College Easter Retreat

On Easter Sunday, I was invited to speak at a student conference for ABU (translated the University Bible Alliance), an affiliate of Intervarsity. Over the past two years I have had the opportunity to work with this organization on several occasions and have always been blessed by my time with them. For Easter, it was no different.

The conference was a Fall retreat (remember our seasons are opposite of the Northern Hemisphere) of college students from all over the Northeast of Brazil. We had students from as far south as Salvador, others from up north in Fortaleza and everywhere in between. They spent the holiday sleeping in rooms at a local church here in JP that supports ABU's ministry.

During the course of the four day conference, several leaders, missionaries and pastors taught the group with a variety of topics. Since it was Easter morning when I spoke, I chose to talk about the resurrection of Jesus.

I know personally that a University can be a tough place to be a Christian. Professors constantly attack the idea of faith and even attempt to make Christians look stupid for believing. In an attempt to be "scholarly", many students turn against Christianity too. Apparently, being a scholar means that you cannot believe in God. Then with all the peer pressure to party, many students have a hard time continuing to believe in Jesus through their college years. I had friends that were fairly strong in their faith in High School, who went away to college and came back without Jesus! So I know the reality these kids face.

With this in mind, I wanted to talk about why it is we are Christians and show that it is not illogical thing or just blind faith. There are several reasons why we believe in Jesus. But the main reason, the most important reason why we believe, is because He rose from the dead. So I started out by showing from scripture that the resurrection is the most important fact of our faith and moreover, if it did not occur, we should definitely not believe in Jesus! It is that important.

Then we walked through the resurrection scenario to see what could have possibly happened to the body of Jesus after He was killed on the cross. When we look at the facts logically, the arguments against the resurrection become increasingly absurd. I mean, if Jesus died and did not rise again, what happened to his body? Where was it when His disciples excitedly ran throughout Jerusalem and all of Israel preaching about the resurrection of their Lord? If someone (and remember that there were many powerful enemies of Jesus) could have produced the body of Jesus, they would have all together ended Christianity before it really got started. But they could not do it. The body of Jesus ascended into heaven to be with the Father. The disciples, who were eye-witnesses of this fact, were radically transformed and consequently spread the good news of the resurrection to the entire Western world.

I basically wanted to show how the arguments against the resurrection were weak and illogical. I wanted the students to be able to leave there with confidence in their faith and a few simple arguments to share with any "scholars" that might try to mock Jesus. With these goals in mind, the morning session was a complete success. We even had some great discussions following the session with several students who had follow up questions. It was a blessing to be a part of this conference and I hope to do more in the future.