DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? PART EIGHT

                                          DID JESUS RISE              FROM THE DEAD?

  PART EIGHT

  (copied from 
   Y-Jesus.com)


Consistent to the End

As if the eyewitness accounts were not enough to challenge Morison's skepticism, he was also baffled by the disciples behavior.  A fact of history that has stumped historians, pyschologists, and skeptics alike, is that these eleven former cowards were suddenly willing to suffer humiliation, torture, and death. All but one of Jesus's disciples was slain as martyrs. Would they have done as much for a lie knowing they had taken the body?

The terrorists on September 11th, proved that some would die for a lost cause they believe in. Yet to be a willing martyr for a known lie is insanity. 
As Paul Little wrote:  "Men will die for what they believe to be true, although it may actually be false. They do not however, die for what they know is a lie. "
Jesus' disciples behaved in a manner consistent with a belief that their leader was alive.

No one has adequately  explained why the disciples would have been willing to die for a known lie, but even if they all conspired to lie about Jesus' resurrection, how could they have kept the conspiracy going for decades without at least one of them selling out for money or position?   Moreland wrote:  "Those who lie for personal gain, do not stick together very long, especially when hardship decreases the benefits."


Chuck Colson, implicated in the Watergate scandal, during President Nixen's administration, pointed out the difficulty of several people maintaining a lie for an extended period of time:
  "I know that the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How?  Because twelve  men testified that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, and they proclaimed that truth for forty years, never once denying it. Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned, put in prison. They would not have endured that if it wasn't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world - and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years?  Absolutely impossible. 
Something happened that changed everything for these men and women. Morison acknowledged; 
"Whoever comes to this problem, has sooner or later to confront a fact that cannot be explained away  .... This fact is that .... a profound conviction came to the little group of people - a change that attests to the fact that Jesus had risen from the grave." 

next post follows