My friend Hayduke wrote a most interesting and provocative post recently in which he offered some suggestions for the Almighty. One of them was this:

"I never did understand the need for all of this hush-hush, mysterious mumbo-jumbo about Heaven and afterlife. If it’s there, why not just show us and be done with it?!"

I responded that he had shown us through Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension into Heaven. To which Jim (Hayduke) replied:

"I wish I had your faith. How do you know the disciples didn't just make the whole thing up?"

The popular historian Will Durant, himself not a Christian, wrote concerning Christ's historical validity, "The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity" (Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 3, p. 555). And again, "That a few simple men should in one generation have INVENTED so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels" (Ibid., p. 557).

Every one of the Apostles, with the exception of John, met a terrible death, not to mention being continuously imprisoned and beaten for spreading the Good News or the Gospel. History relates, for example, that Paul was beheaded, and Peter was crucified, (He requested, by the way, that he be crucified upside down because he did not consider himself worthy to die as his Savior had died.)

Would it not therefore follow that at least one of the thirteen original Apostles in order to save himself would have admitted that the whole thing was a hoax? That has been the case in every hoax of which I have knowledge. One of the parties always ultimately confesses.

Now, let's consider the Apostles themselves prior to Christ's resurrection and ascension. They did not understand why Christ was going to be crucified; in fact, they really were not even 100% sure that He was the son of God.

We know that the disciples were very disillusioned by Jesus' death. The man they had followed around Israel for three years, whom they believed would be the next ruler of the nation, had just been crucified. They had expected a Messiah who would be king, not a criminal to be convicted and killed in the most humiliating way. They probably felt that their lives had been wasted for the past few years and they had publicly been made fools. Of course, they realized that what they had experienced with Christ for the last three years was significant.

But how and what was significant, they did not yet understand. The disciples scattered when Christ was arrested in the garden of Gethsemene (Mrk 14:50ff). Peter denied ever knowing Jesus during his "trial" on the night before his crucifixion (Mrk 14:66ff). The disciples were ready to return to their lives as fishermen because they thought it was over (Jn 21:3).

But after seeing the resurrected Jesus, already transformed and later witnessing his ascension into Heaven, they finally understood what He had meant when He said, "My kingdom is not of this world....I go to prepare a place for you; and if I go to prepare a place for you... I shall surely return."

From that point forward, the Apostles were changed men. They were ready to suffer any punishment, to endure any indignity, to die the most terrible of deaths, all for the privilege of telling the world that Jesus died for our sins so that we too could have eternal life.

That's the message, Jim. And I don't believe it's a hoax.