The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central claim of Christianity and Christianity admittedly fails if Jesus remained in the tomb:
1 CORINTHIANS 15:17 (NKJV)
“And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!”
Consider the implications! If Jesus never rose from the dead, then the Christian faith is built upon a falsehood, we remain in our sins, and our hope of eternal life is misplaced. This is why for the last 2,000 years, people have attacked the claimed resurrection—literally from day one, the Jewish leaders spread false reports that His body was stolen (Matt. 28:13).
And today even among ‘Christians’ like political activist James Talarico who “hates Christianity”, many agree with his pastor Jim Rigby who claims Jesus never rose from the dead!
But if Jesus really did rise from the dead, everything changes for those who believe. His resurrection gives us forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:14), adoption into God’s family (Eph. 1:5), the hope of being reunited with loved ones (1 Thess. 4:14), confidence of eternal life with God (1 Jn. 5:13), and help in this life by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us (Jn. 14:16-17).
This is good news!
With so much depending on this eternally important, historical event, we must diligently examine the evidence of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
1. What Do Ancient Historians Tell Us About Jesus?
Let’s examine testimonies of secular, non-believing ancient historians who had no desire to be labeled ‘Christian’ and endure the societal disdain, torture, and even death many Christians faced.
The Jewish Historian Who Never Became a Christian
One of the most important non-Christian historians of the first century is Flavius Josephus, living from A.D. 37 to 100. As a Jew, he had no reason to promote Christianity, making his testimony especially valuable as an independent historical witness.
Around A.D. 93-94, Josephus completed Antiquities of the Jews, which contains a remarkable passage concerning Jesus of Nazareth, commonly known as the Testimonium Flavianum.
The text describes Jesus as a teacher who attracted followers, identifies Pontius Pilate as the Roman governor who condemned Him to crucifixion, reports that His followers continued to believe in Him after His death, and includes a statement concerning His appearance alive on the third day.
While some scholars debate whether certain Christian-sounding phrases were added or modified by later copyists, others argue that the surviving passage is entirely authentic. In his 2025 Oxford University Press study, historian T. C. Schmidt presents new arguments supporting Josephus’s authorship of the passage.
Professor Schlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem published his landmark discovery of a 10th-century Arabic version of Flavius Josephus’s Testimonium Flavianum, which reads as follows:
ANTIQUITIES 18:63
“At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day.”
Here we see the same context of Christ in this manuscript thus confirming Testimonium Flavianum is reliable.
Josephus also mentions Jesus in another passage describing the execution of James, identifying him as the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ (Antiquities 20.200). This passage is accepted as authentic—independently confirming Jesus was a historical person known as the Christ and that James was recognized as his brother and an important leader in the early Christian movement.
Tacitus The Roman
Josephus was not alone. The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in the early second century, also mentions torture upon Christians for believing the superstitious reports about Jesus:
ANNALS 15.44
“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome…”
An Ancient Reference to the Darkness at the Crucifixion
Phlegon mentions the darkness surrounding the crucifixion confirming the Gospel accounts (Matt. 27:45, Mk. 15:33, Lk. 23:44-45):
AFRICANUS, CHRONOGRAPHY, 18:1
“Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth to the ninth hour.”
These secular historians establish Jesus was not simply a mythical character invented centuries later by a cult following but that He lived in first-century Judea, was executed under Pontius Pilate, left behind followers whose movement survived His brutal public crucifixion and they themselves faced persecution, torture and death throughout the Roman Empire.
This is historically significant. If Jesus had simply died and been forgotten, it is difficult to explain the sudden growth of the Christian movement in Jerusalem, the very city where he was crucified and which held extreme contempt and persecution toward anyone following Jesus.
Something extraordinary convinced his followers that he was alive.
Which begs the question: why did the earliest Christians become so convinced that their crucified Jewish teacher was alive again despite the violence against them?
2. The Empty Tomb: Where Was the Body of Jesus?
How come the greatest, most powerful government on the earth (Rome) could not find the most popular person of their day (Jesus), crucified in the most public of ways and buried in a known tomb which was guarded?
In fact, Jesus’ enemies were ready for a supposed miraculous resurrection (Matt. 27:62-64). Pontius Pilate even declared:
MATTHEW 27:65-66
“‘You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.’ 66 So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.”
