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If you were planning to fool a bunch of people that an event happened (when it actually did not happen), then how would you go about doing it? Experts on conspiracy theories say that if you want a conspiracy to work, then you want to make the event as private as possible, and you want to include the smallest number of people as possible. Otherwise, it will be a failed conspiracy because those factors would increase the chance of being caught in a lie. Let us now run the reports of Jesus’s appearances after His death through this filter of “privacy” and “few in number.” Eminent Bible Scholar Peter Williams has meticulously documented how public these events were. He writes, “The resurrected Jesus is recorded as appearing in Judea (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:31, 36) and in Galilee (Mt 28:16–20; Jn 21:1–23), in town (Lk 24:36) and countryside (Lk 24:15), indoors (Lk 24:36) and outdoors (Mt 28:9,16; Lk 24:15; Jn 21:1–23), in the morning (Jn 21:1–23) and the evening (Lk 24:29,36; Jn 20:19), by prior appointment (Mt 28:16) and without prior appointment (Mt 28:9; Lk 24:15,34,36; Jn 21:1–23), close (Mt 28:9, 19; Lk 24:15,36; Jn 21:9–23) and distant (Jn 21:4–8), on a hill (Mt 28:16) and by a lake (Jn 21:4), to groups of men (Jn 21:2; 1 Cor 15:5,7) and groups of women (Mt 28:9), to individuals (Lk 24:34; 1 Cor 15:5,7–8) and groups of up to five hundred (1 Cor 15:6), sitting (Jn 21:15 implied), standing (Jn 21:4), walking (Lk 24:15; Jn 21:20–22), eating (Lk 24:43; Jn 21:15), and always talking (Mt 28:9–10, 18–20; Lk 24:17–30, 36–49; Jn. 20:15-17, 19-29; 21;6-22)” (from “Hope in Times of Fear” by Tim Keller,pg.10).
Where did they see Jesus after He had died? They saw Jesus, in laymen’s terms, “Here, There, and Everywhere!” Who saw Jesus after He had died? Lots of different people saw Jesus after He had died.
What is the point? The point is this: If the disciples were making up Jesus’s appearances after He had died for the purpose of deceiving others, then they were hurting their case because they have Him reportedly appearing in so many different public places among so many different people (the Apostle Paul said that Jesus appeared to “over 500 people, many of whom are still alive today…” in 1 Corinthians 15:6). It would be too easy to falsify these events with these many appearances among this many people. Proving His appearances as false would be as easy as sliced butter. The disciples would have served their supposed false cause better by having the story that Jesus appeared one time, in a private room, to one or two disciples. This, however, is not the case for the appearances of Jesus Christ. I want to argue that one evidence that His appearances are real (and there are many sets of evidences not mentioned in this article) is that Jesus lived publicly, He taught and performed miracles publicly, He was beaten and crucified publicly, and then He was placed in a public tomb (where anyone could find Him), He was then not found in that public tomb, and then He began to appear publicly in many settings to many individuals. Privacy does not define the birth, life, death, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus Christ. While it has been noted in several scholarly works that naturalistic explanations surrounding Christ’s resurrection have all failed, we can take the famous Sherlock Holmes’s statement to heart: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”