O Death where is thy sting?

Handel's Messiah has long been my all-time favorite musical masterpiece ever. So, I was very interested this week to study the passage from which Handel took the words for "O Death where is thy sting?" In Hosea 13:14, right in the middle of pronouncing severe judgment and denouncing Israel's sinful behavior, God shows His great love and His desire for them to be saved:

"I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?"

And Paul, quoting from the LXX version, at the end of his great dissertation on the centrality of the Resurrection in Christianity in I Corinthians 15:55, used that words that Handel incorporated into his musical piece:

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

How amazing that God, even as He had to justly execute the due punishment for Israel's sin, was looking forward towards the hope of redemption and salvation. And how true, as Paul said, that if there is no resurrection, then our faith is useless, for there would be no victory over sin and death. And, since the resurrection is so central and critical to Christianity, how assuring it is to know that Christ's resurrection is supported by evidence and facts. As Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Easter: Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection, pointed out in a lecture, the resurrection can be supported by 4 "E"s:

• Execution - Historically, it is well-documented that Jesus Christ was crucified and was buried
• Early Accounts - The news of his death and resurrection are documented so soon after it occurred that there was no time for "legend" to develop; and the documentation had to be accurate, for those who had been there were still living and would be able to refute any inaccuracies
• Empty Tomb - It is well-documented that the tomb is empty and the facts support the resurrection as the best explanation
• Eyewitnesses - There were many eyewitnesses over a period of time at different places

The resurrection is not only central to Christianity, but, it can also show that Christianity is true. Since the Gospels are accepted as historically reliable documents, and in them, Christ made claims to divinity and his death and resurrection are recorded there; that when the resurrection occurred (the best explanation of the facts as mentioned above), it supported Christ's claims to be God. If He is God, then what He says is true; and since He supported and quoted the Old and New Testaments, then what is recorded in the Bible is not to be ignored.