After His resurrection, Jesus spent 40 days showing His resurrected body to His apostles and to other disciples. He appeared to His disciples multiple times and had this ability to show up wherever and whenever He wanted, and locked doors were no problem for Him. In one incident, Thomas was not with the other ten, and they all believed, except Thomas. Thomas needed to physically see and touch Jesus to believe it. A week later, Jesus showed up and specifically called out Thomas to touch His wounds; there, Thomas made the first declaration of Jesus as God recorded.
But before these two incidents, on the very day of Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus met two disciples walking away from Jerusalem, noting their very somber state. They were totally stunned at how Jesus was hailed a hero and executed in a span of a few days, and then Jesus, who hid His identity from them, began to explain how all these events were the fulfillment of Scripture, starting with Moses. It was the greatest Bible study of all time, and the two insisted on Jesus staying to eat with them. So He did, and the moment He broke the bread, He disappeared, and they realized it was Him.
Paul reports these sightings and then adds that at one time, 500 had seen Him at once, and at the time of the writing of 1 Corinthians, most of these 500 were still alive. What does that mean? It means Paul said to check him out if someone didn’t believe him.
Many skeptics will go out of their way to say, “Why didn’t Jesus show Himself publicly?” Answer: He did. But why didn’t the Romans take notice? The Roman Empire didn’t care about any of this. Those in Judea were only concerned about law and order. They didn’t care about any of the Jewish religion or rituals as long as they brought in tax dollars and stayed peaceful. And they certainly weren’t going to be bothered with the claims of a man coming back from the dead, except maybe those who saw Him and ended up directly involved in what Jesus was doing. I imagine the centurion who realized who Jesus was when He died would have been very intrigued when the resurrection claims started going around.
It is also worth noting that people didn’t go spreading word about Jesus until Pentecost after Jesus ascended. They all talked among each other, but there was no widespread public sharing about it for those first 50 days. Why? Several reasons. One is that they were still in shock about the whole thing. They were not waiting at the tomb for Jesus to rise as He predicted, so the mere fact that He did rise was just so stunning to them that they could only share with each other. Another reason is that just a few days before, the whole city was shouting for Jesus’ death, and just mentioning Him in public would draw the attention of those who had just gotten Jesus killed. So they weren’t about to go publicly share about this either. But then Pentecost comes and the Holy Spirit comes down, and then it was training wheels off and they went and went BIG. The way historians record the spread of the church matches precisely with how the Bible describes it.
Jesus was not about proving to everyone that He was God, but He provided enough evidence that no one honestly evaluating it could deny its validity. The resurrection of Christ is the most verifiable ancient historical account, and frankly, I would argue even more verifiable than today’s events. Jesus appeared to many different witnesses, and among them were unbelievers. What does that mean? Jesus had hostile witnesses, which means it wasn’t just people who only believed in Him who saw it. No conspiracy could be claimed because a hostile witness could easily refute what was claimed if they were there. But no one ever could stand up and give an eyewitness testimony of anything being faked. Unlike any other myth, counterfeit messiah, or false prophet, Jesus did His events publicly so there would be witnesses. There were no witnesses for Joseph Smith or Muhammad. Everyone else had a private revelation that could not be accounted for, but Jesus showed Himself publicly and went above and beyond any quorum needed for validation.
It is impossible for 500 people to have the same hallucination. It is impossible for multiple people to get the same hallucination multiple times. Jesus did not have a twin brother who pretended to be Him. The body was not stolen, and Jesus did not actually avoid death and came back resurrected at full strength if he just “swooned.” It’s also worth noting that nothing is said about any scars from the whips or even the crown of thorns, just the nails and spear. Jesus showed up in His physical body over 40 days, but He had two jobs to do before He would ascend to heaven. That’s for next week.
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