Someone has said "All the world's great leaders are dead Ceasar, Napoleon, Luther, Calvin and Roosevelt, and I don't feel so well myself I" Surely all the founders of the world's great religions are dead, with one notable exception. Jesus the Christ, the only Savior of the world, is indeed alive. The fact that He alone has conquered the grave makes Christianity unique. Christ alone has battled man's mortal enemies: sin, death and hell and rose the eternal victor!

Consider the tremendous contrast in the prominence given to the death Of the world's great men and the death of Christ. For example, here is the way Napoleon Bonaparte's death is recorded in the Encyclopedia Bratinnia, "He died on the morning of May 5, in his fifty-second year. His body was dressed in his favorite uniform. He was buried in a lovely spot near a spring, shaded by two weeping willows. He had often walked there. 'Here lies' was on the stone, no name."

Treavor in his History of Ancient Civilization, says about Jesus the Christ, "In the later years of Tiberius, probably soon after A.D. 30, occurred in Judea an event unnoticed by the Romans, the crucifixion of Jesus. Yet this seemingly insignificant affair was to become the central event in future Western history. The despised Galilean was destined to triumph over all the gods and emperors -of the Roman world."

How can this fact be accounted for? Christ gave the answer, which no one understood, before He died and rose from the grave,

"I have to go to Jerusalem, I have to suffer at the hands of the chief priests, the scribes and the elders. I have to be killed and I have to rise again from the dead on the third day." (Mt. 16:21).

Christ's death is important and different from all others because it is the second most important event in the history of the world. The major reason why the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world was so that He could die for sinners like you and me. He died the death that we deserved so that our sins might be forgiven, so that we would no longer live for self, but for Him who loved us so much that He died for us, and so that we might be able to go the heaven one day. "The wages of sin is death!" This is an eternal fact! If God had not been willing, in loving mercy, to send His beloved Son to die in our place each of us personally would have to die and go to hell and pay for our sins. Therefore there would be no hope for any of us, just as there is no hope for those who refuse to receive, in faith believing, the wonderful gift of a loving God.

Even though Jesus was willing to die for us, even though He promised life eternal to all who believe, even though He said, "Your brother shall rise again!". Martha said to Him, 'I know that

he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the Resurrection, and the life, he who believes on me shall live even if he dies; and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die,"' (Jh II).

The promises Jesus gave of life eternal; the promise that, "In my Father's house are many mansions, I am going to make ready a place for you... And I will come again, so that where I am you may be also," would not be worth a hill of beans, save for one great fact. Which is most difficult to believe, but none the less the greatest event in the history of the world, the historical bodily resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

Had sin, death and hell been able to hold Him, His promises to us concerning everything would be tarnished, and those of hope beyond the grave would be worthless. Why do you suppose Satan and his agents have attacked the Resurrection so ferociously these past two thousand years since that first Easter morning? Satan's no fool! He knows that when honest persons hear that Jesus could not be done-in by sins, death, Hell and Satan people will come to realize that Jesus can deliver on His promise of life eternal to all who believe. Surely since Jesus was able to raise Lazarus, and several others and conquer the grave Himself, even dull minds like mine, come to realize that what He's done for others He can do for me, and then faith is born! Therefore to stop the hope of reasonable persons, Satan has to discredit the Resurrection. There are many ways that he has tried to do this, and though you have no doubt heard them before, for they are general knowledge, let me refresh your mind on just a few of them.

Let me state before we consider these theories that it is far more difficult to believe them as to why Jesus did not rise from the grave that it is to accept the truth of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is an historically provable fact, these theories are not. I heard a tape by one of the top atomic scientists in the United States, who worked on the invention of the Atomic Bomb, since turned evangelist say, "There is more historical evidence in more public libraries around the world, even in Russia, that Jesus Christ rose from the grave than there is that George Washington was ever President of the United States!" There is a saying that truth is stranger than fiction." Since this is true, many believe the fiction which tries to disprove the Resurrection than to accept the fact of it. Later we shall consider why this is so.

The first hoax they try to get people to believe is that Jesus really was not dead. They assert that He was unconscious or in a coma. What can we say? Well the Roman Centurions were experts and putting persons to death. Before the Centurion, in charge of the crucifixion, told Pilate that Jesus was dead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus side with a spear just to make sure. For were the Centurion wrong not only his job would be on the line, but his life as well. The witnesses report that from the spear wound in His side blood and water immediately flowed. If this is not proof enough, consider the Jewish embalming done by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. The strong aroma of the myrrh and the alose ( a whole hundred pounds of it) put next to the body with linen cloth to slow down decay, would soon have over. come Him in the close confines of the grave, were He yet alive which He was not.

