The Case for Easter Bible Study Guide: Investigating the Evidence for the Resurrection
By Lee Strobel and Bill Butterworth
3.5/5
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About this ebook
What do the Gospel accounts actually say about Jesus' death and resurrection? How can we know the biblical accounts are accurate?
In his bestselling book The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel retraced his spiritual journey from atheism to faith by showing how the evidence he obtained from experts in the field of history, archaeology, and ancient manuscripts led him to the verdict that Jesus truly was the Son of God.
In this four-week Easter study (DVD/digital downloads sold separately), Lee investigates the story surrounding the resurrection of Jesus—and how we can know that it is true.
In each session, you'll explore:
- How to understand the differences between the Gospel accounts.
- How to use historical and medical evidence to build a strong case for Jesus' resurrection.
- Why the Gospel writers are credible when they make this claim.
- Who witnessed Jesus alive after the crucifixion and how it's clear that the early church carried on this teaching.
The Case for Easter invites you and your group to examine the evidence for yourselves and point you to the conclusion that Jesus was the Son of God who conquered the grave.
___________________
Designed for use with The Case for Christmas Video Study/The Case for Easter Video Study (sold separately). This DVD is a set of two videos to accompany The Case for Christmas Study Guide and The Case for Easter Study Guide (each guide sold separately).
Lee Strobel
Lee Strobel, former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Lee earned a journalism degree at the University of Missouri and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to study at Yale Law School, where he received a Master of Studies in Law degree. He was a journalist for fourteen years at the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, winning Illinois’ top honors for investigative reporting (which he shared with a team he led) and public service journalism from United Press International. Lee also taught First Amendment Law at Roosevelt University. A former atheist, he served as a teaching pastor at three of America’s largest churches. Lee and his wife, Leslie, have been married for more than fifty years and live in Texas. Their daughter, Alison, and son, Kyle, are also authors. Website: www.leestrobel.com
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Reviews for The Case for Easter Bible Study Guide
5 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I found the first half of this book to be especially poor, with sweeping statements and flawed reasoning. The second half - especially regarding the historical evidence was slightly more palatable but (unsurprisingly) descends into evangelical tripe.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Although I accept the identity of Jesus Christ on faith, it was interesting to read all the historical evidence of His birth, life, death, and resurrection.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This little book is excerpted from an earlier 1998 book by Lee Strobel: The Case for Christ. Like others of the series, Strobel’s MO is to interview other believing scholars and present his findings as a sort of scientific approach to uncovering the truth about Jesus.Let me start by saying that I’ve never found much inspiration in Strobel’s “The Case for …” series. It feels to me like he demeans the beauty and mystery of Christianity by trying to bring it down to earth, proving the unprovable. But when I noticed this little book attempting to prove the Christmas story, my curiosity won out. There are many valid arguments against the two conflicting birth stories in the Bible, and nothing whatsoever that I could think of as evidence for treating them literally, so I couldn’t resist.Strobel got on my wrong side right away with a blatant misquote of the Gospel of John:John, who begins his gospel by eloquently affirming the incarnation—that is, “the Word,” or Jesus, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” on the first Christmas.At least Strobel knew where to drop the quotation marks! But the reference to “the first Christmas” is misleading and untrue to John’s Gospel. John wants nothing to do with the virgin birth, instead pointing out multiple times that Jesus’ father was Joseph. Conservative Christians may read the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, and then read the incarnation story in John, and naturally try to overlay the two, but this would insult John. John’s theology is one of eternal pre-existence, not of a miraculous birth, and John clearly describes the moment of incarnation at the Jordan river … not at birth.Strobel never does provide proof of the virgin birth, but rather attempts an indirect route, disproving the debunkers. Luke tells the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth, so Strobel stokes Luke as a careful historian, pointing out many places where Luke has been proven accurate, and uses that to deflect a major problem in Luke’s report: That governor Quirinius and King Herod seem