple. — Malachi 3:1; Matthew 21:12-13
He would be betrayed by a friend. — Psalm 41:9; Matthew 26:50
He would be sold for thirty pieces of silver. — Zechariah 11:12; Matthew 26:15
The silver would be thrown into the temple. — Zechariah 11:13; Matthew 27:5
The silver would be used to buy the potter’s field. — Zechariah 11:13; Matthew 27:6-7
He would be arrested as a criminal. — Isaiah 53:12; Luke 22:37
He would be forsaken by his disciples. — Zechariah 13:7; Matthew 26:31,56
He would be accused by false witnesses. — Psalm 35:11; Matthew 26:60-61
He would remain silent before his accusers. — Isaiah 53:7; Matthew 26:62-63
He would be wounded and beaten. — Isaiah 53:5; John 19:1-3
He would be whipped and spat upon. — Isaiah 50:6; Mark 14:65
He would be mocked. — Psalm 22:7-8; Matthew 27:39-40
His hands and feet would be pierced. — Psalm 22:16; John 20:27
People would shake their heads at him. — Psalm 109:25; Matthew 27:39
His clothes would be divided and lots cast for them. — Psalm 22:18; Mark 15:24
He would be offered gall and vinegar to drink. — Psalm 69:21; John 19:29
Not one of his bones would be broken. — Psalm 34:20; John 19:33
His side would be pierced. — Zechariah 12:10; John 19:34
Darkness would fall in broad daylight. — Amos 8:9; Matthew 27:45
He would be buried in a rich man’s tomb. — Isaiah 53:9; Matthew 27:57-60
He would be resurrected from the dead. — Psalm 16:10; 30:3; 118:17; Hosea 6:2; Matthew 28:9

Peter Stoner, in his book Science Speaks applied the science of probability to just eight prophecies regarding Christ. Stoner asserted that the odds any man could have fulfilled all eight prophecies are 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. To illustrate this staggering possibility, Stoner suggested the following scenario:

“Take 10 to the 17th power of silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them according to their own wisdom.”[2]

Lunatic, Liar, or Lord

Almost 2,000 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, it’s become common to say that Jesus was a great man or a great moral teacher. But most of the people who make that claim have probably never carefully read the words Jesus spoke. Jesus claimed to speak for God. He said he could forgive sin. He called God his Father. He said he was the Son of Man, another name for the Messiah. He told the people of Israel, who thought God belonged to them, that actually, God loves all people.

His most outrageous claim was this: Jesus predicted that he would be arrested and killed—and then, on the third day, he would “be raised to life” (Luke 9:22). These aren’t merely the words of a great man or a great teacher. These are the words of someone who thinks he’s the Son of God.
C.S. Lewis put it this way:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must take your choice. Either this was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[3]

Years ago, after finally approaching the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection with an open mind, I discovered to my surprise that I agreed with Canon B.E. Westcott from Cambridge University, who wrote: “Indeed, taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it.”[4]

My prayer for you as a pastor or leader is that many former skeptics will become believers through God’s power in your Easter service this year.

This is an excerpt from Ray Johnston’s bookThis Changes Everything.

Ray Johnston is the founding pastor of Bayside Church in Granite Bay, California, (www.BaysideOnline.com) which has grown into several campuses. To help develop pastors and young leaders, and to help plant churches, Ps Ray founded Thriving Churches International which hosts always-sold-out conferences for pastors and church leaders (www.ThriveConference.org). The next is May 1-2, 2025.

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[1] John R. W. Stott, Basic Christianity 50th anniversary edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity), 70
[2] McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 193.
[3] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 56.
[4] B.F. Westcott, The Gospel of the Resurrection, 4th ed (London, 1879), 4-6; quoted in Paul E. Little, Know Why You Believe (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 58.