Jesus Christ: Resurrection and Ascension

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The resurrection of Jesus, with its completion in the ascension, setting the seal of the Father’s acceptance on His finished work on earth, and marking the decisive change from His state of humiliation to that of exaltation, may be called in a true sense the corner stone of Christianity (compare 1Co 15:14,17). It was on the preaching of Christ crucified and risen that the Christian church was founded (e.g. Ac 2:32-36; 1Co 15:3,4). Professor Harnack would distinguish between "the Easter faith" (that Jesus lives with God) and "the Easter message," but the church never had any Easter faith apart from the Easter message. The subversion of the fact of the resurrection is therefore a first task to which unbelief addresses itself. The modern spirit rules it out a priori as miraculous. The historical fact is denied, and innumerable theories (imposture, theories of swoon, of hallucination, mythical theories, spiritualistic theories, etc.) are invented to explain the belief. None of these theories can stand calm examination (see the writer’s work, The Resurrection of Jesus). The objections are but small dust of the balance compared with the strength of the evidence for the fact. From the standpoint of faith, the resurrection of Jesus is the most credible of events. If Jesus was indeed such an One as the gospel history declares Him to be, it was impossible that death should hold Him (Ac 2:24). The resurrection, in turn, confirms His claim to be the Son of God (Ro 1:4).

The Resurrection

(Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20; 21; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

With the narratives of the resurrection are here included as inseparably connected, those of the appearances of Jesus in Jerusalem and Galilee. The accounts will show that, while the body of Jesus was a true body, identical with that