I was not the first to meet Jesus. Not by two thousand years.
I was a teenager in Oklahoma, lying on the roof of my house on a clear night, looking up at the stars. The sky above the plains goes on forever on a night like that — stars from horizon to horizon, more than you can count, more than you can take in. I had grown up hearing about God. But something settled into place that night that had not been there before.
The God who made all of that made me.
Not as an afterthought. Not as one insignificant creature among billions on one small planet circling one ordinary star. Deliberately. Personally. With the same care that flung those stars into place and set the boundaries of the sea.
And this same God — the God of the universe, the God of the stars — loved me so much that he sent his Son to pay a debt I had run up and could never settle on my own. The heavens had declared his glory. The Son had declared his love. And as I lay there looking up, I understood that Jesus was not a figure from ancient history. He was knocking at the door of my life right then.
I will come back to what I did about that. First — I was not the first. Let me tell you about the ones who came before me.
He Is Risen
The angel’s announcement at the empty tomb is in the present tense: “He is not here, for he has risen” (Matthew 28:6, ESV).
Not he rose. Not he was raised and the matter is now settled. He has risen — and the present reality of that rising is why the tomb is empty right now, why the stone has been rolled away right now, why the grave clothes are lying folded in the darkness.
The traditional Easter greeting makes the same move. He is risen. Not a report about a past event. A confession about a present reality. The resurrection is not something that happened two thousand years ago and then receded into history. It is the hinge on which all of history turns — and on the other side of that hinge stands a living person, not a memory.
Everything that follows is testimony about that person.
The Witnesses
Mary Magdalene
She was the first.
She came to the tomb before dawn on the first day of the week and found the stone rolled away. She ran to tell Peter and John, who came, saw the empty grave clothes, and went home. Mary stayed. She stood outside the tomb weeping, and when she looked inside she saw two angels where the body had been. She turned and saw a man she took to be the gardener.
“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”
She asked him where the body had been taken. And then he spoke her name.
“Mary.”
One word. She knew. “Rabboni” — Teacher. She took hold of him. He sent her to tell the others.
The risen Jesus’s first appearance was to a woman who loved him enough to come to the tomb before sunrise — and his first word to her was her name. The personal, specific, name-knowing Jesus. That is who walked out of the grave.
(John 20:11-18)
The Women
As they left the tomb with fear and great joy, running to tell the disciples, Jesus met them on the road.
“Greetings.”
They came to him and took hold of his feet and worshipped him. He told them not to be afraid. He told them to go and tell.
(Matthew 28:8-10)
Peter
Paul records it without narrating it: “He appeared to Cephas” (1 Corinthians 15:5). Luke confirms it: “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon” (Luke 24:34).
No account of what passed between them is preserved. We only know it happened — and we know what Peter was carrying into that meeting. Three denials. A courtyard fire. The sound of a rooster. The look on Jesus’s face as they led him away.
Whatever Jesus said to Peter in that private appearance, Peter spent the rest of his life proclaiming the resurrection at the cost of everything he had. He died for it upside down on a cross in Rome.
Something happened between them.
The Road to Emmaus
Two disciples were walking to Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem, talking about everything that had happened. A stranger joined them on the road. He asked what they were discussing. They stopped, faces downcast. Did he not know what had happened in Jerusalem these past days?
He let them tell him. He listened. And then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself — and they still did not know who he was.
When they reached the village they urged him to stay, and he came in to eat with them. He took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened. And he vanished.
They looked at each other. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
They got up that same hour and walked the seven miles back to Jerusalem to tell the others.
(Luke 24:13-35)
The Ten Disciples
That same evening, the doors were locked. The disciples were gathered behind them, afraid.
Jesus stood among them.
“Peace be with you.”
He showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. He breathed on them. He gave them the Holy Spirit. He commissioned them.
Thomas was not there.
(John 20:19-23)
Thomas
When the others told him they had seen the Lord, Thomas would not accept it. He had a condition. “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
Eight days later, the doors were locked again. Jesus stood among them again.
He went directly to Thomas.
“Put your finger here, and see my hands. Put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”
Thomas did not need to touch him. He had heard enough. He answered with the highest confession in all four Gospels: “My Lord and my God.”
Jesus said: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
(John 20:24-29)
Seven Disciples at the Sea of Galilee
After everything — after the appearances, after the upper room, after the commissioning — seven of the disciples went back to fishing. Back to what they knew before. Peter said he was going, and the others followed. They fished all night and caught nothing.
At dawn a figure stood on the shore and called out to them: cast the net on the right side of the boat. They did. The net filled immediately — a hundred and fifty-three large fish, and the net did not tear.
John said to Peter: “It is the Lord.”
Peter jumped into the water.
When they got to shore, Jesus had already made a fire and was cooking fish and bread. “Come and have breakfast.” He took the bread and gave it to them, and the fish as well.
After breakfast he turned to Peter. Three times he asked: “Do you love me?” Three times Peter said yes. Three times Jesus gave him a commission: “Feed my sheep.”
Three denials. Three restorations. The risen Jesus did not leave the wound unaddressed.
(John 21)
The Five Hundred
Paul lists this appearance in his account of the resurrection — and attaches a detail that functions not as devotion but as a legal challenge: “he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:6, ESV).
Paul is writing this in the early 50s AD, within twenty years of the crucifixion. He is telling his readers: most of these people are still alive. Go ask them. Check the testimony for yourself. This is not the language of legend. It is the language of a man who knows the witnesses can be cross-examined.
James
Jesus’s own brother did not believe during the ministry. John records it plainly: “not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:5).
