A Pattern Not Worth Repeating

I see a pattern. We ought to learn from patterns. But maybe some people don’t learn.

I’m going to use three historic examples, all within my adult memory, plus a current one. And then we’ll talk about the pattern.

archive illustration found on Pixabay

 

LA Riots— Rodney King, 1991-2

Before I start with this one, I want to go back a bit further. We lived in California during the mid-1980s. A neighbor was a police officer. I remember him telling us about an incident that had happened recently on a freeway we frequently used in the east Bay Area. I don’t remember all of the details of that incident, but there was gunfire, and I believe both an officer and the suspect were killed. The neighbor told us that the guy was on PCP. His eyes told the officers that. The guy had a gun, and a crazy look, and there was no reasoning. Guys on PCP have crazy strength and just keep going. I don’t remember for certain, but I think they had to shoot him, more than once, to take him down and stop him from menacing the public.

That story stuck with me.

Rodney King, photo from here

Now, it was the early 90s. We no longer lived in California, but it was LA where this took place. A guy named Rodney King took the police on a high-speed chase—as fast as 115 mph—for eight miles, before he got blocked and they tried to apprehend him. He resisted arrest, acted strange, laughing and waving at a police helicopter overhead, and continued to try to get away.

The officers used batons, rather than more certainly lethal weapons. (I think a taser might also have been used; King claimed a burn mark from a taser.) But he kept getting up.

What the video showed was multiple officers (four were charged) beating an apparently unarmed man, repeatedly, in what looked like excessive force.

The officers were acquitted on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, and three were acquitted of excessive force, while one was left undecided by the jury. The case had been moved out of LA County, to Simi Valley, where the jury, rather than being all or mostly black, was majority white with an Asian and a Hispanic.

The verdict of the case was the ostensible catalyst for rioting that lasted days. Many businesses were destroyed—mostly minority-owned. Billions of dollars in damages.

A later federal civil trial found two of the officers guilty of depriving Rodney King of his civil rights. But this was after the damage was done.

I’m probably one of the few Americans from that time period that never saw the video of the beating. I don’t really know why; I think I didn’t consume a great deal of TV news, and I had little kids around me all the time, and I didn’t want to see the violence.

But I heard about it, of course. And my first thought was that story of the guy near San Jose years earlier who had been on PCP.

Rodney King wasn’t tested for alcohol until hours after the arrest; results came back just under the legal limit. That means he was very likely quite impaired during the high-speed chase. Toxicology came back negative for PCP, but there was some marijuana in his system. PCP can remain in a person’s system for one to two weeks. So I think we have to assume his erratic behavior wasn’t caused by PCP. But, if you were an officer, just ending an adrenalin-charged high-speed chase to apprehend a danger to traffic, and your life and others’ had been in danger, and then the guy gets out and acts erratically and continues to resist arrest no matter what force has been inflicted—you would probably assume this was PCP or something similar, and that your life was in danger if you didn’t subdue him. [Note: PCP, along with alcohol and cocaine, was in his system at the time of his death by drowning in 2012.]

According to court reports, the officers’ defense was that they followed their training. That may be true.

Whether to follow a speeding car to pull him over, and then have an ensuing high-speed chase were decisions made without knowing the race of the person in the vehicle. Whether to subdue the resisting perpetrator, and use force to do so, were decisions made regardless of the race of the individual—who was doing what he was doing, and just happened to be the race that he was.

King was not an innocent black man who just happened to become the target of racist cops. One reason he stated for attempting to flee was that he was in violation of parole. But being a target of racism is the story that set off the riots.

I got some historical details from these two sources, plus an AI search of court proceedings:

·         “The 1992LA Riots: A Historian‘s Perspective on the Causes and Consequences” 

·        “Los Angeles Riots of 1992” Britannica 

 

Hands Up Don’t Shoot!—Michael Brown, Ferguson, Missouri, 2014

In 2014, a black man was shot and killed by police. The media claimed that he had his hands up and had said “Don’t shoot!” but the cop shot him anyway. The grand jury heard testimony that there could be a case, but the prosecutor, going through that information, chose not to prosecute, and found the officer had acted in self-defense.

