Over the years there have been a number of highly qualified people who have attempted to disprove the resurrection of Christ. One prominent atheist law professor, Simon Greenleaf, wrote the standard three-volume work on legal evidence: A Treatise on the Law of Evidence (1899) which is still used in law today. He was challenged by his students to apply the principles of evidence in his own treatise to disprove the resurrection of Christ. In attempting to do so, he became a Christian and wrote An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists By the Rules of Evidence Adminstered in Courts of Justice to prove the validity of the Gospels.
Two other more recent examples are Josh McDowell, a law student who was so tired of the Christians sharing with him that he sought to disprove Christianity and became a Christian based on the evidence he found. He wrote, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, to share his findings. Then there was the research journalist, Lee Strobel. His story was recently recorded in the film, A Case for Christ from the book he wrote by the same name.
One of my personal favorites, though, is Frank Morrison who started out to disprove the resurrection of Christ and ended up writing, Who Moved the Stone. Morrison was stuck on just that question, “who was it that moved the stone at Christ’s tomb?” What he found was this:
Was it the Roman soldiers who moved the stone. No, because the soldiers were held responsible for their charge. They were assigned the job of making sure no one opened the tomb. Maybe the soldiers fell asleep? During Viet Nam, part of the training for the Green Berets was taken directly from the training manual for the Roman soldiers of this time. These were extremely capable men. Besides, the penalty for a Roman soldier falling asleep was to be burned alive in a fire started by his own clothes.
Was it the Jewish leaders or their guards who stole the body of Jesus? No, it was in the interest of the Jewish leaders to make sure the body stayed in the tomb. After all, if Jesus’ body was removed from the tomb, His followers would claim He was raised from the dead, and the new religion would flourish.
Did the disciples steal the body of Jesus? No. They were cringing and hiding from the Jewish leaders and the Romans. They did not become emboldened in their faith until after Easter. Besides, they would have had to overcome the trained Roman soldiers, and the tomb was sealed with a Roman seal. Breaking that seal was punishable by death. So, it wasn’t the disciples.
Maybe Jesus moved the stone? Well, Jesus had been flogged within an inch of His life. Many victims of a Roman flogging never made it to the cross but died first. Jesus was pronounced dead at the cross by a Roman executioner, someone very familiar with death. Even after that pronouncement, a spear was thrust into His side and water and blood issued forth, a sign of death. Then His body was wrapped in linen and left in a damp tomb for three days. Can we really believer that after three days He revived, broke free from his wrappings, leaned against the stone which sealed the tomb and gave the 1.5 to 2 ton stone a shove and broke free? That would be a greater miracle than God raising Jesus.
Morrison, the skeptic, agreed no earthly person, persons, or force, moved the stone at Jesus’ tomb and had to agree God had done it.
Sometimes Christians doubt the truth of our faith. But, God has given us people like Greenleaf, McDowell, Strobel, and Morrison who didn’t just doubt but stood strongly against and actively sought to disprove the Gospel story of the resurrection of our Lord. They failed miserably in their quests. Heavily armed and qualified people such as these four men, enemies of the Gospel, could find nothing to support their positions and had to honestly fall on their knees before the risen Savior? How much more reason do we have to believe?
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