These were the most lethal soldiers in the world—they overthrew empires after all. A guard often consisted of over 50 soldiers and during a watch, four soldiers changed every four hours. And if their mission failed, they would be executed.
Talk about motive to do your job!
The massive stone rolled in front of the tomb weighed thousands of pounds. It was rolled in a sloped channel so once it was closed, it was secure—it would take over 20 men to move it in order to open the tomb.
Finally, the stone had the official seal of Rome placed on it. This was not a lazy third party security crew hired last minute—this was the official symbol of the Roman empire guarding the tomb!
And yet some scared fishermen with no modern weaponry overpowered these elite battle-hardened soldiers?
Hardly.
Or even better: a group of desperate housewives knocked out 50 soldiers, rolled this massive stone away, carried Jesus’ body and hid Him so well that the greatest manhunt in human history has yet to find Him?
Impossible!
How come in over 2,000 years with all our technology, the only evidence we discover is a missing body in an empty tomb? God invites you to come and see:
MATTHEW 28:6 (NKJV)
“He is not here; for He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”
3. Eyewitness Testimony
The resurrection accounts claim something extraordinary: Jesus has physically risen from the dead and we have seen Him with our own eyes!
Women Were the First Witnesses
According to all four Gospels, women were the first to discover Jesus’s empty tomb (Matt. 28:9-10, Mk. 16:9, Lk. 24:1-10, Jn. 20:11-18) which is staggering for the Scripture to admit this. Why? In the ancient world, women’s testimony was given less legal and social standing than men’s.
If the Gospel authors wanted to invent a convincing story for their contemporary audiences, identifying women as the first key eye witnesses would not be the way to convince people.
Yet Scripture consistently preserves the women’s prominent role in discovering the empty tomb and reports the apostles’ rejection of their testimony:
LUKE 24:11 (NKJV)
“And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them.”
More Than 500 Witnesses at Once
One of the most remarkable resurrection passages is found in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 where Apostle Paul reminds the Corinthian church that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, rose on the third day, and appeared to Peter and the other apostles.
Then he emphatically reports that Jesus appeared to more than 500 believers at one time, most of whom were still living when Paul wrote his epistle!
To have two eye witnesses of a major event is significant in a court of law—to have 500 eye witnesses suddenly confirming the same occurrence changes history.
The resurrection was not a belief invented hundreds of years after Jesus’s death by some fringe cult followers. Even it was confirmed by hundreds of eye witnesses who once doubted but now believed!
4. Doubters and Persecutors Became Believers
One of the striking features of the New Testament is its willingness to describe the failures and unbelief of Jesus’s own followers. The account of Thomas is poignant:
JOHN 20:24-25 (NKJV)
“Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 The other disciples therefore said to him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ So he said to them, ‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’”
Peter denied knowing Jesus three times (Lk. 22:54-62) and Jesus’ other disciples abandoned Him when He was arrested (Mk. 14:50), yet the book of Acts describes these same disciples publicly preaching the resurrection in Jerusalem.
What changed? They encountered the risen Christ.
James: From Unbelief to Leadership
John 7:5 records that even Jesus’s own brothers did not believe in Him during His earthly ministry but later, James became an important leader in the Jerusalem church (Gal. 1:19; Acts 15).
Why would someone who had previously rejected Jesus’s claims eventually become a prominent leader in a movement proclaiming Him as the risen Messiah?
James saw the resurrected Christ!
Paul: From Persecutor to Apostle
Paul’s conversion is equally remarkable: he actively persecuted the church, separating children from parents (Acts 22:4), conducting house raids (Acts 8:3), even trying to destroy the very movement he would later spend his life advancing (Gal. 1:13-14). What changed his mind?
Paul personally encountered the risen Jesus Christ (Acts 9:3-20). Paul eventually became one of Christianity’s most influential missionaries showing firsthand evidence that a former persecutor of Christians could sincerely become a Christian after encountering Jesus Christ.
5. Torture and Death for a Known Lie?
The only logical refutation of these eye witnesses claiming Jesus resurrected is that every single one of them lied about it. But consider: why would someone be tortured to death for a lie they knew was a lie?
