Hi, this is Hank Hennigraph, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast with another Hank Unplug Short.

For Eastern Christians, today on POSCA,

we have arrived at the culmination of Holy Week.

For Christians in the West, this Hank Unplugged Short ought to be a great reminder of what you celebrated as the apex of the Christian faith just one short week ago. Again, POSCA or Easter is the culmination of Holy Week, a culmination in which you and I, along with the body of Christ throughout the world, celebrate the ultimate game-changer. If I face hardships in life for merely human reasons, what have I gained?

For as St. Paul put it, if the dead are not raised, why not just eat and drink?

Because after all, tomorrow are just going to die?

If Christ has not been raised, said St. Paul, your faith is futile. You're still dead in your sins.

Then also, those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied, pitied more than all men. You see, without resurrection, Christianity

crumbles. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, the apostle Paul gives us a four-part argument

underscoring the irrevocable reality of the resurrection of our Savior.

He begins by passing on the creedal affirmation that Christ died. He died for our sins

according to the scriptures. This is not only a well-established fact, but in our modern age,

a scientific enlightenment, there is virtual consensus

among New Testament scholars that Christ did indeed die on the cross, that he was buried in the

tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that his death drove his disciples to despair.

In the second of this four-part argument in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, St. Paul argues that

that Jesus was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

In point of fact, the earliest Jewish response to the resurrection presupposes the empty

tomb.

And of course in the centuries following the resurrection, the fact of the empty tomb was forwarded by Christ's friends and his foes in similar fashion.

Of one thing, you and I can be absolutely certain.

Early Christianity could not have survived an identifiable tomb that contained the relics

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