…I'll just say that it all boils down to what you are going to do with the resurrection. Are you going to write off the eyewitnesses of that event as liars or lunatics and dismiss it? Or are you going to accept their accounts as the truth, and therefore see that God exists? It has to be one or the other, doesn't it? After that, you can quibble over details of theology all you want, or quibble over Big Bangs, geologic time, evolution and so on. But the resurrection has to be dealt with, one way or the other, some time or another. It was, I believe, the key event in all of history.
Dude, I’m with you. Wholeheartedly. The bottom line is that the foundation of Christianity is not a collection of ancient writings we call the Bible. The foundation of Christianity is the reality of God and the historicity of Jesus and the New Testament events ~ the Resurrection of Jesus being paramount.
Luke said that “many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us”…this happened in the lifetimes of those documenting the events…and that his account was just one of those “many”; and it’s one of the four separate and individual accounts of the life of Jesus that survived antiquity. And all four of those separate and individual accounts described the resurrection. Why so “many”…? Why would “many” endeavor to document the life of a Judean day laborer turned rabbi that was later executed by Rome…? Because something extraordinary happened…!
So if even one of the gospels or the accounts of Jesus’ life is true, then we likely need to lean in. Are any of these a reliable account of actual events…? Because if any one of these is a reliable account of actual events, then what they say about Jesus is true. And if what they say about Jesus is true, then game on…! Faith on…! And we should press on. We should lean in. For those who are Jesus’ followers, your faith is not in vain.
The resurrection is our hope, just as it was clearly Apostle Peter’s hope, as well as the hope of all of Jesus’ earliest followers.
