After the resurrection, after their Savior, their Messiah was killed, something happened that turned their lives upside down and never once denied it. And that fact was that on the third day he was raised form the dead and he appeared to them with all kinds of convincing evidence and proofs, they said, that he’d been raised from the dead for forty days.
What happened in the lives of the apostles? I could see Peter talking to John, and this could be a realistic conversation. “John, John, what do we do? We’re wrong! He’s not the Messiah. John, he’s dead! John, we’ve left everything. We’ve left our business. We left our families to follow him, the king who was going to rule the world. John, he’s dead. He’s not the Messiah. How could we been so mistaken?”
Jesus was the most unlike candidate to be the Messiah of his time, because they looked for a reigning political Messiah. But Jesus said, “I came to suffer. I came to die” “Lord, you can’t! You’re the Messiah. The Messiah can’t die. You’re the son of David.” He said, “I came to die, but I’ll be raised again the third day.” They couldn’t understand him.
So the Jews thought there were two Messiahs coming once each. Jesus said, no there’s one Messiah coming twice. And this is how they arrived at that, and how Jesus was the most unlikely candidate to be the Messiah of his time.
Maybe skeptics will say, Josh a lot of people have died for a great cause. And that is true. But the great cause of the apostles died on the cross. Let me give you a little historical context to greater appreciate that statement.
After Jesus’ death the lives of the apostles were transformed to the point that they endured persecution and even martyrdom. Such strength of convictions indicates they were not just claiming that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them in order to receive some personal benefit, but they really believed it.
If the resurrection wasn’t true, the apostles would have to know it, and then you would have to say this: they not only died for a lie, but they knew it was a lie. If that were true, that would be eleven miracles greater than the miracle of the resurrection.
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