Thirdly we have the immediate effect:  If Jesus did actually rise from the dead you would expect such an extraordinary event to have an incredible effect on the world.  Today you’d expect an event like this to be on Twitter in real time, and then for Youtube videos, blog posts, and finally the network news would catch on.

That’s the fastest news cycle we can imagine, and news of the resurrection of Jesus travelled in incredibly fast ways for their culture as well.  It transformed Peter, an illiterate fisherman into a dynamic public speaker, willing to risk his life for what he believed.  The church was born and grew at a tremendous rate.  It drew the attention of authorities who tried to squash the movement, but some of their leaders, like Paul in the Bible, and even the Roman emperor, eventually found themselves convinced it was true.

The growth of the Christian church, those first followers of Jesus, is a story of peaceful revolution is unmatched in human history.  This belief that Jesus actually did rise from the dead spread across the known world in less than 300 years…that’s Twitter speed, but in a different era.

Question: If Jesus did rise from the dead, what difference would it make to your life?  How would people see a difference?

Read John 16 and reflect – What kind of transformed life is Jesus preparing his disciples to experience?