to serve simultaneously, though Herod died ten years before Quirinius arrived as governor. Strobel’s “proof” that Luke’s account is historical: a coin dated to 11 B.C., bearing Quirinius’s name. Perhaps there were two governor Quiriniuses? But the rumor is absolutely not true; there exists no such coin, and Strobel should have done his homework. Strobel also neglects to mention the obvious: we know precisely who governed Syria in the years surrounding Herod’s death. It was Quintilius.Strobel jumps into the argument over whether Isaiah prophesied a virgin birth or whether the original Hebrew says only that a child will be born to a young woman. It’s a fun argument, but totally irrelevant, because just a few verses later, Isaiah makes it clear that he’s not predicting an event hundreds of years in the future, but in his own lifetime.Strobel’s best attempt is to argue for an early writing of the Gospels and traditional authorship, then deduces that these authors surely would not misrepresent the story so quickly after Jesus lived, because there would be others around to correct them. He manages to uncover one reasonable scholar (Blomberg) who agrees with this dating. The vast majority of Bible scholars do not.Strobel concludes that everything in the scripture about the Messiah has been fulfilled, and this proves Jesus’ identity. I am growing so tired of hearing this. Any knowledgeable Jew would be totally baffled by this claim, because Jesus didn’t fulfill any of the prophecies important to them! He didn’t gather the Jews back to Jerusalem, he didn’t rebuild the Temple, he didn’t reestablish the Jews as God’s favored people, he didn’t bring world peace, he didn’t unite the entire world in worship of one God, the list goes on. Perhaps we believe Jesus will come back and do all these things someday, but can we quit saying Jesus fulfilled the prophecies? He most assuredly did not … not in the political way the Old Testament expected.I’m starting to get argumentative, so this is probably a good place to close. Can we just leave things to faith which belong in the realm of faith?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a short book written by the journalist Lee Strobel. While his main book, the Case for Christ (which I have not read) no doubt deals with what he has written here more extensively, this is still a very good and well written book outlining Strobel's investigation of who Christ was and the legitimacy of his claims. In fact, after reading this book I have developed a healthy respect for Strobel as it is clear that being a sceptic, he did not simply brush off Christianity but instead chose to investigate it fully to see whether the claims that it made where true. There are many people in the world who form opinions about a subject and simply discount all evidence to the contrary. Somebody who is willing to investigate a claim, and then be willing to change their views on a subject, to me, is a person worthy of respect.
Book preview
The Case for Easter Bible Study Guide - Lee Strobel
SESSION 1
Evidence for the Resurrection
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic . . . or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse.
–C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Introduction
For many of us, there were two stories in our childhood that captured the essence of Easter. Like the rails of a train track, the duo never intersected but ran in parallel tandem through our memories. The first was the story of the Easter Bunny. We heard tales of the happy white rabbit, dressed in human clothes, who would fill empty baskets with all sorts of our favorite chocolate candies . . . if we behaved ourselves throughout the year.
The other rail was more serious. It was the story of Jesus Christ, who died on the cross in a grotesque manner known as a crucifixion on Good Friday, but then miraculously rose from the grave on Easter Sunday to show his power over sin, death, and hell. Easter would likely find us dressed in our Sunday finest, attending a church service (whether we were regular church attenders or not), and returning home to baskets of melting chocolate while we waited for the family’s traditional Easter dinner. If we were lucky, there would be an after-dinner Easter egg hunt featuring color-dyed, hard-boiled eggs.
The Easter Bunny and the resurrection of Jesus. One is decidedly childish, while the other represents the most profound event to ever occur in human history. But for many people today, believing Jesus’ claims that he was the Son of God—and that he actually rose from the dead on the third day—is like believing the big magical bunny is real. They doubt whether the Gospel accounts can be trusted and prefer to pass off the story as a legend or mere mistake.
So, what proof do we have that Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection actually took place? How can we know that he actually was executed and died on a Roman cross those many years ago? And what does the reality of Jesus’ resurrection mean in our lives? In this first session, we will start to dig into these issues by examining the events surrounding Good Friday and, in particular, the Roman execution-style murder that took place that