Jesus didn’t really die; someone gave him a drug that made him look like dead, and he revived in the tomb. Answer: Roman soldiers knew how to kill people, and no disciple would have been fooled by a half-drugged, beat-up Jesus into thinking he’d defeated death and inaugurated the kingdom.
When the women went to the tomb they met someone else (perhaps James, Jesus’s brother, who looked like him), and in the half light they thought it was Jesus himself. Answer: They would have noticed soon enough.
Jesus only appeared to people who believed in him. Answer: The accounts make it clear that Thomas and Paul do not belong to this category; and actually none of Jesus’s followers believed, after his death, that he really was the Messiah, let alone that he was in any sense divine.
The accounts we have are biased. Answer: So is all history, all journalism. Every photo is taken by somebody from some angle.
They began by saying, “He will be raised,” as people had done of the martyrs, and this quickly passed into saying, “He has been raised,” which was functionally equivalent. Answer: No, it wasn’t.
Lots of people have visions of someone they love who has just died; this was what happened to the disciples. Answer: They knew perfectly well about things like that, and they had language for it; they would say, “It’s his angel” or “It’s his spirit” or “his ghost.” They wouldn’t say, “He’s been raised from the dead.”
Perhaps the most popular: what actually happened was that they had some kind of rich “spiritual” experience, which they interpreted through Jewish categories. Jesus after all really was alive, spiritually, and they were still in touch with him. Answer: that is simply a description of a noble death followed by a Platonic immortality. Resurrection was and is the defeat of death, not simply a nicer description of it; and it’s something that happens some while after the moment of death, not immediately.

Three Additional Observations that support the belief that Jesus did rise from the dead.

Jewish tombs, especially those of martyrs, were venerated and often became shrines. There is no sign whatever of that having happened with Jesus’s grave.
The early church’s emphasis on the first day of the week as their special day is very hard to explain unless something striking really did happen then. A gradual or even sudden dawning of faith is hardly sufficient to explain it.
The disciples were hardly likely to go out and suffer and die for a belief that wasn’t firmly anchored in fact.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance : that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. —1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (NIV)

• Some people have been taught to

Reveal Answer

spiritual experiences.
• What is in our bibles was

Reveal Answer

before it was written down.
• Paul’s statement that Jesus “was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4) is not just the product of theological reflection, it is the fruit of his

Reveal Answer

.
• Paul wasn’t

Reveal Answer

into the Kingdom.
• He

Reveal Answer

the resurrected Lord and he surrendered.
• A person with an

Reveal Answer

is never at the mercy of a person with an

Reveal Answer

.
• We need to experience a

Reveal Answer

with the resurrected Lord.