Resurrection predictions

In an autobiography I read long ago, written, if I remember rightly by a Jewess, she recounted reading a Gospel for the first time, not knowing anything of it. As she read, she was profoundly touched by the excellence of the person of Jesus, his moral life, his wisdom and teaching – to the point that she thought this must be a prophet sent by God, like those in the Old Testament. As she read finally of his betrayal, arrest, trial and condemnation by the authorities, both religious and Roman, she grew more and more apprehensive of the outcome, wondering how God would get his prophet out of such circumstances. But when she reached the crucifixion and the death of Jesus, she closed the book, broke down in dismay and set a time of grieving for so great a man.

After that period of sorrowing, she finally picked up the Gospel again, and you can imagine her amazement, relief and joy as she read on and discovered that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples, eating and speaking with them. It led her to faith in Jesus as her Messiah and Saviour.

The fact that Jesus rose from the dead is the decisive factor in demonstrating that he was who he said he was: he was “declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead,” says the New Testament (Romans 1.4). I will share the evidence for this historic fact in the next blog; this time I want to bring out something else just as amazing: Jesus actually clearly predicted on three separate occasions that he would rise from the dead. 

Did you ever hear of someone predicting their resurrection? That just doesn’t happen! If anyone was so brazen as to make such a claim, the ensuing reality that he remained dead would quickly disillusion any who had believed him. But Jesus predicted his death and resurrection and it happened! Matthew, Mark and Luke all record these clear predictions, as well as other allusions Jesus made to it, which John also recorded. So all the Gospels contain the absolutely unique prophecy by Jesus of a humanly impossible event, which occurred three days after his death (and even the three day delay was foretold by Christ!). This has no equal in world religions, and it constitutes enough evidence to convince the most hard-minded unbeliever, if he has the honesty to face up to it. 

“Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man [i.e. himself] must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly” (Mark 8.31-32 c.f. parallels in Matthew 16.21 and Luke 9.22). Again: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day” (Matthew 17.22-23 c.f. parallel in Mark 9.31). Then a third time, Jesus took the disciples aside and said to them: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written of the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon; they will scourge him and kill him, and on the third day he will rise” (Luke 18.31-33 c.f. parallels in Matthew 20.17-19 and Mark 10.33-34).

These precise predictions are certainly among the most extraordinary facts recorded by the Gospel writers; and what is even more mind-boggling is that they turned out to be true: it all happened just as Jesus said it would.

Clive Every-Clayton