EASTER STORY: CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION

Some atheists and non-believers sometimes come up with illogical arguments on why the resurrection could not have happened. Instead of saying that it’s a belief they have – that it did not happen, they try to argue their way around it. Now no one can quarrel with what one believes; it’s their right, and because when you come down to it, only you know how and why you believe it. No argument can persuade you otherwise, until you are convinced yourself that you believed wrong. So arguments don’t cut it where belief is concerned. But we have to be honest with ourselves in stating what it is we believe or not believe. “A man convinced against his will, Is of the same opinion still.”

One of the so-called arguments centres around the empty tomb. Was it really empty? Did the witnesses go to the wrong tomb? Did someone go and steal away the body? This last one was the one the arch enemies of Jesus Christ  – the Pharisees, chief priests and teachers of the law – who arranged his crucifixion used. They had asked Pilate for guards to secure the tomb to prevent any tampering; then when confronted by the resurrection they wanted to deny, they bribed the same Roman guards to say that His disciples came and stole the body while they were asleep! How ironic! All they had to do to prove their case was to produce the presumed ‘stolen body’.

There are many incidents of tombs and graves not containing the bodies supposedly buried in them when they were opened. This could be due to lots of possibilities, including criminal activity. But in none of these cases has it ever been claimed that the dead person later returned to life. So an empty tomb of itself does not make a resurrection. An objective and analytical person would go beyond the empty tomb and reduce the argument to two questions:

Did the victim actually die?

Did the victim come back to life after the death?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then resurrection must have occurred because dead people are not usually in the habit of coming back to life!

How do the questions apply to Jesus Christ?

The gospels give many clues of what most probably happened during Christ’s crucifixion. Before His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, He sweated blood as He contemplated what He knew was coming and praying for the strength to go through with it. This condition of sweating blood, haematihidrosis, although very rare, is known to medicine and is caused by extreme stress – physical, emotional or both- which produces chemicals that rupture blood capillaries in sweat glands, thus releasing small quantities of blood into the sweat. Sweating of course is part of stress, and someone abandoned by close friends and family (as Jesus Christ was), who knew exactly the ordeal he would soon be going through, had very good grounds for stress. In our daily lives we are spared extreme stress of this type because we don’t really know what is coming. We imagine it and are apprehensive and fearful about what may happen; we don’t really know all of it, as He did.

He suffered hypovolaemic (low blood volume as in dehydration) shock from prior sweating combined with the severe flogging (scourging) to which  He was subjected, under the orders of the Roman Procurator Pilate, before being led to the crucifixion site at Golgotha. Body fluid volume loss from the combination of bleeding and sweating could lead to this kind of shock as is commonly found after severe diarrhoea and vomiting, or sweating from heat stroke. We know this because from the records, he probably fainted on the way while carrying the cross, and could not continue. The soldiers then had to commandeer Simon of Cyrene to help carry the cross to Golgotha. While on the cross, He stated that He was thirsty; when they tried to respond to this by giving Him wine vinegar on a sponge, He declined drinking it.  Thirst is a well-known sign of volume loss as we have all experienced at one time or another.

The Jewish leaders who instigated the crucifixion requested Pilate to hasten the death of the victims by breaking their legs so the bodies could be taken down before their impending Passover feast.  When the soldiers went to do this, they found that He was already dead. They broke the legs of the other victims crucified with Christ but not His own.  To confirm the death one of the soldiers plunged a spear into His side, releasing blood and water, according to the records.  Medically this could have come from pleural (from the lungs) and or pericardial (from the heart) fluid; accumulation of these fluids are well known consequences of death by this method. The separation of water and blood suggests that He must have been dead for some time, as the blood elements (red in colour) had by this time separated from the fluid elements (serum), thus coming out as blood and water.  The records also show that Pilate was surprised that he died so quickly – after only six hours on the cross (Mark 15:44), and while the other victims were still alive.

After this, two of His secret disciples, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who were themselves members of the Jewish ruling council, went to Pilate to get permission to bury the body.  They got it, took the body down, wrapped it in their customary way with 75 pounds of spices (aloes and myrrh), before burying it in a new tomb in a cave nearby. Then the tomb was sealed, and the guards that had been requested were posted.  So, all these provide proof that the victim actually died.

So people who claim that His body was stolen away, or that He didn’t really die on the cross should reflect on the condition of the victim after the ordeal described at the event. If by some miracle He didn’t really die, would He not be in such a pathetic physical condition as to elicit pity rather than awe and inspiration among friends and sympathisers? Could anyone admire such a pathetic figure, let alone make Him out to be the kind of Saviour that hitherto unbelieving friends and followers would later stake their very lives on, unto death?  Many of these early disciples and apostles died as martyrs for their faith, often in gruesome ways.

Was He seen alive afterwards? Here the evidence is so compelling that jurists consider it much more than would be needed in a law court to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt. Most of it came soon after the event, and dramatically changed the Apostles who were literally transformed from cowardly fearful comrades who denied Him the night of the arrest or ran away afterwards, into bold, extra-ordinarily outspoken witnesses. They did not just believe that he was raised – for one can believe earnestly and still be wrong, but they knew, He was risen. They had seen Him, touched Him, and eaten with Him.  This was not only as individuals, but also in groups of seven, eleven, and at one time over 500.  And most of these eye witnesses were still alive when these claims were made and written down.  The pages of the first half chapters of Acts of the Apostles are filled with speeches and statements implying that the fact of the resurrection was not at all in dispute when the records appeared; they talked as if the fact was understood and accepted by all.

Among the ones whose lives changed radically as a result of these after the resurrection encounters were His brothers especially Jude and James who did not believe in Him during His lifetime, but who became leaders in the early church.  Each of them wrote a book of the New Testament, and suffered martyrdom, according to church tradition.  And of course there was Paul, formerly Saul, who was an ardent Pharisee persecutor of the church, and who encountered the risen Christ on his way to Damascus to carry out his persecution mission.  He became a changed man after this, became one of the greatest missionaries and theologians of the church and ended up writing almost half of the entire New Testament.

How about you? Have you checked out the facts? If not, why not?