Eyewitness News – Today’s Youth Devotion

Eyewitness News

Bible Reading: 1 John 1:1-4

We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is Jesus Christ, the Word of life. 1 John 1:1

FOR CENTURIES, loads of the world’s philosophers have assaulted Christianity as absurd. Many have simply ignored the central issue of the Resurrection. Others have tried to explain it away through a variety of theories. But the facts of the empty tomb are as convincing today as they were two thousand years ago.

Here are some of the relevant facts:

• Jesus of Nazareth-Jewish prophet who claimed to be the Christ prophesied in the Jewish Scriptures-was arrested, judged a political criminal, and executed by Roman crucifixion.
• Three days after Christ’s death and burial, some women who went to his tomb discovered his body was gone.
• In subsequent weeks his disciples claimed that God had raised him from the dead and that he had appeared to them at various times before ascending into heaven.
• From that core of early disciples, the message of Christ spread throughout the Roman Empire and has continued to spread through the centuries.

So did the Resurrection really happen? Was the tomb of Jesus really empty? There are only two possible ways to answer these questions. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was either one of the world’s most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes, or it is the most remarkable fact in human history.

Think about the witnesses for a moment. The New Testament accounts of the Resurrection circulated during the lifetime of men and women who were alive when the event happened. Those people could have easily confirmed or denied the accu­racy of the accounts. The writers of the four Gospels either had witnessed these events themselves or were relating the accounts of eyewitnesses.

Had the writers of the Bible books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John made up the story of the Resurrection, their report never would have lasted past the first cen­tury. But even people who hated Jesus and wanted to disprove the Resurrection couldn’t refute what everybody else knew to be fact: the tomb was empty and Christ was alive.

You didn’t see the empty tomb or the risen Christ, but you have the reliable, time-honored testimony of the New Testament writers. Christ is risen!

REFLECT: How would you answer a non-Christian friend who said the Resurrection never happened?

PRAY: Pray for a friend who doesn’t believe the truth of the Resurrection.