When the resurrection of Jesus Christ is questioned by skeptics and seekers, do we know how to respond with truth and confidence?
Apologist Mark Mittelberg helps us understand why the Christian faith makes sense and how to confidently engage in conversations with skeptics.
“It’s good to have some answers and some thoughts ready, but what we need to shift towards is asking more questions of the other person. And then really listening to them.”
Mark shares a practical question to ask that helps dig into the deeper issues regarding Christ’s resurrection.
“What I often do is I’ll say, ‘I’m just curious, what do you think happened to Jesus’ body?”
“History tells us very clearly the tomb was empty. There’s almost universal agreement that the tomb was empty; the body was missing.”
Instead of dictating truth, Mark encourages us to hear out skeptic’s beliefs. In this example that could mean asking, ‘what’s your alternative theory?’
“You can just of lead them into that discussion.”
The alternate theories that people come up with, pale in comparison to the truth. Mark shares a few of these theories,
“If they say, ‘the Romans stole the body, or the Jewish leaders stole the body.’ That makes no sense at all; they’re the ones that conspired to put him in the grave, they didn’t want him out of the grave.”
“‘Well the disciples did it!’ The disciples were freaked out and cowering in a little shack somewhere. They were scared to death; Peter had just denied he even knew Jesus three times, he was certainly not in a good state of mind to say,
‘I’m going to go and get past a bunch of Roman guards, roll a stone away and steal a dead messiah, then pretend like a resurrection happened so I can be persecuted the rest of my life.’
“The alternative theories don’t take you anywhere.”
These questions not only lead to compelling faith discussions, but leads people directly to the truth about Christianity.
