The Faults in the Framing: The Disciples Did Not Steal the Body of Jesus (Part 1)

And how do we know the tomb was even empty? The four gospels corroborate that the tomb was, in fact, empty. The empty tomb is also mentioned in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (15:3-8), a sermon by Paul (Acts 13:36-37), and Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:29-32.[3] The fact of the empty tomb cannot be refuted historically, as it would only take the body of Jesus to squash any movement against the Jewish authorities, much less be the catalyst of a new religion. It was capital punishment to rob a tomb according to an archeological discovery in 1878 of a stone slab pronouncing this edict from an emperor from the time that Jesus lived, likely because of the events surrounding Jesus’s resurrection and to prevent any other claims of so-called resurrections.[4] This archeological discovery only strengthens that for certain, the tomb was empty. If the tomb was not empty, there is no gospel. We were dead in our sins, unable to save ourselves from the wrath of God to come, and because Christ was resurrected, we too can be resurrected in Christ and avoid eternity without God. Because of Jesus, we can participate in forever with our Creator, the God and Father of all.