risen from the dead

All of the false “religions” hate the Christians because they serve a living God.  Their gods came and spoke some ideas and then died, they don’t believe a god can live for eternity.  When Jesus rose from the dead the soldiers that were guarding the tomb saw Him before they “fell out”.  When they came to their senses they went and told the high priest.
 
Mathew 28:12-13 When the elders heard of the resurrection of Jesus, they paid the guards a large sum of money.  They instructed the guards to lie and tell everyone that His disciples came and stole the body of Jesus.
 
Jesus had to be raised from the dead or He would be guilty of sin and be in hell forever.  Before the death and resurrection of Christ, everything in the temple had to be done every year because the blood of animals cannot remove sin, it can only cover it.  Jesus has become our High Priest, He had to be resurrected in order to go back to heaven and purify the heavenly utensils.  After He used His blood to cleanse them, our sins would be blotted out, Jesus was the final sacrifice under the Abrahamic covenant.  If He had not risen from the dead and gone into heaven, none of us would ever see heaven for ourselves.
 
Mark 16:11 When the women told the disciples that they saw Jesus after His resurrection, none of them believed their report.
 
Jesus had to appear to them and He got in their faces.  How could they preach the resurrection if they themselves didn’t believe it?  When He was with them He told them how He would be sacrificed and raised up on the third day.  Despite watching Him perform all those miracles they still didn’t believe what He told them.  Jesus had only one recourse, He had to keep speaking the Word till faith came.  They didn’t completely believe until the Holy Spirit came to take over where Jesus left off.
 
John 20:29 Jesus said to Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed: blessed (empowered to prosper) are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
 
The apostles saw Jesus after He rose from the dead and were blessed, we have not seen Him but we are just as blessed as they were.  They had the spirit of eye witness, we have the spirit of faith fed to us by the Holy Ghost.  Every man who so desires can have the witness of the Holy Spirit if they choose to.
 
Romans 10:9, 17 If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.  So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
 
Anybody can have faith, God gives every man his measure of faith.  Some do little with it and others set out to develop it.  Faith is like muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.  I have absolutely no doubt Jesus was raised from the dead, further more, I believe He will raise my body from the grave if He should tarry.  Jesus is risen, Jesus is alive and died for all of us.  Selah.

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