Teaching Your Kids to Defend the Resurrection

                    Teaching Your Kids to Defend the Resurrection

       Our kids at some point will be released into the wild of College and secular thinking that denies the transcendence and innerency of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, the miracles of the Bible, Creation, the flood, and the resurrection and unless our children are able to defend why they believe what they believe, they will quickly lose their faith. "My parents say it is true" or "The Bible says it" will rapidly be laughed out of existence. To aid you in teaching your kids how to defend the Resurrection, that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, here are 6 easy points that you and your children can use.

   A. Apostles

         All the apostles except John died horrific deaths for proclaiming Jesus rose from the dead. You can make up a story about Jesus rising from the dead but you aren't going to die for it. Charles Colson talks about after Watergate scandal broke, they planned to all keep quiet and deny but within 18 hours everyone was squealing on the others plea bargaining to stay out of jail. Could 12 disciples really keep a conspiracy like that quiet for the rest of their lives and through torture and death. No! These cowards who all fled when Jesus was arrested soon boldly proclaimed the gospel unto death. The reason - they met the resurrected Lord.


  B. Bible

        Now I know I said how do you use the Bible as proof when people increasingly don't believe the Bible to be true. All I can say is that we have manuscripts of portions of the apostles letters that are dated to the lifetime of the people who would have around at the time of this supposed resurrection. What if I wrote a book that Elvis didn't really die because I saw him in Pigeon Forge. I would probably be ridiculed severely because the coroner, pall bearers, his wife, his children would say, "That's not true - we saw his body. We saw him put in the ground and he isn't alive." Now if it was written 100 years from now when all the eyewitnesses are dead, I might have better success. You see, as these letters were circulated about the resurrection, if they weren't true this claim wouldn't have gotten off the ground. People would have said, "No he didn't, here is his tomb and he is still in it.
       One other factor is often used to discredit the resurrection but actually supports it. The four accounts in the gospels all have variances which shows they didn't collaborate to make up a lie. Testimonies that are somewhat different in minor details but are in agreement on the main event are more acceptable in a court of law than testimonies that look like they have been rehearsed, copied, or memorized.

  C. Calendar

       Did you know that B.C. means before Christ and A.D. means in the year of our Lord in Latin. The calendar used by most if not all of the world was rearranged on the basis of Jesus Christ. There have been a lot of famous people to die in history and a lot of people to get killed unjustly or for a noble cause. But only one shaped history so much that he affected time. What was different about him? How about the fact that he rose from the dead. No one else has ever done that. Every great and famous person that ever lived, died and stayed dead.

   D. Dead Body

        Every murder or crime show has a dilemma, what do the perpetrators do with the body? We have a body dilemma in the killing of Jesus, too. Where did His body go? The myth circulating was that the disciples stole the body. How? There were armed guards stationed at the tomb with the royal stamp saying if you break this seal you die or if you soldiers fail your duty you die. As we have seen , the disciples were cowering in fear when Jesus was taken and there is no way they could have moved this huge stone without the guards hearing it. Also they wouldn't start a legend when all that was in it for them was poverty, hiding, and death. What about the Romans? If they took the body they would have just produced it to squelch this new religion which was a nuisance to them. There is no logical explanation for where the body went

    E. Empty Tomb

        All great people of history have grave sites that you can go visit. Jesus has an empty tomb but the surprising thing is that they aren't positively sure this is the right place. Why? Because the point was he was only there for a few days. The grave wasn't the focus because he wasn't there. He was and is alive.

    F. Females

      When you look at the Easter story, women are prominent. They are the witnesses of the empty tomb, they are the first to see Jesus, and they go tell the disciples who don't believe them. Why is this significant? Back in these days women were considered second - class citizens. Their witness was not acceptable in court yet these are the witnesses of the resurrection. If you were making up this, you would have men be the witnesses not women. The only plausible reason for including women is that this is how it actually happened. The only reason that the authors, the founding fathers of the church would have the women as the heroes and themselves as having no faith is that this is what really happened.