Luke 24:21 – We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel.

1 Corinthians 15:14, 17 – And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless...and if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins.

1 Corinthians 15:19 – And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.

Luke 24:22 – Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report.

John 20:25 – They told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”

Matthew 28:12-14 – A meeting with the elders was called, and they decided to give the soldiers a large bribe. They told the soldiers, “You must say, ‘Jesus’ disciples came during the night while we were sleeping, and they stole his body.’ If the governor hears about it, we’ll stand up for you so you won’t get in trouble.” 

“There is simply no plausible natural explanation today to account for Jesus' tomb being empty. If we deny the resurrection of Jesus, we are left with an inexplicable mystery.” –William Lane Craig

“It is my pleasure that sepulchres and tombs, which have been erected as solemn memorials of ancestors or children or relatives, shall remain undisturbed in perpetuity…much rather must one pay respect to those who are buried. Let no one disturb them on any account. Otherwise it is my will that capital sentence be passed upon such person for the crime of tomb spoliation.”

John 20:18 – Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

Luke 24:30-32 – As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared! They said to each other, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?”

1 Corinthians 15:6 – After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.

“There can be no doubt, historically, that some of Jesus’s followers came to believe he was raised from the dead – no doubt whatsoever,” Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God

1 Corinthians 15:3-5 – I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.

“This is the kind of foundation-story with which a community is not at liberty to tamper. It was probably formulated within the first two or three years after Easter itself, since it was already in formulaic form when Paul ‘received’ it." -N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

Luke 24:9-10 – So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. 

“The fact that despised women, whose testimony was deemed worthless, were the chief witnesses to the fact of the empty tomb can only be plausibly explained if, like it or not, they actually were the discoverers of the empty tomb.” –William Lane Craig

Acts 2:32 – God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this.

“After the death of Jesus the entire Christian community suddenly adopted a set of beliefs that were brand-new and until that point had been unthinkable. The first Christians had a resurrection- centered view of reality.” --Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

“Every effort to account for the birth of the church apart from Jesus’ resurrection flies in the face of what we know about first-century history and culture.” --Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

“The early Christians did not invent the empty tomb and the meetings or sightings of the risen Jesus....Nobody was expecting this kind of thing; no kind of conversion experience would have invented it, no matter how guilty (or how forgiven) they felt, no matter how many hours they pored over the scriptures. To suggest otherwise is to stop doing history and enter into a fantasy world of our own.” –NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

Mark 9:31-32 – “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. He will be killed, but three days later he will rise from the dead.” They didn’t understand what he was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant.