The dynamic, energized birth of the Christian Church took place at the Moment of Easter. It had enormous power. It affected human life and human history. Before we attempt to penetrate the Moment of Easter, we must first observe, measure, and deal with the effects of Easter. Scholars may well question the objectivity and the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection, but no one can doubt for a moment that something happened, the effects of which are visible, measurable, demonstrable. The Moment of Easter may have been beyond history, but its impact was not.
In this section I will attempt to lay that impact before my readers. It is an accumulation of data that I believe Christians tend to minimize. It is impressive, overwhelming evidence that needs to be spelled out and viewed in its totality. It points to the need for an explanation. It may not prove that resurrection happened, but it certainly does prove that something happened—something of significance, power, and impressive strength. The issue is so personal, so immense, so life-determining that even the most skeptical nonbeliever must give it consideration.
Effects cannot guarantee the full disclosure of the cause, but they can point to the reality of a cause. This process is considered legitimate in other areas of the human exploration into truth. Its use cannot be denied an opportunity to bring light to so central a moment of human history as Easter historically has been. Deductive reasoning shall be our tool in this section. The reader must make sure that he or she faces the limitations of this tool and understands what it cannot do. Only then will deductive reasoning be useful for what it can do.
When I was a child reading comic books, two advertisements were regular features in the chronicles of my favorite comic heroes. One was for the Charles Atlas Body Building Course, and the other was for a diet aid. Both featured dramatic pictorial evidence of before and after. In the Charles Atlas ad, a beach bully was always kicking sand into the eyes of a scrawny man who was too intimidated to protest. His manhood threatened by his ineptitude in front of his girl friend, he simply seethed and yearned for vindication. Cutting out an ad similar to the one on that page, this scrawny victim of oppression sent for the Charles Atlas Body Building Course. It arrived, and in due time he was a veritable Mr. America with bulging biceps. The final picture in the advertisement took us back to the beach sometime later. Again the bully kicked sand, but this time the muscled graduate of the Charles Atlas School belted him and ran him off the beach. Vindicated, he embraced his proud girl friend and gave thanks to the source of his newfound strength and invited hisreaders to follow his example and enroll at once so they too would no longer be pushed around.
In the reducing plan featuring a diet aid, the first picture was of an enormous woman in a ridiculous-looking bathing suit. The fat descended her legs in ripples that looked like high tide at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Her face and her body were not separated by a neck. The ad suggested that this was a photograph of Mrs. Jane Doe before she started using this diet aid. The second picture was of a svelte, trim woman with dimensions that sound like those of a beauty pageant contestant. She testified to the effectiveness of the product, citing the change in her dress size, in her husband’s attitude, and in her joy in life. She too urged the overweight reader to act at once by sending in the attached coupon.
Both of these ads were using deductive reasoning. They showed the person before using the product and then afterwards. There was a discernible, measurable change. Obviously, something had happened. They suggested that their explanation accounted for the change. The ads were effective only to the degree that the reader believed their explanations. That the advertised product produced the pictured results cannot be proved by this process. That something happened if the photographs honestly reveal the same person at two different times in the same life is indisputable. In some sense this process is like observing the wind. You can see signs of its presence, you can feel its cooling or warming breath, you can measure its impact, but the wind itself cannot be seen.
It is important that we understand the effects of the Easter Moment. We will look at people and traditionsbefore Easter and these same people and traditions after Easter. Incredible changes will be obvious. One cannot prove in this manner that the Resurrection of Jesus happened, but one can prove that something happened—something big and powerful, for it left an enormous impact upon the life and history of the world. To use a double negative, the Easter Moment cannot be nothing. It has to be something.
I would like to think of this section as a trial, an attempt to gather evidence to cause a jury to reach a verdict. So think of the following chapters as witnesses telling their story on the witness stand, trying to demonstrate that something happened at the Moment of Easter. If you as the jury decide they have made their case, perhaps you will read on.