Paul records, without elaboration, that the risen Jesus appeared to James (1 Corinthians 15:7). Whatever James saw, he became a pillar of the Jerusalem church. He led it through persecution and hardship. He wrote the letter that bears his name. He died for his testimony — executed by the high priest Ananias around AD 62.
A man does not die for a story he knows to be false. Especially not a story about his own brother.
Something happened between them.
Paul on the Damascus Road
“Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Corinthians 15:8, ESV).
Paul — then known as Saul — was not a grieving follower hoping for good news. He was an enemy. He stood and watched approvingly as Stephen was stoned to death for proclaiming the resurrection. He went house to house in Jerusalem dragging Christians to prison. He was traveling to Damascus with letters authorizing him to arrest followers of Jesus there as well.
On that road, a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground. A voice spoke.
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
“Who are you, Lord?”
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
He arrived in Damascus blind. Three days later his sight was restored, he was baptized, and he began proclaiming in the synagogues that Jesus was the Son of God. The people who heard him were astonished. Was this not the man who had come to arrest these people?
Paul never recovered from that road. He was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and eventually executed — all for the name of the one he had come to destroy. He wrote more of the New Testament than any other author. He planted churches across the Roman Empire. And he went to his death proclaiming what he had seen outside Damascus.
You do not do that for a hallucination.
The Promises Kept
The appearances were not the end. Jesus had made specific promises about what would follow his resurrection — and they were kept.
The Holy Spirit
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever” (John 14:16, ESV). “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7, ESV).
Fifty days after the resurrection, on the day of Pentecost, the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem. Suddenly there came a sound like a mighty rushing wind filling the entire house. Tongues of fire appeared and rested on each of them. They were filled with the Holy Spirit.
Peter — the man who had denied Jesus three times by a charcoal fire — stood up and preached. He explained what was happening in terms the crowd could understand, from the prophet Joel, from the Psalms of David, from the resurrection of Jesus which he and the others had witnessed. He called them to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.
Three thousand people responded that day.
The church did not begin with an institution. It began with a promise kept.
(Acts 2)
The Ascension
“I am going to the Father” (John 14:28, ESV). Jesus said it in the upper room. The disciples did not fully understand it then. Forty days after the resurrection, on the Mount of Olives, they were about to see it.
He gave them final instructions — that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit came upon them, and that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
And then, as they watched, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
They stood there looking up. Two men in white robes appeared beside them.
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
The Ascension is not the end of the story. It is the intermission.
(Acts 1:9-11)
The Promise Yet to Come
“I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3, ESV).
He is coming back. The angels were specific: in the same way as you saw him go. Visibly. Physically. Unmistakably. Not as a spiritual impression or a theological concept but as the person who cooked fish on the beach, who spoke Mary’s name in a garden, who showed Thomas his hands.
The last words of Scripture are a promise and a prayer. Jesus speaks: “Surely I am coming soon.” John answers: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20, ESV).
The story is not over. The resurrection is not the final chapter. It is the guarantee of the final chapter.
The Chain Continues
Mary Magdalene was not the last person to meet the risen Jesus. Paul was not the last. The three thousand at Pentecost were not the last.
He has been meeting people for two thousand years.
I know this because of what happened on a roof in Oklahoma.
I lay there looking at the stars — more than I could count, more than I could take in — and the weight of it settled on me in a way it never had before. The God who made all of that made me. Not as an accident. Not as one insignificant creature among billions. Deliberately. With care. And he loved me — me specifically, with the wound I was carrying that no one fully saw, with the debt I had run up in sin that I could never repay — he loved me enough to send his Son to settle what I owed.
The heavens declared his glory. The Son declared his love.
And in that moment I understood what Revelation 3:20 means from the inside:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
— Revelation 3:20, ESV
He was knocking at the door of my life.
So I opened it. I repented of my sins — not as a transaction, not as a formula, but as the honest acknowledgment of a man who had run up a debt he could not pay and was being offered the chance to have it settled. And I invited him in.
I was not the first. Not by two thousand years.
I will not be the last.
The tomb is still empty.
The five hundred witnesses Paul invited his readers to go question — most of them still alive when he wrote — they saw what they said they saw. The disciples who locked themselves behind closed doors in fear became men who turned the Roman Empire upside down and died rather than deny what they had witnessed. Paul, the hunter of Christians, became the most tireless proclaimer of the resurrection in history. James, the brother who did not believe, died for the testimony.
Something happened to all of them. The same something.
He is risen.
Not was risen. Not rose, once, and the matter is now historical. Is. Present tense. Alive. Active. Seated at the right hand of the Father. Interceding. Coming again.
And standing at your door.
He knows you. Not humanity in the abstract — you. Your name. Your history. The thing you carry that no one fully sees. The debt you know you owe. He knows all of it, and he is knocking anyway.
What are you going to do about that?
Further Reading
The following books are recommended for readers who want to examine the historical evidence more closely. None of them requires a seminary degree.
- Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Zondervan, 1998) — an investigative reporter’s personal attempt to disprove the resurrection; he interviewed scholars, examined the evidence, and became a Christian; also a 2017 film of the same name
- N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003) — the definitive scholarly treatment; comprehensive and rigorous
- Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Kregel, 2004) — accessible examination of the historical evidence; written for general readers
- Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Thomas Nelson, revised 2017) — the classic apologetics resource on the resurrection and the reliability of Scripture
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (originally published 1952; HarperOne edition 2001) — the chapter on the trilemma remains the sharpest short argument for taking Jesus’s identity seriously