Acts 26:8

ST. PAUL AND THE RESURRECTION

‘Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?’

Acts 26:8

St. Paul’s appeal to Cæsar placed Festus in a difficulty. How could he draw up the indictment? The arrival of King Agrippa II. with his sister Bernice on their congratulatory visit to Festus was opportune. Agrippa would hear the man himself, and in this twenty-sixth chapter of the Acts we have the record of the Apostle’s most impressive address. The question in the text is difficult to answer, for God is omnipotent. King Agrippa could give no answer, nor can we. But we may meditate on the fact.

I. The evidence for the Resurrection.—Jesus of Nazareth was certainly dead; and by the testimony of those who had every opportunity to ascertain the fact He was certainly alive again. Not one of the disciples expected the Saviour to rise again; it was only by the irresistible power of accumulating evidence that they were forced from their incredulity to the conviction of the truth. He was seen by five hundred men and women who could not all have been fools or fanatics. On the basis of belief in the Resurrection a large community speedily sprang up in the world. On this basis still rests the Church of the Redeemer.

II. The practical importance of the Resurrection.

(a) If no Resurrection, we must part with that absolute confidence which we feel in every single statement that the Saviour made.

(b) If no Resurrection, we are deprived of assurance that there is any connection between His death and the forgiveness of our sins.

(c) If no Resurrection, then, to say the least, Christ was mistaken about Himself.

III. If we lose hold of the Resurrection we lose hold of that great foundation-truth that Jesus is the Son of God—the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father.

—Rev. Prebendary Gordon Calthrop.

Illustration

‘On the basis of belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, with all that it involves, a large community speedily sprang up in the world, as you will gather if you read the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians—these Epistles having been written by St. Paul before any of the Gospels were issued, and only a few years after the crucifixion on Calvary. Relying on the testimony of those who had seen Jesus after He rose again from the dead—men and women, young and old people—many of them of intelligence, and standing, and culture, believed in Jesus, and were baptized into His Name, and formed the nucleus of what we now call the Christian Church.’