 The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of Christianity. The Apostle Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:17, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” Many attempts have been made to reject the resurrection of Jesus and the empty tomb. One attempt to discredit the resurrection is presented in Matthew 28:11-15, where we read of the payoff of the Roman guards by the Jewish authorities to say that Jesus’ disciples came to the tomb at night and stole his body. Many theories have been proposed over the years attempting to embroil Jesus’ disciples in some sort of coverup that they supposedly promoted and lied about, but one by one those proposals fall apart.
Charles Colson, the former counsel of President Nixon and convicted conspirator in the Watergate scandal, writes that the attempt to cover up Watergate convinced him that Jesus was raised from the dead. He said, “There were only 8 or 10 of us in the inner circle around the President who really knew what was going on. All we had to do was stonewall for a couple of months and the Watergate scandal would be over. We had all the power and prestige of the presidency at our fingertips, and if the truth broke, there would be embarrassment and perhaps a prison sentence. There was no grave danger. Our lives were not threatened, but we could not hold the conspiracy together for more than two weeks. We could not contain the lie. Once prosecution was possible, the natural instincts of self-preservation was so overwhelming that the conspirators one-by-one deserted their leaders. They caved in and they stood in line at the prosecutor’s office to escape jail.” Colson concludes: “I know that the disciples could not perpetuate a lie like the resurrection, because it was not just their reputations that were at stake. Their lives were in danger. They had no clout. They had nothing to gain by the lie and yet every one of them stood fast in the conviction that Jesus is alive. Take it from one who saw firsthand how vulnerable a coverup is: nothing less than a witness as awesome as the resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and he is Lord!” Think about it: Every apostle, except for John, died a martyr’s death for maintaining the claim that Jesus is the Son of God who forgives the sins of the world, that he resurrected from the dead and now reigns as King of kings. Many people will die for what they believe in (as do Muslim terrorists today), but no one dies for what they know is a lie. The disciples knew whether or not Jesus was dead or alive; they died for him because he lives for them—and they knew the truth. He lives! Tyler
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