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The Fundamentals was the appearance of one who never had been really dead and was now merely resuscitated. This theory of Paulus has been brought forward and revamped by various rational- istic writers in our own time and seems to be a favorite theory of those who today would deny the reality of our Lord’s resurrection. To sustain this view, appeal has been made to the short time Jesus hung upon the cross and to the fact that history tells us of one in the time of Josephus taken down from the cross and nursed back to life. But to this we an- swer: ( 1 ). Remember the events preceding the crucifixion; the agony in the garden of Gethsemane; the awful ordeal of the four trials; the scourging and the consequent physical condition in which all this left Jesus. Remember too the water and the blood that poured from His pierced side. (2). In the second place, we reply, His enemies would have taken, and did take, all necessary precautions against such a thing as this happening. (John 19:34.) (3). We reply, in the third place, if Jesus had been merely resuscitated, He would have been so weak, such an utter physical wreck, that His re-appear- ance would have been measured at its real value, and the moral transformation in the disciples, for which we are try- ing to account, would still remain unaccounted for. The of- ficer in the time of Josephus, who is cited in proof, though brought back to life, was an utter physical wreck. ( 4 ). We reply in the fourth place, if brought back to life, the Apostles and friends of Jesus, who are the ones who are supposed to have brought Him back to life, would have known how they brought Him back to life, and that it was not a case of resur- rection but of resuscitation, and the main fact to be accounted for, namely, the change in themselves would remain unac- counted for. The attempted explanation is an explanation that does not explain. (S). In the fifth place, we reply, that the moral difficulty is the greatest of all, for if it was really a case of resuscitation, then Jesus tried to palm Himself off as one risen from the dead, when in reality He was nothing
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