What would your answer be if you were asked to name the greatest event in the history of the world?

I suspect that your answer would depend on your overall worldview. A Christian, who fully understands the Gospel message, would say that the resurrection of Christ was the greatest event in history. But I don’t think any non-Christians would agree with that answer. Regardless of what their religious or ideological beliefs might be, all non-Christians have one thing in common; they don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ.

Lee Strobel has been a follower of Christ and a well-known Christian apologist for over 30 years. Before becoming a Christian, Lee was an award-winning investigative journalist and the legal editor for the Chicago Tribune. He was also a self-professed “drunk” and an “angry atheist.”  His wife, Leslie, was agnostic when they married, but later became a Christian. Leslie’s conversion to Christianity infuriated Lee to the point that he was considering a divorce.

Lee wanted the agnostic Leslie back so he devised a plan; he reasoned that if he could prove to Leslie that Christianity wasn’t true, she’d ditch her newfound faith and her new friends from church and return to her agnosticism. As an investigative journalist and Yale-educated lawyer, Lee was qualified to gather the evidence and also prosecute his case against Christianity. He rightly concluded that to successfully prove (to Leslie and the world) that Christianity was based on myths and superstition, the only thing he had to demonstrate was that the resurrection of Christ never occurred.

Lee took a two year leave of absence from his job at the Tribune and began traveling all over the world interviewing experts in many different fields. As many of you know, Lee’s research is now compiled in his best-selling book, The Case for Christ. Through his research, Lee became a firm believer in the resurrection of Christ and found that it took more faith for him to maintain his atheism than it did for him to commit to following Christ.

As Lee says, when you accept the resurrection of Christ as a historical fact, it leads to hope and transformation – “It gives me hope that as Jesus was resurrected from the dead, so I will someday be too. It gives me confidence in the teachings of Jesus, that I can apply them to my life, that they’ll make a difference in my life. They’re not just the teachings of a bright and loving individual; they’re the teachings of the Son of God himself. It means to me that Jesus deserves my worship and my allegiance. It also means that I want to spend my life helping other people see the evidence for the resurrection, that they too may experience what I’ve experienced, which is a 180-degree life change from my days as an atheist, to my days as a Christian.”

Jesus wasn’t merely resurrected; Jesus IS the resurrection! Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

At the top of my blog, I have a page titled Christian? For two-thousand years the verses on this page have been used to explain what committing one’s life to following Christ entails. The final and key verses are the following – “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10)

The resurrection of Christ is the greatest event in the history of the world!

HAPPY EASTER!