Atheists and Life After Death

An atheist wrote, “I see no reason to believe that your view on a life after death is accurate. Why believe that there is such a thing as Heaven?”

I replied that the life of Jesus and His resurrection were very good reasons to take a serious look at life beyond the grave. You see, there are historical events that don't make any sense if Jesus didn't rise from the dead. Here are a few examples:

First of all, the first-hand accounts, based upon those who lived with Jesus and were witnesses to His resurrection are extremely dependable as we measure works of antiquity. The more copies that we have and the closer the copies have been dated to the original the better we're able to say that the copies accurately reflect the originals. If documents 1,500 years removed from their originals are considered dependable, how much more documents 50 or 15 or even 5 years removed from the originals? Having said that:

. The number of copies in existence show beyond doubt that the documents lack corruption and that they do not contain crucial errors.

. They show that copies were made carefully and in close succession.

. The immediacy of the written record is absolutely vital to authenticating the documents as trustworthy. That is why the New Testament documents are far, far superior to any other texts of the time.

I need to say up front that those atheists who say that the Biblical Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist, themselves exist on the fringes of reality along with those who deny the Jewish Holocaust.

Beside that, we need to ask ourselves, if the facts of Jesus life, death and resurrection, as we have them aren’t true, how do we explain the fact that Josephus, Matthew, Tacitus, Mark, Lucian of Samosata, Dr. Luke, Mara Bar-Serapion, John, The Babylonian Talmud and John Dominic Crossan of the “Jesus Seminar” among many others all attest that Jesus’ crucifixion is historical fact? Atheists are forever complaining about a lack of extra Biblical testimony. Again, that type of complaint can only come from a point of profound ignorance or a deliberate attempt to distort the truth. Even Matthew, Mark, Luke and John whose documents have been included in the Bible, all of these individuals represent valid, independent verification to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

If Jesus didn’t die on the cross, why would these historians and scholars write that He did? Why would they simply invent these stories? There was/is absolutely nothing of earthly value to be gained by going along with or agreeing with the lie that atheists suppose these documents to be.

Don't just rush over this. Think about it! If the New Testament documents are not reliable, true and accurate:

. Why do we have multiple, independent, extra Biblical sources attesting to the risen Jesus?
. Why do we have virtually unanimous modern historical scholarship agreeing that the disciples truly believed they saw Jesus alive after His death on the cross.
. Why would atheist historian and New Testament critic Gerd Ludemann say, “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”
. Why would atheist historian Paula Fredriksen say, “I don’t know what they saw, but as a historian I know they believed they saw Jesus.”
. Why would highly critical New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann agree that historical criticism can establish “the fact that the first disciples came to believe in the resurrection and that they thought they had seen the risen Jesus."

. If Jesus’ resurrection was a lie, and if her believing Peter’s lie was causing his wife’s torturous death, why would the apostle Peter allow his wife to be crucified while he was forced to watch? All Peter had to do to save both of them from a torturous death was to tell the authorities that it was all a hoax. All he had to do was point to where the dead body of Jesus lay. All he had to do was admit to a conspiracy (atheists are deep believers in conspiracies). But he couldn’t do that, for the truth was and is that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive forevermore.

Without the resurrection being historical fact, none of this makes sense. Why would even the enemies of Christianity affirm the historical facts regarding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus if the evidence isn’t accurate and compelling?

I mean, think about it. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead:
. Why would all the disciples, plus hundreds and hundreds of others believe that they saw Him alive?

. Why would they say that they spoke with Him? . Why would they say that they ate with Him at various times and various places? . If none of that is true, why would they be willing to die for making up the lie of seeing Jesus alive? There was absolutely nothing of earthly value to be gained, and everything to lose (and in a pretty unpleasant manner) by concocting the supposed lies about Jesus life, death and resurrection.

Remember these people didn’t believe the lies that someone else told. Over the centuries many people have died for believing another person's lies. But if these people died for a lie, it was their lie! They died for saying they saw Jesus alive again after His death. Without the resurrection being historical fact, their willingness to die for the “truth” doesn’t make any sense.

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead:. Why do we have Paul’s testimony about His encounter with Jesus and why do we have his radical transformation in character from a persecutor of the Church and a killer of Christians, to the greatest missionary that the Christian Church has ever seen? Remember, Paul was a rabid sceptic regarding Jesus when Jesus appeared to him. Paul was an enemy of the Christianity when Jesus appeared to him. This is not like most conversions whereby the person reads or hears something that persuades h/her to change. Paul’s evidence for the risen Jesus was first hand and so convincing that he endured years of hardship, persecution and rejection for proclaiming the risen Lord, before finally being beheaded by Nero in 64AD.

By the way, Paul, who is responsible for most of the New Testament documents obviously completed his writings prior to his death so his accounts are very, very early. His creed from 1^st Corinthians 15 is dated to around 5 years after Jesus' death and resurrection. A creed documenting the worship of Jesus as God, obviously already well established.

