Alive: 21 Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus ChristSample

Reason 9: Jesus' followers remained loyal to him

On the day that Jesus died, three men were crucified, and two thousand years later only one has a global movement of devoted followers willing to die as martyrs. Why? Only Jesus died and then rose from death. Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette says, “It was the conviction of the resurrection of Jesus which lifted his followers out of the despair into which his death had cast them and which led to the perpetuation of the movement begun by him. But for their profound belief that the crucified had risen from the dead and that they had seen and talked with him, the death of Jesus and even Jesus himself would probably have been all but forgotten.”

Why is it important that people continued to follow Jesus, and many began to, directly AFTER He was crucified?

Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 7 vols., The First Five Centuries (New York: Harper, 1937), 1:59.