Handbook for Christian Maturity

Step 1; Lesson 4

To Recognize the importance of Christ’s resurrection, and how it relates to us personally.

Physical return of Jesus from death to life

Jesus did not come back to life metaphorically or spiritually.

Essential to Salvation

Not like other times people have been raised from the dead.

Everyone who was raised, died again except Jesus.

Not a zombie!

1. Jesus predicted his death, burial, and Resurrection; as wells as the Prophets of the Old Testament.

2. The Tomb Really was Empty

3. Jesus was seen and interacted with after He came back to life by friends and enemies

4. Witnesses transformed by what they saw and heard.

5. The Christian church exists.

6. The apostles taught their followers to believe Jesus died and rose again.

Luke 18:31-33

Jesus predicted his death and described what would happened

Nothing says power like choosing to lay down your own life and picking it up again.

His enemies were afraid that Jesus’s followers would steal the body and insist that he rose from the dead. Matthew 27:63-65

300 Old Testament Prophecies

A stone at the entrance – Mark 15:46

Soldiers guarded the tomb – Matthew 27:62-66

Why didn’t the Roman or the Jewish leaders produce the body? Because the Tomb was empty

Why issue a spin-story to explain why the Tomb was empty? Matthew 28:11-15

Not hallucinations

None of them believed until they saw Jesus

Neither Paul nor James or Jude were followers of Jesus before the Resurrection

The Women’s testimony and the “Principle of Embarrassment”?

1 Corinthians 15:1-8

Peter, James, 500 followers, the apostles, and Paul

Thomas went from a disbeliever (John 20:24-28) to a believing prayer (Acts 1:12-14)

Peter was turned from a coward (Luke 22:54-62) to a bold witness (Acts 4:1-22)

Paul pulled a 180 when he went from persecutor (Acts 7:54-8:3) to Preacher. (Acts 16:16-40)

ALL of the Apostles (except John) were executed martyred for their Faith in Christ

They were so convinced that they gave up their lives.

They did not just believe they knew the truth.

2 Peter 1:16-21

For the most part when the leader of a small group is killed, the movement fades into obscurity. Not go on to be a world-altering force for 2000 years.

Jesus changes lives. No different in the 21st

century than in the 1st Century.

Didache, Clement of Rome, The Shepherd of Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Diognetus

Papias, Quadratus of Athens, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Claudius Apollinaris, Minucius Felix, Melito of Sardis, Hegesippus, Dionysius of Corinth, Athenagoras of Athens, Irenaeus of Lyons, Rhodon, Theophilus of Caesarea, Theophilus of Antioch, Maximus of Jerusalem, Polycrates of Ephesus, Pantaenus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Serapion of Antioch, Apollonius, Caius, Hippolytus of Rome, Origen From https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NZRu6Q5bV5ABHofkuLs5VhblO5ndJM5WdwouoAZuVVU/edit#slide=id.i0

There is no other explanation for explaining these things – Jesus bodily and in reality rose from the dead – proving and authenticating everything else he said and did.

Validates everything in the Bible.

The Resurrection is the most important miracle ever. If you can accept the truth you can accept any miracle described in the Bible.

Jesus is our ever present hope – our only hope! 1 John 2:2,3

Case for Christ by Lee Strobel

Cold-Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace

Mary Jo Sharp’s “Confident Christianity” website

And many others.