Since not too many believe this another concoction is that the women and the disciples, in their grief being beside themselves, went to the wrong grave or even the wrong cemetery. Have you ever heard such nonsense? Were this the case all the enemies of the Resurrection would have had to do is go to the right cemetery and produce the body of Jesus and the hoax would le finished. They would have loved to have been able to do this, but Resurrected bodies are no longer in graves so that they can be exhumed.

One of the more famous tales is that the disciples of Jesus stole His body and then merely claimed that He rose from the grave. What about the Roman Soldiers guarding the grave? Here again all that those supporting such folly would have to do is seek and find the body and disprove the Resurrection once for all.

Then there is the perverted idea that the Disciples so longed for the Resurrection of their Master that they out of psychological need perpetrated the story that He was alive. This just does not fit the facts! Even though Jesus had told them that He was the Resurrection and the life, and that He would rise again in three days, rising from the grave just does not ordinarily happen. And even though their Teacher was no ordinary person, it never dawned on their finite minds that He really was talking about living beyond ,he grave. So sure were they that it was all over that they went back to their former jobs, dejected and full of sorrow with broken hearts and shattered dreams. Since these things are true the idea of making up a story about the Resurrection never entered their minds. In fact some of their number just could not come to believe the Good News after having been told by the women and their fellow Disciples that Jesus was alive. So they had to see for themselves.

Finally there is the perversion that they did not see the Ressurrected Jesus, but a ghost. Well suffice it to say that ghosts do not appear under real historically provable circumstances like Jesus was seen by so very many. Who ever heard of ones being able to touch a ghost, to say nothing of placing their real fingers in the nail marks on the ghost hand. Come now you don't believe that do you? When did a ghost ever appear to over five hundred wide awake human beings at one time?

We learn from I Corinthians 15, that Paul invited the skeptics of his day to investigate for themselves and speak with the witnesses of the Resurrection most of whom were then still alive.

Why then did we believers believe in the historical bodily Resurrection of Jesus? C.S. Lewis, the great British skeptic, turned believer, once was asked how real the Ressurection of Jesus was. He replied by saying, "As real as fish and loaves." For Dr. Luke says, "Jesus has a meal of fish and bread with His disciples shortly before He ascended into heaven, (see Lk: 24),

The Bible informs us that the Disciples fled after the arrest an(i or death of Jesus, and two others had to bury Jesus. They seemed to have lost all courage and hope. For when Jesus said from the cross, "It is finished," they literally believed that it indeed was finished. Their master was dead, their hopes were shattered, their dreams were gone. With broken hearts they went back to pick up the pieces as best they could where they had left their all to become Jesus' loyal followers.

Could anything that is common to man transform these broken men, and mend their shattered ideals and empower them for the Kingdom work? I don't think so. Yet history records that something did.- Can any one honestly believe that these broken men were transformed by the lie that their Master and Lord and Savior and Friend was still in the grave and they knew it full well? Men do die for noble causes, but I have never heard of sane men being willing to die for a hoax. Have you? Yet these men willingly and gladly suffered and died for Jesus sake. Further, were it not for the Resurrection and the Holy Spirit which their alive, resurrected, ascended Savior sent to them what in the world gave these weak, unlearned men the desire and the power to transform the world for Jesus?

The transformed Saul of Tarsus gives the reason, "But now has Christ been raised from the dead .... And if any man be in Christ he is a new creation, the old has passed away; behold new things have come," (I Cor 15:20 & 11 Cor 5:17).

Inspite of all the evidence to the contrary why do so many people persist in their refusal to believe the Resurrection? Sinful man does not like the knowledge that each and every one of us is going to have to stand before a just and holy god and give an account of our lives. I am convinced that millions would gladly give their right arms if they could be assured that we humans die like a dog and that's all there is to it. Then we could eat, drink, and be merry with no fear of Judgment, and hell and God. But even the powerful lie of Satan that there is no Resurrection of Christ Jesus, cannot deaden the innate feeling of men that there must be a heaven to gain and a hell to avoid; there just has to be a day coming when the good will be rewarded and the evil punished. Man's God given sense of justice demands it.

On the other hand, we who believe in the literal bodily Resurrection of Jesus who are looking forward to our own resurrection one day, should work all the more faithfully, knowing that to die in Christ is gain; and to receive the rewards that God has promised to His faithful servants.

My friends, if your hope is not in Jesus the Christ, can you honestly say that you have any hope, especially in these days considering the way the world is going?