People throughout history have suffered and died for beliefs they have been taught not knowing whether they were true or not. But Jesus’ disciples were not dying for what they were taught—they were dying for their first eye-witness testimony of experiencing the resurrected Christ themselves!
So why would Jesus’ earliest followers willingly endure persecution, imprisonment, torture and death for a lie proclaiming Jesus had risen?
- Scripture condemns lying (Ex. 20:16), stating all liars will eternally endure the flames of the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8).
- They had nothing to gain by lying. They did not gain wealth, prestige or power—they lost friends, family, business, reputation and even their lives.
- They were not trying to create a system of mind control over the masses; following Jesus meant loving their enemies while praying for their persecutors (Matt. 5:44), respecting the government (1 Pet. 2:13-17), and paying taxes (Rom. 13:6)!
Yet Josephus records James’s execution by stoning in approximately A.D. 62; church history states Peter was crucified upside down; and before the Apostle Paul was beheaded, he endured beatings, imprisonment, persecution, and terrible hardship for proclaiming the gospel (2 Cor. 11:23-28).
Jesus’ early followers were mostly martyrs. And they all willingly suffered and died for what they truthfully witnessed.
6. Jesus Was Foretold in the Scriptures
Jesus’ life, death and resurrection fulfilled numerous Old Testament Scriptures. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to two disciples traveling to Emmaus and explained how the Scriptures pointed toward Him (Lk. 24:25–27).
The Holy One Would Not See Corruption
David declared over 1,040 years before Christ:
PSALM 16:10 (NKJV)
“For You will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.”
On the day of Pentecost, Peter applied this passage to Jesus’s resurrection (Acts 2:25–32), declaring David had died and been buried, and his tomb remained among them, thus he was speaking prophetically of One whom death could not hold.
The Suffering Servant
Isaiah 53:1-12, written 750 years before Christ was born
Isaiah describes the suffering, rejection, and death of the Lord Jesus, declaring He would bear the sins of others, suffer unjustly, and be buried in a rich man’s tomb in His death.
Psalm 22:1-18, written 1,044 years before Christ was born
This Psalm gives precise details of Christ’s mockery endured, people dividing His clothing and casting lots for it, the Roman crucifixion, piercing Him, detailing how none of His bones would be broken (Ex. 12:46, Jn. 19:33-36), and the exact words of Christ cried out from the cross to His Father.
There’s hundreds of prophecies written centuries before Jesus came showing He did not merely rise from the dead—He fulfilled what God had promised through the prophets.
7. The Living Testimony of the Risen Christ
Historical documents, eyewitness testimony, and fulfilled prophecy are important. But Christianity does not teach that the resurrection is merely an ancient event to be studied.
Jesus promised His followers that He would send the Holy Spirit, who would dwell within them and empower them to be His witnesses (Jn. 14:16-17; Acts 1:8).
The very disciples who had previously abandoned Jesus in fear boldly proclaimed His resurrection in the face of persecution. This same empowerment exists for believers today.
The Christian faith is not merely an intellectual acceptance of historical facts, it is a living relationship with the risen Jesus Christ through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture invites us:
PSALM 34:8 (NKJV)
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”
What Is the Most Reasonable Explanation?
After considering the evidence, we are left with several significant observations:
- Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person who was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
- His followers denied, departed and disbelieved Him.
- An empty tomb once guarded by the most feared soldiers cannot be explained away.
- Over 500 eye witnesses claimed to see the resurrected Jesus at once.
- His followers suddenly changed from fearful cowards to bold witnesses, proclaiming His resurrection shortly after His death, facing persecution, torture and death themselves.
- His followers were filled with a power not of their own, still witnessed by believers today.
How should we explain these events? Should we dismiss them as nonsense? These are questions it would behoove you to begin thinking about and answering for yourself.
Remember, if Jesus remained in the grave, Christianity has no foundation. But if Jesus rose from the dead, His resurrection vindicates His claims and confirms the promise of eternal life offered through Him—making this an eternally important matter to you.
Jesus Himself declares to you:
JOHN 11:25 (NKJV)
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.”
This is why the resurrection matters so profoundly. We believe the historical evidence, the testimony of Scripture, and the continuing work of the Holy Spirit point to one extraordinary conclusion:
Jesus Christ is risen indeed!
