JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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The Presence of Women
The mention of women in the resurrection narratives (Mk 15:40-41,47; 16:1-8) is another
indication to the authenticity of the Easter event since it makes the accounts to have a high
degree of probability of being historically correct.39 In the first place, if someone were going to
make up an account of the first witnesses to the empty tomb and the risen Christ, why would
they choose women instead of the disciples?
This is foolish in that it makes the disciples look cowardly and the women courageous.
This hardly enhances the view of the disciples in the early church. Also, the women are named
specifically. This would be foolish in fabricating a story since if these women were not actual
people, members of the early church would have wondered who knew these women and what
happened to them.
In first-century Judaism, a woman's testimony was almost worthless. A woman was not
allowed to give testimony in a court of law except on rare occasions. It makes absolutely no
sense to have invented a story and made women the first witnesses to the empty tomb since the
presence of women was an embarrassment. Yet they are included in the gospels because the
gospels are attempting to describe what actually happened.
To make bad things worse, the inclusion of one woman, Mary Magdalene, who had been
possessed by demons (Lk 8:2), is another indication of the brutal honesty of the biblical account
since such possession would have cast even more doubt on her veracity. Is it any wonder that the
disciples did not believe the women's report:
"But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them" (24:11).
Lord's Day
There is, in the second place, the Lord's Day. The Seventh Day Adventists claim that
Sunday observance originated with the pagan Romans centuries after Christ, and then quote
Catholics in such a way as to give the impression that these Catholic authorities say that "their
Roman Church, hundreds of years after Christ, made the change."40 Canright, who for many
years was a Seventh Day Adventist, shows that the Lord's Day originated with the apostles and
not with pagan or ecclesiastical Rome.41
Some who admit that the apostles changed the day, hold that they did it in order to setup
a new religion or to honor their now dead Master. But the remarkable thing about that is the fact
that the apostles were Jews; and that any Jew should turn from the observance of their timehonored
Sabbath Day, which had been given in Eden and been made a sign of their covenantrelation
with God (Ex. 31:13; Ezek. 20:12,20), for such reasons as these, is absurd. As poor
fisherman they were in no position to introduce a holiday in honor of any mere man. The origin