No one else has empty tomb

(new article tomorrow)

"The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position."--Josh McDowell, author of the 2006 best-seller Evidence That Demans a Verdict

*****

In a book about destiny, the author writes, "As a scientist, I've got two questions: Has anybody ever defeated death and, if so, did he fix it so I could too?"

The obvious answer is there is someone who faced death, defeated it and made a way for everyone else to do the same. It's Jesus Christ.

The historically proven reality of the resurrection is the foundation Christianity is built on. Christianity expects a person to believe certain indisputable facts:

*Jesus Christ was a real person who lived on earth

*He was charged by Jewish leaders and crucified at the hands of Roman authorities

*He was buried in a known, accessible tomb and then preached as risen

*The leaders of His nation tried to dispose of the message that He was resurrected by  persecuting those who preached it

*The empty tomb, though, belied all their efforts

"The empty tomb is the central fact of the Christian faith; it's a fact that can be demonstrated to a historical certainty," explains Richard Jordan.

"People will tell you you can't prove the resurrection scientifically, but there's a lot of things in life you can't prove scientifically.

"The scientific method is a method of replicable events. It's science if you have something you observe, and you make a statement of it, and then others can come along and replicate the event. But there are a lot of things where you don't do that."

"Felons convicted in courts of law for murder, for example, are not convicted on science. They're convicted on historical evidences—the evidences which demonstrate something happened historically, in time, and jurors are pressed to a decision, or a conclusion.

"Individuals are forced to a conclusion based on the evidence. Whether you want to make a conclusion or not, the evidence demands that you come to a verdict.

"People who reject the resurrection do what's called 'circular reasoning.' They start off with their assumption, 'The resurrection can't happen. It's impossible because I know it is.' 

"Their reasoning goes, 'It's impossible for someone to be resurrected, therefore the resurrection didn't happen. How do I know that? Because it's impossible for somebody to be raised. Therefore, since it didn't happen, because it's impossible, it can't happen; it's just a myth. Anybody who says it really did happen is a liar or a nut. Any book that says it did is just to be dismissed out of hand and not even considered as being anything factual. Why? Because the resurrection can't happen. . . .'

"You see how you just go around? The problem is the first statement you make is wrong and if you can demonstrate that statement is invalid, what do you do with the rest of it? It invalidates the whole circular reasoning.

"In a article appearing in Christianity Today magazine, one of the world's leading philosophical atheists of 50 years revealed that in the last four years he's become a Deist. While he says he doesn't know if the Christian God is God, the only God worth really believing in would be the God of the Christians based on the resurrection."