I love Easter. We’ve just come through what for pastors is the most wonderful and exhausting time of the year (along with Christmas). But I love it. I love sunrise services, shared breakfast, and the increased crowds on Easter Sunday. But most of all I love the Truth that Easter celebrates.
I don’t love the view of Easter that equates it with springtime, the yearly cycle of birth-death-and rebirth, and some vague sentiment of “what Easter means to us all.” I especially don’t love the claim that Jesus’ resurrection was a myth.
I’m with the Apostle Paul: if Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, “we are of all people most to be pitted.” (1 Cor. 15:19) If I didn’t really believe that Jesus rose from the dead, I’d quit the ministry and go get an honest job.
There are what are called “minimal facts” about the death of Jesus and what happened next. That means that even disbelieving, skeptical scholars admit the following:
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