The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead on the 3rd day is the cornerstone of Christian faith. Without this key historical fact Christianity crumbles to the ground, it is nothing more than a bunch of crazy people who are willing to sacrifice their own comfort and pleasure to gain a fictional eternity with a dead man.<\/p>\n
Let’s take a brief look at 5 false resurrection theories. If you’d like to study them in more detail apologist Peter Kreft analyzes theories 1-4 in a series of blog posts here.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This theory supposes that everyone who said they saw Jesus alive after his resurrection was hallucinating. Somehow all the disciples and many others managed to have the same hallucination of Jesus risen from the grave. This may be the weakest of the 5 theories as it’s nearly impossible to imagine that everyone could have the same hallucination. Paul tells us that Jesus appeared to more than 500 people (1 cor 15:6) Could it be that those 500 plus people all suffered the same delusion?<\/p>\n Furthermore, there is absolutely no sign of psychiatric problems with the disciples either before or after the resurrection. None of them display classic signs of schizophrenia but rather show very normal and healthy patterns of thinking in their behavior and in their writing.<\/p>\n If Christ only appeared to one person who then related it to others, we might be able to plausibly assume that it was a hallucination or a vision. However, since he appeared to hundreds of people over a period of several weeks we must rule out the idea that his resurrection was a figment of the imagination of over 500 people.<\/p>\n Peter Kreft writes:<\/p>\n The five hundred saw Christ together, at the same time and place. This is even more remarkable than five hundred private “hallucinations” at different times and places of the same Jesus. Five hundred separate Elvis sightings may be dismissed, but if five hundred simple fishermen in Maine saw, touched, and talked with him at once, in the same town, that would be a different matter. 1)<\/sup>Real Encounter: 13 Reasons Jesus\u2019 Disciples Did Not Hallucinate<\/a><\/span>Theory #1 Hallucination<\/h2>\n