8 April 2023 12:57 am Views - 385
Finally, He taught them the doctrine, He preached before His death and most of them had not understood the deeper meaning of what He had taught them. He now made them understand the doctrine he had preached. Especially taking from the Old Testament the passages which were spoken about him. He made them realize that He was the Messiah that the Jews were expecting for ages - the fulfilment of the Old Testament.
What is Resurrection?
Resurrection is not a resuscitation of a corpse, which means that a dead body comes to life with the same corruptible body, which will face material death in the future one day. During the mission of Jesus Christ on earth, he raised Lazarus from death, but Lazarus died afterwards.
Resurrection is a metaphysical reality. It is a resurrected body. The body is different from the material body that Jesus had when He lived his physical life on Earth.
Yet, He is the same Jesus Christ, who lived physically on earth. If Jesus Christ, after resurrection had the same material body, which he had on earth, how can Jesus Christ enter into a closed room? We find in the gospel that Thomas, who was a disciple, doubted that He had risen, and when Jesus appeared, and showed His wounded hands, He asked him to testify to it.
Since He had a resurrected body that transcends space and time in the material realm, He could enter through closed doors and appear and disappear suddenly to His disciples. According to the early fathers of the church, the soul is imprisoned in a material body at birth, which escapes from this material body at our physical death. Our “being” acquires material existence at birth, and departs from our material body at our physical death. The Empty Tomb is not conclusive proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. One could argue that disciples stole His body and set the word around that He is risen. Even the appearances of the Risen Lord could not give any conclusive proof for the fact that the Lord has risen from the dead. One could argue that delusion may have occurred in their minds due to various factors that they encountered. What cannot be disproved is the fact that all the disciples who fled away, when Jesus was captured by the Jews, bore witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is risen. On the day of the Pentecost they received a Divine power from the Risen Lord as he promised to send to them, and they, as brave men, went out. Out to people to bear witness to the fact that the Lord had risen from the dead, and people who heard Peter. On that day, according to the Act of the Apostles, the 3,000 men were converted to Jesus Christ. On the first day of his sermon the immense power and strength they received was enough for them to understand the teachings of Jesus Christ to make them fully converted to believing in the person of Jesus.
To this conviction, they all gave their lives to Him and became martyrs except Saint John, who was the youngest among the disciples, who died in his old age and wrote the most profound gospel in the Bible. Those who embraced the teaching of Jesus Christ lived a life of grace and testimony, and as a result, many were converted by them and they experienced the power of the risen Lord and performed miracles. They were able to convert many people to the Lord because of the Divine power they experienced and by adhering to the teachings of the Lord.
Science cannot disprove the resurrection, as it is no longer in the empirical sphere. Resurrection goes behind the realm of the subject matter of science. A resurrection is a unique event. One-time phenomenon. It cannot be repeated as in empirical sciences. Scientific propositions: To be called a scientific proposition it needs to have certain criteria, which have to be fulfilled. Regularity and repeatability are considered as the sine qua non for scientific data. Therefore, resurrection falls outside of scientific data.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fact. This fact was well documented. That Jesus died on the cross, that He was crucified by the Romans under Pontius Pilate, and that He was placed in the tomb and on the third-day tomb was empty. He had risen. Risen Lord appeared to many and changed their lives forever.
The fact is that the power of the Risen Lord transformed the lives of billions of people throughout the centuries and continues to be so is an undeniable fact and it goes to prove that Jesus lives and that the mystical Union with the Risen Lord empowers the lives of those who believe in Him.