JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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NATURE OF RESURRECTION
The nature of Christ's resurrection is that it was a bodily resurrection.
Physical: Bodily
This means it was an actual or physical resurrection. The theory of Paulus and Strauss
that Jesus did not actually die, but that He merely fell into a swoon, from which the cool air of
the tomb and the spices revived Him, is not only blasphemous but a gross perversion of the plain
meaning of biblical terms. That Christ had actually died, is evident for various reasons:
1. The centurion and the soldiers declared Him to be dead (Mk 15:45; Jn 19:33).
2. The women came with the expectation of anointing a dead body (Mk 16:1).
3. The blood and water flowed from His opened side (Jn 19:34-35). Physiologists and
physicist agree that such a condition of the vital organs, including the heart, precludes the
possibility of swoon, and proves death.
4. He did not appear to His disciples on the third day as one half-dead, but as a mighty
conqueror of death.
5. Christ Himself declared that He was dead (Rev 1:18).
A Bodily Resurrection
Jesus resurrection was a bodily resurrection. Many who claim to believe in the
resurrection of Christ refuse to believe that His was a bodily resurrection. They explain His death
and resurrection as being merely the two sides of the one experience: in His death He passed out
of His physical life, and in His resurrection He passed into His spiritual life. Thus His death and
resurrection are declared to be simultaneous events.
The appearances of Christ are explained as those of His spirit or as mere subjective
hallucinations. Except for differences in the explanation of Christ's post-resurrection
appearances, this theory is held by the destructive critics of our day, by the Millennial Dawnists,
or Jehovah's Witnesses, by the Christian Scientists, and others. Many explain the disappearance
of Christ's body by suggesting that it may have been dissolved into gases, or that it may be
miraculously preserved somewhere.
Proof of His Bodily Resurrection
1. Jesus Himself declared after His resurrection that He had flesh and bones.
(Lk 24:39-40)