All Authority In Heaven and On Earth

"For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay 

down My life so that I may take it again.

No one has taken it away from Me, 

but I lay it down on My own initiative 

I have authority to lay it down, 

and I have authority to take it up again. 

This commandment I received from My Father."

John 10: 17, 18 

Historical Fact:  Jesus Christ was crucified.

Historical Fact:  Jesus Christ was buried.

But the Resurrection still provides the "sticking place" for many.

Examining the arguments:

If the tomb was still occupied, why wasn't the body produced? All arguments would have been proven false. The powers in authority at the time knew that the Resurrection was predicted. The guards were set in place. Doesn't it follow that if they could have produced the body, they would have?

If the body was merely stolen, why were all the disciples willing to die for their belief in Him? If it was all a hoax, what was it that completely transformed the lives of the disciples after His death? They tended to be rather timid and unfocused, immature in their understanding during their training while the Lord walked among them. But after the Resurrection, they boldly preached the Gospel with a power that did not come from any source within themselves. A faked Resurrection couldn't have produced the conviction that would empower them to that degree.

Why was Jesus' brother converted after "the fact?" 

What caused Paul, the Jew's Jew, to believe? What could have caused him to turn his back on the very foundational belief system of his life?

In the end, one of the most compelling arguments for the validity of the Resurrection was the witness of the lives it transformed. And that is still the case. 

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)