Though there are many strong evidences for the resurrection of Christ, surely the strongest is the abundance of eyewitness testimony. Numerous people saw the resurrected Christ, and this was recorded by multiple writers in the New Testament in what courts of law describe as “corroborating testimony” – the kind of eyewitness evidence that wins a case.
“Corroborating testimony” is testimony from independent witnesses about the same events, which “complement” each other by their individual emphases. The details do not contradict each other, they are simply additional details from a separate perspective. This demonstrates there was no collusion between witnesses. It is the kind of evidence which is powerful to decide the truth in a court of law, and is the type of testimony that the four gospel writers present about Jesus Christ, including His resurrection. And the historical fact is that the disciples were all energized by having seen the resurrected Lord – to the point where they sacrificed greatly and died in the service and proclamation of the gospel.
The writer of Acts sums up the eyewitness testimony of the resurrection this way: “To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days…” (Acts 1:3a). Or as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:6, “After that, he was seen of by above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present…” Here Paul invites his readers to check the truth of the resurrection by questioning the many eyewitnesses who were still alive. He could never have done that and gotten away with it – given the power, resources and numbers of his enemies – if it were not true! And by the way, multiple people do not “hallucinate” together at one time.
Think about this: If each of the 500 people were to testify for only six minutes, including cross-examination, you would have an amazing 50 hours of firsthand testimony! Add to this the testimony of the many other eyewitnesses and you would have the largest and most lopsided trial in history!
The authorities had been left trying to explain how Christ’s tomb became empty when there were trained Roman soldiers stationed to guard it (Matthew 28:11-15). The official story which the Roman soldiers were bribed to relate – that the disciples stole the body in spite of their armed guard and the heavy stone rolled down over the entrance – is unbelievable as testimony. If Roman guards fell asleep on the job, they would lose their lives. And even if the entire unit did fall asleep, the crowd, the effort and the noise it would have taken to move an enormous boulder out of its closed position (estimated to be 3,000-4,000 lbs) would have awakened them.
The fact is that the tomb became empty – and this is eyewitness testimony unrefuted even by the enemies of Jesus, and reported outside the Bible by such secular historians as Josephus. The proclamation of the resurrection could not have been maintained for a single day in the Jerusalem area following that first Easter Sunday if the emptiness of the tomb had not been established as a fact for all concerned – because people could simply walk over to see for themselves!
No wonder Dr Simon Greenleaf (1779-1853), law professor, influential legal scholar, and one of the founders of the Harvard Law School, who originally set out to disprove the biblical testimony concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ, famously came to the opposite conclusion. The abundance of corroborating eyewitness testimony would be more than sufficient evidence for Christ’s resurrection in a court of law, he wrote in a learned tract, “The Testimony of the Evangelists: Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice”.
– Mark Cadwallader, Creation Moments Board Chairman
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