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What are some of the examples shared by Dr. Groothuis which provide evidence for Jesus’ resurrection?
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Dr. Groothuis describes the lack of reasoning for any group to steal the body of Jesus or perpetuate a lie that he resurrected. The movement they were trying to squash would be revived. The disciples turned from fearfulness to boldness and would not have done that for a lie, people don’t die for lies they know to be lies. And we see the early church confirming the resurrection through their sacraments, social structures, and existence.
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Examples that provide evidence for Jesu’s resurrection are:
a) changing the Sabbath to Sunday,
b) baptism and the Lord’s Supper were incorporated into the early church until
I also believe that a solid fact that also demonstrates Jesu’s resurrection is the radical transformation of His disciples, how they died and persecuted for His cause.
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He begins with the reminder that evidence supports the trustworthiness of the New Testament. But putting that aside, he continues through a minimal facts explanation where the logical conclusion is the resurrection. He refutes alternative explanations, and even gives evidence from the early church for the truth of the resurrection.
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Using the minimal facts approach, Dr. Groothius established that even the most critical scholars agree that Jesus died, that he was buried, and that somehow his tomb became empty. Based on the previous argument that there is a Creator God, there is the possibility of miracles, even the miracle of a resurrection. In trying to account for the empty tomb, he argues that the disciples had no means to steal the body from a guarded tomb, and the Roman soldiers had no motive to hide the body elsewhere. The disciples had no reason to lie that they saw a risen Christ, since such a religion only brought them persecution and martyrdom. The other witnesses to a resurrected Christ could not have hallucinated either, since the appearances were too many and in too many different settings. Finally, the practices of the early church – the change of the Lord’s day from Saturday to Sunday, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper – were tacit indications that the early church believed in the resurrection of their Lord. This was not a later distortion of their creed.
#apologetics
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A few examples include a change in the Lord’s Day from Saturday to Sunday, the early church’s
practices are based on the resurrection of Jesus indicating that He did rise from the dead, and the identity of Jesus claiming to be God in the flesh. Jesus said exactly what happened.