Paul went from a brilliant and educated man of stature and adulation in the Jewish religious community, someone at the top of his game, to basically a bum on the run. All because Jesus personally appeared to Paul and demanded his allegiance. As Paul himself said, “If Jesus isn't resurrected from the dead, we who believe are to be pitied as fools for enduring such hardship and death.”

Without the resurrection being historical fact, this change in Paul’s character doesn’t make any sense. He had absolutely nothing of earthly value to gain, and everything to lose by concocting a story of meeting Jesus while on His way to persecute the Church.

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead:
. Why in the world would Jesus’ brothers James and Jude (both sceptics who refused to believe without empirical evidence) go to their deaths proclaiming that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead?
. Why would they claim that they had seen Him?

. Why would they write documents urging other women and men to remain firm in their faith in Jesus even under pain of death?. Why would they confess that Jesus, their brother whom they formerly despised and mocked, is the Lord God, Messiah?

Think about it! What would it take for you to believe that your brother was God Incarnate? For me it would take nothing less than a predicted death and physical resurrection from the grave actually happening.

James and Jude who each have a letter included in the New Testament were sceptics. And for good reason. Until His ministry began, Jesus was nothing more than their big brother. A nice guy? Sure. At the very least He stuck around and took care of the family after their dad died. To be honest though, the older He got the more embarrassing Jesus became to the family. “Would you please shut up about all this stuff about you being God?” Even His mother couldn't get Him to just come home and be quite. And then, what they had originally believed about Jesus being just this guy, well, it all started to come apart. The manipulation of matter / energy is not supposed to be possible. But He seemed to be doing it. Like all good sceptics, James and Jude were able to nurse their doubts for awhile, until – well, until He got arrested. After the crucifixion, their doubts had to give way to self-honesty. Empirical evidence, undeniable evidence forced them to change their minds. Dead people do not naturally come alive again. So there they were, a month after their Brother was murdered, saying that they'd changed their minds and I mean they had really changed their minds. Jesus' brothers, James and Jude put their lives on the line to affirm their new understanding of what their brother had been teaching. Their conversions were a drastic change from thinking their Brother was insane. They weren't alone. Within a month of His death, we have His whole family, mother, brothers, sisters all gathered together with other believers. People who had once doubted Jesus, were now affirming the truth of who He claimed to be.

Thomas is often cited as the disciple who needed solid evidence for the resurrection, but if you pay attention to the Gospel accounts, you'll see that every single one of Jesus' closest followers required hard evidence before they were convinced, not just that Jesus was God incarnate, but that He had indeed risen from the dead, just as He had predicted. These were not gullible easily led men and women. These were people, each and every one of them individuals who required empirical evidence before they would, before they could believe. Even in the last chapter of John we have John describing how he and the other disciples, who'd been out fishing all night, crowded around the resurrected Jesus who was frying fish over a fire on the shore of the lake. And he writes, “None of us dared ask, “Who are you?” because we knew it was the Lord. This was now the third time Jesus appeared to us,” John 21. Can you hear how tentative they were? They could just barely grasp the truth of something that simply does not happen by natural means.

Without the power of Creator God, dead people do not come alive again. Not after being crucified, dying, being embalmed in 75 pounds of spices etc. and buried in an ice cold tomb. Yet a few weeks later, these same people were unstoppable witnesses to the fact of Jesus rising from the dead along with His message of forgiveness of sins.

Without the resurrection being historical fact, this change in the beliefs of Jesus’ siblings and disciples doesn’t make any sense. They had absolutely nothing of earthly value to gain and everything to lose if what they said about Jesus appearing to them after His death was not true.

Remember, these people were sceptics at the time that Jesus appeared to them. Why would they become His followers if His resurrection (which in my thinking even trumps walking on water) wasn't historical fact?

If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, why was the tomb empty? Why did enemies of Jesus and enemies of His message agree that the tomb was empty? If the enemies of Jesus took the body to keep the disciples from stealing it, why not just produce it and put an end to the story? After all, this took place right in Jerusalem, the scene of the murder.

These are historical facts for which the only logical answer is the factual reality of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as described by the writers of these documents. David Hume is recorded as saying, re: miracles, “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.”

Not just the existence of this mathematically precise, life sustaining, moral universe, that came into being out of literally nothing material, but Jesus' appearances after His crucifixion, the fact of the empty tomb, the radical change in character of His disciples, the conversion of sceptics Paul and Jesus' family, and the existence of the Christian Church and 3,000 converts on the first day of preaching by the disciples all fit Hume's conditions.

These historical event demand and explanation and the best explanation, the most reasonable explanation (unless you have an atheist world-view to protect) is that Jesus the Christ was who He claimed to be and did indeed die via Roman execution, was buried as predicted in a rich man's grave and rose physically from the dead only to appear to hundreds and hundreds of individuals before returning to His throne in heaven. And if those event are true then it is also highly likely that Jesus will return as predicted as a time when “every knee will bow in submission and every tongue will confess that Jesus is King of kings, Lord of lords, Creator of Heaven and earth.

Why would anyone in their right minds set themselves up as enemies of such a Power, when an offer of peace and forgiveness is being made to them right this very moment?