The Apostles had not grasped the statements of Christ in such a way as to lead them to look with confidence for His return, or to gather hope of His resurrection.  On the contrary, they did not expect His resurrection, and, when they heard of it, they could not believe it to be real.[133] Yet, convinced by the evidence of their own senses, they came to hold it fast as the fact that crowned all their hopes in life and death.  Although the preaching of “Jesus and the Resurrection” exposed them to persecution and martyrdom, they nevertheless continued to proclaim a risen Lord.  “If Christ is not risen,” says Paul, “then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain,"[134] and he goes on to admit that if the Resurrection had not taken place, he was altogether mistaken in the view of God’s character set forth in his preaching and epistles.  Peter makes a similar statement:  “We are begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."[135] It is His victory over death that confirms the truth of His claims.  He is proved to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.[136] So important a fact was it regarded in connection with their work, that when they met to select a successor to Judas in the apostolic college, it was held to be essential that no one should be appointed who was not able to testify that he had seen the risen Lord.[137] Paul regarded this doctrine as so necessary, that he made it the basis of faith and salvation:  “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."[138]

The life of Paul is an unanswerable argument for the truth of the Resurrection.  Not only did he preach this as the central doctrine of Christianity; he maintained it at the cost of all that, before his conversion, he had held dear.  He was not a man to give his faith to such a doctrine without overwhelming evidence of its truth.  As Saul of Tarsus he had been in the fullest confidence of the Jewish rulers, and knew all that they could urge against the reality of the Resurrection, but their arguments had no weight with one who had seen the risen Lord on the way to Damascus.

The importance of the Resurrection of Christ as an argument for the Divine origin of Christianity is recognised alike by those who receive and by those who reject it.  Negative criticism has assailed the doctrine and has devised ingenious theories to explain on natural grounds the testimony on which it is received.  The diversity of such explanations goes far to refute them, and their utter failure to account for the marvellous effects which the appearances of the risen Jesus produced on the witnesses, or for the place which the doctrine held in their teaching, has tended rather to establish than to discredit the reality of the Resurrection.