Michael Brown, illustration found here

Again, this was claimed to be systemic racism against an innocent unarmed black man. But what had actually happened was much different than the media story. I wrote about it at the time, so I’ll repeat the basic story:

 A very large young man, on drugs, robs a store, shoving the (Asian) store owner on his way out with unpaid-for merchandise. Minutes later, when a report of the robbery is being sent to police officers nearby, he’s walking down the middle of the street, where he will attract the attention of law enforcement. He doesn’t take direction to get out of the street, but reaches in to a police vehicle, attacks the officer, goes for his gun, threatens his life.

When the officer shoots, still with the perpetrator looming over him within the police car, the man begins to run away. He has just represented himself as a threat; it is the officer’s duty to pursue to see where he goes, particularly because this is near residential areas; people could be harmed by this man. In Officer Wilson’s statement, he never intended to apprehend the big, dangerous man alone. He had called for backup and was just keeping eye contact. But Michael Brown turned around and started coming at the officer.

Considering the previous attempt on the officer’s life, just moments before, there were a lot of things the officer could fear: another physical attack that might knock him out; losing control of the weapon and having it used on him and on other innocent civilians. He fired several rounds at the charging man. He saw a flinch, so he knew he had hit him. He paused. Michael Brown didn’t do the normal thing—stop, hold up his empty hands, surrender. After being shot, he continued to charge at the officer. He kept charging, despite additional bullet wounds. Nothing stopped him but the final head shot—when he was within three yards of the officer.

Unarmed does not mean not dangerous. Clearly this man was dangerous and was exhibiting threatening behavior. Would it have been nice if we had some sort of instantaneous tranquilizer gun, instead of real bullets? Maybe. But when you’re up against a criminal with real bullets, you might not want to risk a slow response to his getting hit. And you might not know in the moment all the details that get examined after the fact. So officers carry guns, and I think we’re in agreement that’s for our protection and theirs.

What about Tasers? Good in some circumstances. But you have to be quite close, with all circumstances right. And there is always a chance they could still cause death. So I’m still waiting to hear what problem exists with the system.

There was one sure, certain way this tragedy could have been avoided: Michael Brown could have behaved less like a thuggish threat and more like a civilized human being.

He could have raised his hands to show he had no weapon. He could have respectfully obeyed the officer. He would probably still be alive if he had done everything wrong except for charging at Officer Wilson even after receiving bullet wounds. Stopping at any point would have saved his life.

I link to several sources within my piece; plus I referred to another historical source, both below:

·       "Contrasting Civilization and Savagery in Ferguson" December 1, 2014. 

·       “Michael Brown is killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri” This Day in History, published August 6, 2020.

 

Summer of Love—George Floyd, 2020

Remember, I’m one of the few people who never watched the Rodney King beating video. I am also one of the few who never watched the video of the officer on the neck of George Floyd. (I have seen photos and short snippets; even these, like the accompanying photo here, look shocking.) This may make me seem less informed than the ordinary person. But I think, for me, I was better able to hear facts and evidence without the emotions the video would cause.

George Floyd, held down by
Officer Derek Chauvin,
image from Wikipedia

I wrote about this quite a lot at the time, although not a lot describing the actual event, more about the aftermath—what got termed the "Summer of Love" or "mostly peaceful protests" that led to billions in property destruction. My first impression was that the story we were given by the media was accurate: that a 44-year-old white police officer, Derek Chauvin, had caused the death of a black man, George Floyd, brought into custody for using a counterfeit bill at a store, and then resisting arrest and behaving erratically. I believed the country agreed it was a bad act, while there were disagreements on what to charge, and what should be done.

As we went through the case and learned more, what we learned was that the man, George Floyd, was in bad health. And he was a drug user. And it was possible that he swallowed drugs to avoid prosecution for having them in his possession. We also eventually learned that he did not die of asphyxiation, but of heart failure. The officer was holding him down in a position that he was trained to do while waiting for paramedics, which had been called. Think back on the PCP situation and Rodney King; police have good reason to be wary of suspects behaving erratically. It may be an ironic twist that the training given to Officer Chauvin was in order to avoid the apparent police brutality in the Rodney King case.

