Thomas Jefferson was not a believer.  We know that from his words. There is also the evidence of disbelief in his personal copy of the New Testament. He had gone through the gospels, deleting all passages that recorded the supernatural or claimed that Jesus was the Son of God. Jefferson's Gospel of Matthew ends with, "And he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed." That's it. No resurrection. No risen Jesus. No truth in the disciple's remembrance of events.

    But if there had been no resurrection, the world would never have heard of Jesus Christ. There would never have been a world wide movement called Christianity.  There would never have been the life-transforming message of the gospel. There would never have been a bible for Jefferson to trim with the skeptic's scissors. And you would not be reading these words. A dead first century Jew would not have been able to so radically disturb the planet.

    The good news, however, is that Jesus rose from the grave.  That is the clear message of the early church, an enterprise where many who claimed to be eye-witnesses to Jesus' resurrection were willing to die terrible deaths  because they held to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. It was the truth. It is the truth. Christ the Lord is risen. He is risen indeed!

Ben