How would you convince anyone it had happened?
Consider: if you were dropped off by a time machine a couple millennia back, and you witnessed the events leading up to the Crucifixion, and then saw incontrovertible evidence of the Resurrection (like, you took a walk with Him, or had dinner with Him, or even touched Him), what would you do in order to convince other people, and posterity, of what you had seen yourself?
You might tell a lot of people. And you’d be fearless about it, because you’d KNOW what you saw, and with Whom you had talked. People wouldn’t be able to shake your faith in what you’d seen, for the simple reason that you wouldn’t doubt what you had personally experienced.
You might start to connect up small groups of people with whom you’d shared your experiences (and some teachings that would flow from it), to keep alive the memory, and simply because you’d be so excited about it all that of course you’d follow His instructions…. which were basically to tell lots of people about Him, to love each other, to teach each other and remind each other what He had taught, etc.
You’d probably write some letters to people you hadn’t seen for awhile, to keep in touch, and remind them of the truth of what you’d experienced and what He taught, about the Father and Himself.
Some of your friends with similar experiences would write other letters, some would write biographies and histories, etc.
You’d be convinced to your dying day that what you saw really happened, that He had risen from the dead, just as He prophesied.
You would know, by the time you’d told a few people, that it was going to be very hard to convince people of the truth of what you’d seen. And you would learn to recognize that, for reasons only He understands, some people will respond to hearing the truth, and some won’t. But you would know that you should not give up, and that some people may respond later, so you’d keep trying.
You would wonder how future generations will respond, when the original witnesses are no longer on Earth, so you’d be careful to keep the books and letters they wrote intact as long as possible, and put them in faithful hands for safekeeping to the next generation. You’d be concerned, though, because knowing the history of how one generation is faithless in keeping to the teaching of the previous one (since you read the Old Testament), you know that it will take absolutely faithful people, with Divine insight and motivation, not to utterly corrupt the whole thing within a generation or two.
You might be surprised at how much effort subsequent generations have put into keeping the teaching intact…. and if you knew about it, you would count that fact as evidence of something in operation in people’s hearts and minds all that time, since, having read the Old Testament, you know it wouldn’t have happened any other way.
April 27th, 2010 12:05 am
This is great, thank you for posting this.
May 1st, 2010 11:09 am
lol sweet info man.