Without argument, there was nothing in the case showing racism, and racism was not even brought up in the case. But that was the pretext for the weeks of rioting and looting, and the spread of Black Lives Matter across the country and around the world.

Below are the pieces I wrote during that first month.

·        “Don’t Mistake Rioters for Protesters” June 1, 2020 

·        “Don’t Mistake Rioters for Protesters, Part II” June 4, 2020 

·        “Chaos Is Tyranny” June 8, 2020 

·        “Those Who Stir Up to Anger vs. Those Who Inspire” July 6, 2020 

 

Deportation—Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Returned to El Salvador, April, 2025

This current story in the news this month is different in that it doesn’t involve white police and black suspects. It’s about an illegal alien from El Salvador, who was sent back along with other criminal offenders to an El Salvador prison.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, image from here

The news story claims that this was a mistake, that the man was guaranteed safety from being sent back to his home country. The media refers to him as a Maryland man, a married father.

They leave out some crucial details. He is an MS-13 gang member; this was adjudicated twice. His wife twice had protective orders against him for beating her. He was directed to leave the country in 2019. There was an order not to deport him to a particular country—but it was Guatemala, not El Salvador. A clerical error in the court papers? Well, probably not. His claim had been that a gang was threatening him and his family, which had been doing a pupusa business out of their home in El Salvador, from which he fled to the US. However, the rival gang had been destroyed since then, after President Bukele’s crackdown on gangs—changing the country from the most dangerous to one of the safest in the world. So the threat to Garcia no longer existed. And the family, previously threatened by the rival gang, was no longer in El Salvador, but were in Guatemala.

When MS-13 was designated a terrorist organization, that overrode any previous order preventing his deportation to a particular place. He was deported to the country of his origin—and citizenship—where he was wanted as an illegal gang member.

In other words, Garcia was not mistakenly deported to El Salvador; he was legally deported to his home country of El Salvador. [He has since been moved from the terrorist prison, CECOT, to a less intimidating prison.]

A federal judge took it upon himself to claim the President had no right to deport this illegal alien gang member. He ordered the plane—already in flight—to be turned around on his order. And he is trying to find the President guilty of insubordination. That means he sees the President as one of his subordinates, which is laughable.

What we do not need to worry about is ICE “kidnapping” and deporting innocent legal aliens, let alone naturalized  or native born US citizens with Hispanic surnames. [I actually know people with these needless worries.]

There were a number of sources on the more accurate details of this story. Among my favorites was an explanation to the media by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. This full 14-minute clip from C-SPAN has him answer the question near the beginning, but he adds details later as well. 

Most of the information I got came from Robert Gouveia videos, in which he went through the court documents. Here is one from two weeks ago:

  ·        “Trump Held in CONTEMPT! Kilmar Hoax SHATTERED! Poison Pill Attorney FIRED! Tish James BUSTED!” 

  

What Is the Pattern?

Someone, an enemy of civilization, looks for a narrative. They need an example case; they are ever on the lookout for such a case. In several of these (and we could have added Trayvon Martin, given time and space for yet another), they find what is supposed to be a typical innocent black man harmed or killed by systemically racist police officers. And in the last one, it is supposed to be a typical illegal alien, come here to build a better life, innocent except for that transgression of entering the country illegally.

In every case, they have used very non-innocent suspects and non-racist officials. If there are actual examples of their narrative—which there would be, if the narrative were true—they could find plenteous examples. But they don’t.

They say things like, even though it isn’t precisely true in this case, it’s the overarching truth, the bigger truth.

But, again, if it were true in the larger sense, there ought to be examples galore. Are they just really unlucky, happening serially upon negative examples by chance, among all the other incidences of systemic whatever they’re claiming?

More likely, they choose really bad examples of innocence being oppressed by their enemies—We, the People—because their narrative is false.

Some people might have believed them the first time or two. But lately (see "The Propaganda Beast Is in a Doom Loop"), fewer people are falling for the false narrative. And that could bode well for our future.

