Are you SURE Jesus came back to life?

Some people don’t want to believe in Jesus, and so they look for excuses to deny that He is really God or that He didn’t really die and come back to life. We know Jesus really did die and come back, and there are a lot of good reasons to believe that!

Here are just a few more Fast Facts about Easter so you can be sure of your faith in Jesus!

Tomb Triple Protected

How do we know that Jesus really came to life again?

Before His crucifixion Jesus often talked about how He would come to life again in 3 days. Jesus talked about it so much that the Jewish leaders were afraid that the disciples would steal His body and pretend He had come back to life!  

They wanted to make sure the disciples couldn’t do that, so they went to Pilate and asked him to guard Jesus’ tomb, and Pilate went all out. Jesus’ tomb was triple protected with a large stone, Roman guards and a Roman seal.  

When Jesus did come back to life, and His body was gone, it was hard to argue that His body was stolen with so much protection guarding against that. Even though the Jewish leaders bribed the guards to lie about what happened, there was no denying that Jesus was alive! 

Was Jesus a ghost?

Some people say that Jesus wasn’t really alive, but that He was a ghost. I don’t know much about ghosts but I’m pretty sure that they don’t eat and Jesus ate with His disciples.  

And people could touch Him! You can’t touch a ghost. Jesus invited Thomas the doubting disciple to touch the holes in His hands from the nails and the hole in His side where the Roman soldier pierced His side.  

Jesus had the scars from the cross, but His resurrected body was different–He could walk through walls and appear suddenly! His friends still recognized Him and could see evidence that it really was Jesus. There was no longer any doubt that Jesus was alive! 

Were the disciples lying about Jesus being alive? 

Did the disciples make up that Jesus was alive? Some people today still say that they lied about it. 

But if it was a made-up story, the Jewish leaders would have found Jesus’ body and shown that the disciples were lying. But no body was found.  

And the disciples were very different after Jesus rose to life. Before His death, they were constantly afraid, lied about knowing Him and ran away to hide from the Romans.  

But once they saw Jesus alive, everything changed! They understood once and for all that He was God and spent the rest of their lives telling others about Him, even dying for their belief in Jesus. People don’t die for something they know is a lie and almost all of Jesus’ disciples died for their faith in Jesus.    

Were the disciples just dreaming that Jesus was alive?

Dreams are sometimes confusing and strange. Sometimes they’re about what you did that day, or even about what you really wish were true.  

Some people say that Jesus’ followers only wanted to see Jesus again, so they all dreamed He was alive again, instead of it being real.  

But let’s think about this: Many eyewitnesses saw Jesus alive after His death on the cross. So, did they all have the same dream? Of Jesus doing the exact same things?  

Jesus was seen by many different people in many different places and times. And at one point over 500 people saw Him at one time! There is no such thing as a group dream. Lives were transformed by Jesus and that is not a dream! 

Was Jesus really dead?

Did Jesus really die? This is something that you hear people ask once in a while when they don’t want to believe He rose from the grave. But yes, Jesus really did die, the Roman soldiers made sure of that. 

They had a lot of experience crucifying people, so they knew what they were doing. The fact that they pierced His side to make sure Jesus was dead is proof of that. When Jesus was pierced, water and blood flowed out of His wound, which showed He had already died.  

Everyone there, including the Romans and Jewish leaders, believed Jesus had died. And think about this, even if Jesus hadn’t died, He couldn’t have recovered enough from His severe injuries to walk around again in only three days. His recovery time would have taken much longer.  

The only way this was possible is that Jesus did die and rise again, just as He said!