But the most convincing affirmation of His identity was that after lying in the grave for around 48 hours, Jesus rose from the dead. Many people have tried to explain this event away with suggestions that his followers were deluded by grief, deliberate liars, or that he never really died in the first place. None of these explanations are impossible, but it does not account for why so many of his followers were willing to live in abject poverty, face horrendous persecution and even forfeit their own lives rather than denounce this truth. Being a follower of Jesus was no easy or rewarding option, yet not one of them was willing to deny their experience of seeing Him die and then rise again. It is hard to believe that they were making it up.
But it is also hard to believe that someone could just rise from the dead - unless of course they were the author of life itself, that Divine being whose power and authority brought the world into existence in the first place.