The Moment of Resurrection

I am the most beginning of beginners at watercolor painting. But I wanted a way to celebrate Easter. And, as I mentioned last week, I was intrigued by the calculation of the moment of resurrection, based on the Shroud of Turin, that the moment “took 34,000 trillion watts of energy emanating from the body in a flash of one 140th of a billionth of a second to produce that image.” It had to be a huge amount of energy, but a short enough time that it didn’t burn the Shroud and everything else.

So I imagined that brief flash, possibly too brief to have been perceived by human eyes, had there been any to see it. But you can do such things in imagination.

 

"The Moment of Resurrection" by Linda Nuttall, April 2025

I would like to have produced something better; I won’t mention the flaws, but I do see many. But as a way of celebrating Easter, I’m somewhat pleased with how it turned out.

I imagined it with the stone already rolled away by the angels—so they are perhaps inside to witness. There wouldn’t have been a lot of room, but I didn’t feel capable of painting them on the outside looking in.

Also, the arched doorway is not likely how it looked. The opening would likely have been much smaller, and possibly squarish. But we have a Church symbol, using the arched doorway with the Christus statue, by Thorvaldsen, representing the risen Savior emerging from the tomb. The arch shape does match the gate into Jerusalem that the returning Lord will enter through. So, anyway, I took that artistic license. 

Church symbol introduced in 2020

I also added the olive tree at the edge of the scene. I don’t know how close the tomb is to the Mount of Olives, where Gethsemane was, the place of the olive press, a symbolic representation of Jesus’s suffering. But it seemed like something worth having in the scene.

The area isn’t typically verdant, but a photo I saw of the garden tomb had some flowers in the foreground. And Mary Magdalene, who first saw the risen Lord, mistook Him for the gardener before He called her by name, so I thought there ought to be some garden flowers there.

Since I wrote last week about the Shroud of Turin, and the strong possibility that it was evidence of the death and resurrection of Christ, I found additional sources.

There’s a conversation Pastor Jeremiah Johnston has with Michael Knowles, where he goes through many of the same evidences he had with Glenn Beck, but he also has with him the head covering. This answered a question I had: why was the image on the Shroud but not on the head covering? He explained that they would have covered His head while taking his dead body down from the cross, and they would have laid him down, and then removed the head covering to wrap the body, and then would place the head covering over the top. The head covering, by the way, has had a known provenance since the beginning. The head covering, interestingly, has stains that coincide with markings on the Shroud, so that the two items verify each other.

There are others also talking about the Shroud and its authenticity. The Happy Lady compiled a 37-minute video of short clips of people talking about the Shroud, and about the reality of the resurrection of our Savior. In the middle (maybe 20 minutes in, if I remember right), she shows the AI generated image based on the Shroud of Turin, which AI has animated. It’s startling how lifelike it is. She also has clips of a woman, raised Jewish, who had a near death experience as a teen when she was thrown from a horse. She could describe Jesus and how He looked. Artists had attempted to depict Him based on her detailed description, but she said they were never quite right. And then, when she eventually saw that AI image based on the Shroud, she was stunned at how closely it resembled the Jesus she had met.

I don’t base my testimony of Christ’s atonement and resurrection on a piece of cloth, or even on others’ testimonies. I have the whisperings of the Spirit telling me these truths. But I love seeing the possible evidences, and pray that interest in such things might bring someone close enough to encounter the real Jesus Christ in their lives.

He lives! That moment of resurrection changed everything for all mankind for all eternity.

He Died for Us, and He Lives!

We’re just about to begin Holy Week, which culminates in celebrating the greatest event in human history. Christmas would not celebrate an important birth had not the resurrection also happened some thirty-three years later.

While we go through this life depending on faith more than knowledge, there are some things that are evidence for our faith. And we can use those things to strengthen our faith, but they don’t replace it.

Dr. Jeremiah J. Johnston talks with Glenn Beck about the 
Shroud of Turin, with a replica displayed behind them.
Screenshot from here.

