The Christ of the Empty Tomb

Dr. James Montgomery Boice. (1938 - 2000) was a Reformed pastor and theologian. He ministered as the senior pastor and Bible teacher at the famed Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1968 until his untimely death. He was a well respected speaker in evangelical and Reformed circles and a prolific author. He later helped form the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. And in "The Christ of the Empty Tomb," Dr. Boice bestowed an outstanding and uplifting work on the Resurrection of Christ. P & R provides this wonderful work by Pastor Boice that covers: - The joy of the Resurrection truth: Jesus is alive and that reality makes all the difference - Christ died for a purpose and one of the foreknown goals was His Resurrection - The Christ's Resurrection is a vital and essential element of the Gospel. One mustn't completely rest his worldview on brute facts, nonetheless some of the facts concerning the resurrection of Christ are: 1. Numerous eyewitnesses testified under the threat of death that they saw the risen Jesus, including 500 people at one time. To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). 2. All the apostles, except John, died a horrible death knowing they saw Jesus alive from the dead. Hundreds more died because they would not recant the fact that they saw the risen Jesus. Not one Apostle recanted to save himself from a torturous death. 3. The resurrection was proclaimed in the city of Jerusalem where the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection took place. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, his enemies only had to produce his body and this new religion that they hated would be terminated before it started. 4. The conversion of the opponents of Christianity, including many Jewish Priests and Pharisees (Acts 6:7, 15:5, 20:21), can best be explained by the resurrection of Christ. The risen Jesus converted many of those who executed Him because of the overwhelming evidence of His resurrection and His many appearances. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee" (Luke 24:1-6). 5. Ancient hostile sources and extra-Biblical writers record the same facts of Christ's death and empty tomb including Josephus in his Testimonium Flavianum recorded below: Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of