Is The Resurrection Reliable History?

By Rev. Ernest O'Neill

Loved Ones, I don't know if you've tried those arguments out, but I tried them. And I tried somehow to persuade myself that this resurrection had not really taken place and that this Jesus was no different from any other religious leader. But Loved Ones, the more you try to offer arguments to explain the resurrection, the harder it gets to believe the arguments themselves, and the easier it becomes to believe the resurrection. Of course Loved Ones the truth is that's a ridiculously unhistorical approach to take to history. You don't confirm history or disprove history by saying it couldn't have happened because I can think in my little head of some other way that it could have happened.

You examine the evidence. And when you examine the evidence for the resurrection, it is beyond the evidence of any other historical event. Westcott said, "It's the best-attested fact in history, the resurrection of Jesus". And it is Loved Ones. The witnesses are the most reliable witnesses that we have ever had to examine. They have made an impression of honesty and sanity in our world. Wherever you get true Christianity, you get an influence for health and sanity in our society that has come from the Peters and the Johns and the Simon Peters and the James. These men were the most reliable people that we have met in our history. They were people who died for what they witnessed.