A couple of months ago, Glenn Beck interviewed Pastor Jeremiah Johnston, an evangelical pastor who has specialized in the study of Christ’s death and resurrection (BlazeTV version here, YouTube version here). He tells that, when he defended his dissertation at Oxford, his supervisor, a good person and scriptural expert, was going to give him full marks, but hesitated and asked, “Do you actually believe the resurrection of Jesus happened?” Johnston answered that, yes, going by the evidence, the most likely explanation was that it really happened. And this brilliant scriptural scholar says, “I don’t see it that way.”

The hesitancy to believe—among pastors and biblical experts—is something I’ve been aware of for some years. Only about half of pastors believe in the literal resurrection of Christ, our Lord and Savior.  I don’t know what they hang their faith on, if not that. It must take some mental gymnastics to preach of Christ, but only as a historical figure worth admiring for his teachings.

Evidence doesn’t seem to convince some people. And the people it would likely convince probably already have faith. But that is not always true. Sometimes the evidence opens an unbelieving mind up to think, “What are the ramifications for my life if this is true?” And whatever brings people closer to Christ is for the good.

Johnston’s purpose on Glenn Beck’s program was to provide evidence for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. Until the last few years, I hadn’t thought much about this. Catholic relics may or may not be interesting museum pieces, but I wouldn’t see them as necessary for faith. And many are inventions, albeit old ones by now. As Glenn says, you could make a forest of the supposed authentic crosses of Jesus.

Back in the 1980s, the Shroud was carbon dated as a forgery made around 1200 AD. That is pretty damning evidence. But it turns out the sample piece used for that carbon dating was taken from a repair patch. The Shroud has survived at least three fires, and has singe marks to prove it. There are multiple places where new fabric was woven in to make repairs.

More recent sampling—avoiding the repairs—has been different. Now there are newer techniques and technologies for dating. They used a something called WAXS—wide-angle x-ray scattering—comparing the Shroud of Turin to a shroud from Masada, both showing decay approximating 2000 years.

Experts in some 60 scientific and scholarly disciplines have studied the Shroud. There was careful examination of the pollen found on the Shroud. One would expect, since it has traveled quite a bit, that it would have pollen and other microscopic bits showing its European locations. But it turns out most of the pollen actually shows plants from the Israel area, and not just any plants from there, but plants that bloom and have pollen in the spring—at the time of Passover, which is when Christ’s death and resurrection took place.

Another remarkable thing is that the image on the Shroud is a negative, as in a photographic negative. If it were a forgery, it was made as a negative centuries before the invention of photography and any understanding of photo negatives. In other words, if it were forged, it was done in a way that neither the forger nor anyone seeing it would understand what they were seeing. Also, there is no evidence of paint, oxidation, or added pigmentation. The image isn’t stained through. A linen thread has between 70 and 150 fibers; the image penetrates only about 3 fibers, although I believe blood stains penetrate through.

I don’t know for certain that the Shroud of Turin is authentic. But when I listen to Pastor Johnston and others who have studied it, my mind is certainly open to the possibility that it is.

If it is authentic, there are some things we can know about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The image on the Shroud is of a bearded man of Semitic features. His shoulders were dislocated, which Johnston explains would have been the result of the weight of the body on the outstretched arms.

The image on the Shroud has 30 to 50 puncture wounds on the head, as could have been caused by a crown of Bethlehem thorns. Johnston demonstrates that the crown was more of a helmet than a wreath, as often depicted. The thorns are long and sharp. Even a single poke would cause significant pain.

Crown of thorns replica made with Bethlehem thorns;
9-inch nail replica in the background.
Screenshot from here.

The crown of thorns was not a usual practice of crucifixion; there is only record of this one instance. It was an added misery, mocking our Savior as “King of the Jews,” which the Romans posted on a sign above him. You might recall, the Jews who called for His crucifixion protested that it should say He called himself King of the Jews, implying that He wasn’t really. But the Romans didn’t acquiesce to that wish; they left the mocking label that identified him accurately.

There was a lot of blood on the Shroud. It was identified as human blood, type AB, which is rare; we know it as universal receiver blood. It’s possible to differentiate between blood spilled while alive and post-mortem blood. There was blood related to the scourging; this torture was so severe that many crucifixion victims did not survive it to be hung. They’ve counted over 372 wounds from the scourging—where two Romans used flagrums, causing six wounds per strike. The count does not include the sides of the man, because the image is two-dimensional.

