Peter and John had been arrested and told by the religious authorities not to speak nor teach in the name of Jesus.
However, in the New Testament Book of Acts, chapter 4 verse 33, it says: “With great power the Apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”
What motivated them to preach with such power?
If it was true, as was rumoured, that the disciples had come in the night and stole the body of Jesus from the burial tomb, would this fraud spur them to preach the resurrection with such power?
Perhaps they adopted the philosophy that we live in a universe where strange and unexplained things can happen.
Resurrections should be expected once in a while. Reincarnation is just as possible as a resurrection. Evolution might be possible given enough time and enough lucky lightning strikes into a primeval soup to produce the first living cell, which evolved into plant and animal life and, finally, man.
It’s possible – anything is possible in such a universe.
Would this kind of thinking have produced what we read in Acts chapter 4 verse 33, the “mega” power preaching of the Resurrection of Jesus?
The answer is, not really! The real reason is that their preaching was born from a conviction that Jesus was alive from the dead.
Jesus had shown Himself alive after His suffering and death by many infallible proofs, and these men were eyewitnesses, and they were reliable eyewitnesses.
If they were known to be shifty and told exaggerated stories, their witness would hardly be credible, but they were known to be men of God and had integrity. Their lives and their message corresponded.
Eyewitness
I was once an eyewitness to an accident. A lady stepped off a Toronto transit streetcar and fell into the street. I was in a delivery van overlooking the whole scene.
I jumped out to go to her aid. She seemed to be in considerable pain. Two police officers came and took charge. The streetcar conductor took my name, address, and phone number.
Over a year later I was summoned to the York County Court House in downtown Toronto to give testimony to what I had seen.
The lawyer acting on the lady’s behalf seemed pleased that I was a minister and asked me to wear clergy attire, which presumably would enhance my credibility with the judge.
Since I was a nonconformist minister I only wore a regular suit and tie, so we had to rely only on my testimony.
Later I received the judge’s report in which he had awarded the lady damages for injury suffered and for loss of time from work. I was rather pleased to read that he regarded me to be a reliable witness in the case.
Well, the Apostles were reliable witnesses; they knew what they had seen and spoke with great conviction and power.
What they preached was not only objectively true but became subjectively convincing when empowered by God’s Holy Spirit so that many people believed in the Lord.
Can we living in 2015 still believe in the resurrection of Jesus?
Some theologians have explained that religious events of this nature could occur in the realm of faith or in pre-history, but not in real history.
On April 15, 2006, one clergyman was quoted in the Winnipeg Free Press as saying the resurrection story is a “spiritual metaphor.” If you find such views helpful, I would be very distressed for you.
It is quite astonishing that the Free Press would feature such a negative and agnostic view on the Saturday just before Easter Sunday, when we observe the most important event in human
history: the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead!
This is not a minor matter because eternal destinies are at stake. The Scripture says, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans chapter 10 verse 9).
Lorne Moorhead is a retired pastor living in Flin Flon.
