Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
The resurrection of Jesus is not just another religious claim—it is the claim. Christianity rises or falls with it. As Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). Everything hangs on this.
At its core, Christianity rises or falls on one question: Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
How do we answer this question? Well, let’s take a breath and ask: How do we answer any question about events in the past?
Well, when there are eyewitnesses to the claims, we generally have three options when weighing their testimony:
Deception—the witnesses were intentionally lying, fabricating a story, making it all up.
Delusion—the witnesses were confused, as in they’re just misinformed or mistaken somehow.
Devotion—the witnesses weren’t deceiving or deluded, they were simply devoted to the truth of what really happened and it’s up to us to piece together all of the information into a coherent whole.
That’s more or less the trilemma we’re left with when we consider the resurrection accounts of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The claim is that Jesus lived. He died. His tomb was found empty on the third day after His death. And His followers claimed to see Him alive. So let’s walk through the options.
First, Deception. This is the idea that Jesus’ disciples concocted the whole resurrection story. There are a number of different ways people make this case. One of the oldest examples, perhaps the oldest, is The Stolen Body Theory mentioned in the Bible itself, Matthew 28:11-15. Here it is claimed that the Jewish leaders started a rumour, that Jesus’ friends snuck into the tomb when the guards were asleep, stole His corpse, and fabricated this whole resurrection story for some sort of social or political gain or influence.
But the problems here are plenty. For one, Roman guards don’t just sleep through a grave robbery. And Jesus’ followers—frightened, scattered, teenage women among them—weren’t exactly a covert ops team. Also, if the body was stolen, why didn’t the authorities simply produce it and end the movement before it began? I mean, it’s not like Jesus’ friends ran away to some far-off country to begin this story, they started talking about Jesus’ resurrection DAYS after His public execution in the very same city it all went down! Perhaps the reason the authorities didn’t produce the corpse is because they couldn’t.
Even more compelling: why would Jesus’ followers willingly suffer for a claim they knew was a lie? They had nothing to gain and everything to lose. It is well documented that for the first 2-300 years, Christians were brutally tortured and killed for their belief in the resurrection of Jesus. How do we explain their resolve in the face of persecution? Or the way Christianity swept across the Roman Empire and reshaped the world? However you explain it, I submit to you that deception by Jesus’ friends and followers is an unlikely reason.
So, that leaves us with the second possibility. If Jesus’ followers weren’t deceivers, maybe they were deluded?
On this score, one of the more popular theories is the so-called Swoon Theory which suggests that Jesus’ didn’t actually die but fell into a swoon, a deep coma-like state, and later revived in the cool of the rock-cut tomb. So, Jesus’ friends buried Him, thinking He was dead—but He wasn’t.
But again, there are some problems here. For one, if the Romans were good at anything it was killing. We have clear records of what was involved in crucifixion and the stress it put on the body, even have archaeological excavations of nails through feet.
For another, even if Jesus had survived, the brutality of the scourging and crucifixion makes it highly unlikely that He was able to get up, move a boulder, man-handled some trained armed guards, to casually go out and hang with His friends on a Sunday.
So, The Swoon Theory has its problems.
But, okay, maybe Jesus’ friends weren’t deluded in thinking He was dead, maybe they were just deluded in thinking He came back alive.
Enter The Hallucination Theory. The basic idea here is that Jesus’ friends were so grief-stricken they began to imagine Him alive. But hallucinations are private, individual events. Yet the resurrection accounts speak of group appearances—on roads, in homes, over meals, to individuals and crowds. Not only that, this theory doesn’t explain the empty tomb.
And beyond all of that, resurrection wasn’t on the radar of first-century Jews for them to hallucinate about! Many Jews at that time believed in something like a general resurrection at the end of the world when God would raise all the righteous dead to life. But certainly not one man, in the middle of history. So, while we might struggle with the idea of resurrection—dead people don’t rise from the dead—first-century Jews knew that as well, but for them the problem was even greater. Because they didn’t just have cause to doubt it, they had religious reasons to resist it. So as hard as it is for us to accept, it was harder still for Jesus friends. And yet they did.
Yes, there are other fringe theories—wrong tombs, identical twins, misidentified bodies—but none sufficiently account for the accepted historical facts: Jesus died, the tomb was empty, His followers claimed to see Him alive, and the Christian movement exploded from the very place He was crucified.
So, in the final analysis, I think the most compelling explanation is that Jesus really did rise from the dead. His friends weren’t deceivers or deluded, they were devoted to what really happened—Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus didn’t escape death—He confronted it. Crushed it. And came back with the keys. So that the empty tomb is not an ending but the beginning of the new creation.
Now, you might say, “But Dave, resurrection isn’t exactly a simple explanation.” And I agree! Christianity doesn’t ask you to check your brain at the door. Truth invites questions. And there are very thick books written on this subject in addition to the Bible for you to consider for yourself.
But here’s what I can tell you: the resurrection of Jesus is the most stubborn, inconvenient, paradigm-shattering claim of history because it forces a decision. Will you accept it—or not?
Let me be real with you. I have more questions now than I ever have before. I work for an organisation called “Questioning Christianity.” And yet I’ve never been more sure that Jesus rose from the dead.
Because if Jesus really did rise from the dead—if He got up, walked out, spoke with friends, ate with them, showed them His scars—then you know what? Everything’s going to be okay. Because if Easter is true, then despair is on borrowed time.
So, whatever keeps you up at night… whatever weighs on your chest… whatever fear or regret or ache you’re carrying—Christianity doesn’t bypass suffering, it breaks it open and plants hope inside—because if Jesus walked out of that tomb, then it changes everything. This life is not as good as it gets and death is not the end of the story.
Here’s where Christianity is so utterly unique.
Other religions talk about an escape to some sort of afterlife, where there’s some sort of consolation for the life that has passed here on earth. But not Christianity. Jesus doesn’t say ‘escape the world’ He says ‘I’m remaking it, and it begins with my empty tomb.’ And it’s not just your body that will be resurrected, the claim is that the whole world will be resurrected. Not just consolation for a life lost, but restoration of the life you were made for in the beginning.
So it’s not escape from this life—it’s the redemption of it. Where heaven invades earth in its fulness. Justice rolls like a mighty river. And God Himself will wipe every tear from the eye as evil is undone, death is swallowed up in victory, and everything sad will come untrue.
That’s what the resurrection of Jesus means. Not hope in vain, but hope in history—grounded in the person of Jesus.
The resurrection wasn’t legend etched into some secret golden tablets buried in some hill in North America. It wasn’t mysteriously revealed in a cave to a man we have no way of getting back to, and many reasons to suspect. The death and resurrection was a historical event on full public display, which means Christianity is an open book sayin’ ‘bring it’. Come and see for yourself it is true.
Truth invites questioning, and I believe that the resurrection is not wishful thinking—it’s a waking up to the way the world really is, instilling a reasonable hope that death is not the end and bodies planted in the dirt are but seeds sown to burst forth immortal with new and eternal life.