Glenn Beck holds a replica of a Roman flagrum, used for scourging.
Screenshot from here.

There’s blood where the nails were placed. These were 9-inch nails, and the Romans knew how to place them for maximum pain; in the hands only would not have held the weight of the body, so they placed nails in the wrist, where nerve endings would cause even more pain. The feet, or ankles, are nailed together with one nail. Excruciating doesn’t begin to describe the pain our Savior went through on the cross—only shortly after his ordeal in Gethsemane, which caused sweat like blood from every pore, beyond the endurance of a normal mortal.

So, blood from those sources was shed during life. But there’s blood near a wound in the side, where the Romans used a short sword, or lance, to ensure his death (rather than breaking leg bones, as was typical, but that would happen to go against prophecy—not that the Romans knew this). This blood, mixed with water, was post-mortem blood. And, while Pastor Johnston didn’t mention this, I’ve understood that the water mixed with blood coming from that piercing of the side, up and into his heart, showed that His heart had burst. Jesus literally died of a broken heart.

Glenn Beck holds a replica of a spear or lance used to wound
Jesus in the side, penetrating up into His heart, to ensure death.
Screenshot from here.

The image shows a man with bent knees. That would have been his position when rigor mortis set it, which lasts about 40 hours. Dr. Johnston estimates that Jesus would have been dead for 39 hours, rising just before rigor mortis ended and decay set in.

One of the fascinating things the Shroud may be telling us is of the flash moment the resurrection happened and the image was created. Pastor Johnston says,

Another scientist, another school has given five years to study this, just the amount of electromagnetic energy or even radiation it would take to produce an image on a shroud like this. But the fascinating thing is the timing, because, when they sample it, it takes a lot of time to get the image on the shroud, but then the shroud would burn up almost instantaneously.

So we know the image of the Shroud, based on five years of study on light—and again, you can read all this; it's fascinating—we know that it happened in one 140th of a billionth of a second, and it took 34,000 trillion watts of energy emanating from the body in a flash of one 140th of a billionth of a second to produce that image. So in other words, God took the first selfie.

I don’t know how they figured out how to measure those things. But, wow! I’m picturing the tomb, with that flash of light emanating from it. I don’t know whether the angels who rolled the stone away were there before or after that moment. I’m picturing them rolling the stone away first, so they could have entered and witnessed the moment. So I’m picturing a bright flash coming from inside, through an open doorway, rather than smaller streams of light escaping around the not-quite-airtight stone. (I’m trying to think how to paint this, although it would be better if a real artist gave it a try.)

The tomb, with the large stone to be rolled away, was not the typical tomb. Usually such family tombs would be about a meter square with indentations cut into the stone, like fingers, where multiple bodies could be laid. The bodies would remain until decomposed, about a year, and then the bones would be collected and placed in an ossuary. We saw this age-old process practiced in a cemetery we toured in New Orleans a couple of years ago.

But this larger tomb would have been for a wealthy man—or a king. It is believed to have been newly purchased by Joseph of Arimathea, for himself and family. It had never been used. And the Shroud, measuring 14 feet 3 inches long by 3 feet 7 inches wide, would have been what Joseph of Arimathea had prepared for his own eventual death.

The replica that Dr. Johnston displays in Glenn’s studio—an exact photograph to scale—is about as close to examining the actual Shroud as most of us will get. The Shroud is kept in Turin, Italy, and the Archbishop there, at this point, has decided that in this coming jubilee year it will not be displayed. There are new and improved ways to safeguard such an item while making it viewable, but so far that is not being done.

As we said, the image is a photo negative. The positive shows white hair—"like wool”—which we would assume is different from His earthly hair color. I’m fascinated by the images that come from the Shroud. An image, even a photo, doesn’t always give us a full idea of how someone looks. But it’s something.

This is the actual image, turned into a positive, from the Shroud.

Image of the face on the Shroud, turned from negative to positive.
Screenshot from here.

