Some years ago my daughter dropped her brand new iPhone down the toilet. At the time she was away at a concert in London. It was some time before she could get home and make some attempt to dry it out. Sadly, by that stage it was well and truly dead and no amount of immersing in rice and leaving for days in the airing cupboard made the slightest difference. Although she longed for it to come back to life, she learned that when a thing is dead there really is no going back.
When Jesus died he really was dead and his friends knew it. However much they wished that he was still alive, they knew it was hopeless. They gave him a proper burial and when they did go to his grave it was to mourn, not to see him come out. So, all the more surprising that suddenly that was exactly what they started to say had happened. Over several weeks hundreds said the same thing: Jesus was alive. This was not wish fulfillment or hallucination but rather conviction. The stories of Jesus’ resurrection just wouldn’t go away, and 2000 years on they still won’t.
It is no longer possible to listen to this story in the iOS version of the app but you can do so by subscribing to Turn The Page in Apple podcasts.
