One of the myths people tell to try to deny the resurrection of Jesus is that his body was stolen.

Almost no scholars actually believe this, and for good reason!

The death of nearly all the apostles who would have been in on the conspiracy is one of the strongest arguments against the idea that Jesus’ body was stolen from the grave.  People die for something that they believe is true all the time, that much is true.  Islamic terrorists die every day for things they believe are true.  The difference with the apostles is that if they stole the body, it seems unlikely that they would then die for what they knew was false, but instead were dying for what they knew.

The apostle Paul had an experience of what he believed was the risen Jesus.  The man who was persecuting Christians suddenly began proclaiming belief in him and eventually, after countless hardships that arose directly from his conversion to Jesus, he gave up his life for the message in Rome.

This kind of faith and subsequent sacrifice is inexplicable and not really repeated elsewhere in history for something that all the martyrs knew were falsehoods.  It would be one thing if this were one person’s story, but this is the testimony of numerous people who claimed to see the risen Jesus and then gave their lives up for him.