For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Eye-witness testimony carries substantial weight in a court case. The credibility of this evidence rises exponentially when you can produce multiple witnesses testifying to the same event. It would be impossible to prove that something didn’t happen when 500 men and women say they saw the same thing all at the same time. They saw the resurrected Jesus. Why is this so important? These witnesses didn’t just see Jesus, they saw each other as they saw Jesus together. Since Paul is writing about 25 years after the event, many of the witnesses are still alive to dispute the sighting.
Yet the first century does not record a multitude of disputes. The main dispute was created by the chief priests who bribed the Roman soldiers assigned to Jesus’ tomb (Matthew 28:12-15). The priests coached the soldiers to say the body of Jesus was stolen.
Scripture teaches us to believe that Jesus died and rse in new life on that first Easter morning. We don’t believe because we saw it, but because we read it in the Bible. “Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed’” (John 20:29).
