He is risen!

He Is Risen! · 20 April 2019

Resurrection of Christ
by Noël Coypel
This work is in the public domain.

If you are of a mind to go to a Christian church on Easter Sunday, you will most likely hear the words, “He is risen!” to which you will probably respond, “He is risen, indeed!” And you will be right.

The older I get, the more I realize that my own faith is firmly rooted in fact. Sure, there are experiences and feelings that go along with a relationship with God, but those experiences and feelings mean very little without the facts that back up my faith. I would be wretched indeed if Jesus had not risen from the tomb. Or if He had just been a fanciful fictional character in an outdated fictional book.

H.G. Wells said, “I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”

I wonder about this quote and thoughts from other non-believers who know about Jesus, but do not follow Him. I wonder how they reconcile the facts with their own decisions. After all, if this most dominating figure in history has captivated us for centuries, why do we not look closer at the facts? Why do we not dig deeper into this person who claimed to be God? Why do we just pass off the notion as ludicrous that Jesus was who He said He was, that He died and rose again, and that He wants us to follow Him?

I wonder about these questions and I realize the answer lies in a Fleetwood Mac song. God has said to us all that we can go our own way. And He said it to us from day one of human history. (Which is day six in Genesis.) So instead of looking at the facts and following where they lead, we choose to follow our own notions and go our own way. Every day.

The fact of the matter is that Jesus is risen indeed. This is not the most contested fact in history, it is the most attested fact in history. People have been trying and failing to prove it wrong for over two-thousand years. The Romans could have quashed the whole Christian movement once and for all by producing the dead body of Jesus. But they could not do it then and people cannot do it now. For Jesus is risen indeed. His body was only in the tomb a few days.

I know that people flounder in their faith. We have doubts. We wonder if the Bible is true. We wonder if Jesus is truly risen. And we are right to do so. We ought to flounder every once in a while. We ought to have doubts that God is there. Or at least we ought to question. Because as long as we truly seek the answers in those times of questioning, doubting, and floundering, we can find them. And we can know that the answers are rooted in fact. History proves again and again that the foundation of our faith is true. Just ask God to prove it. He will.

For you see, the most important words to know are just the beginning of our faith. Those words are written indelibly for all time and all people. And they are heard most loudly on Easter morning by Christians around the world.

“Jesus is risen!”
“Jesus is risen, indeed!”

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