There’s an AI rendering—I’m not sure which of these, below. The one on the left comes up in the video on BlazeTV, but the one on the right is used in the same place in the video on YouTube, near the 10-minute mark. The conversation between Glenn and Jeremiah is this:

GB: What is the most famous icon painting of his face that's, like, split in half, right?

JJ: Yes, this is fascinating, because I actually have a dear friend, Doug Powell, who's taken that icon in the image of the shroud, and he's put it in Midjourney AI to produce what I think is the best, closest image of the face of Jesus. And it is a Semitic man; it is a man from the land of Israel.

AI-generated images based on the Shroud; left is from BlazeTV; right is from YouTube.

I don’t know either way. The left one feels more peaceful; the right one looks a bit angry, although it could be pained expression or simply not smiling. Jesus would definitely look like a man from Israel. Johnston mentions iconography from coins and early depictions that look more like the image on the Shroud than the weaker, less manly medieval depictions, and that seems true to me.

The summary of all this is that the real Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion, was buried in a borrowed tomb, and rose from the dead on the third day.

What evidence do we have that he rose and physically lived again? Many testimonies in the scriptures. Mary Magdalene was first to see him. Then there were the remaining eleven except Thomas, and then there were the disciples again with Thomas. He ate fish and honeycomb with them, showing that He was not just a spirit; He had a physical body. In the interim, there had been the two men on the road to Emmaus.

And then there is the long period of time, up until Pentecost (50 days after Passover, if I understand right) teaching and training His disciples, setting up His Church, during which some 500 people witnessed him.

In the Book of Mormon, He visited the people on this continent sometime after the resurrection—and were told they were whom He had referred to as His other sheep of another fold, and that there were others He would visit as well. There are similar such stories from various places around the world: northern America, Central America, Russia, Africa. In the Book of Mormon, the record shows He had them come and see Him up close, and witness the wounds in His hands and feet and side. He taught them. He blessed the children. And He set up their church structure, as He had done with the apostles in Jerusalem. I would think He did similar teaching and instruction with any other scattered sheep He visited.

In 1820 He was seen by Joseph Smith, a 14-year-old boy in upstate New York. And there are multiple times Joseph Smith and others witnessed our Lord and Savior as a resurrected being. One notable visit was after the Kirtland, Ohio, Temple dedication, April 3, 1836, after which there were also visits from Moses, Elijah, and Elias, conferring their priesthood keys with laying on of hands—meaning they had physical bodies as resurrected beings as well. (There’s a good video covering both ancient and more modern encounters with the risen Lord, here.) 

There are many stories of people interacting with Him in near death experiences. And in dreams. (I had such a dream once, although mine was clearly only a dream, not a vision, for which I had to spend some time working out the symbolic meaning, but I couldn’t describe His appearance afterward.) I have known of people in our day who testify with knowledge that He lives and has a tangible body. It may be that there are more such experiences than we know, but they are not spoken of because of their sacredness.

It seems much more likely to me that the resurrected Jesus lives, and it’s all real, than that thousands of accounts, both historical and more recent, are all a lie. That is logic and reasoning. But beyond that, there is the Spirit speaking to me, telling me that He lives, and He went through what He did because He loves me—and loves all of our brothers and sisters who have lived or will live on this earth.

And if this is all true, then what I need to do is try to live like Him—not the going through crucifixion, but the obedience to the laws of Heaven, the living a life of integrity, love, truth, and mercy—so that when we see Him in the flesh, we shall be like Him. Compared to what He went through for us, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.

I have for some years celebrated Easter by concentrating on the scripture stories of Holy Week, and the art and music—some of the most glorious music ever written (see here, here, here, and here, for example). I celebrate Easter with eggs and bunnies and chocolates too, because those things are available, and fun, and remind us that spring is a time for rebirth, which we celebrate as symbolic evidence of the resurrection.

This year I hope my testimony here today may help someone celebrate Easter with more recognition of the grandeur of the most glorious day ever to have happened—until He comes to live among us again for the prophesied thousand years.

Please enjoy this video I found touching: "Greater Love."