the Eagle Has Risen: Resurrection in Mirror of Moon Landing

The idea of testing the Resurrection of Jesus as we would any other historical claim didn't occur to me until decades after the Moon landing. In hindsight, it now seems quite natural. But when I was a nine-year-old boy, my eyes were elsewhere. Along with millions of others, I watched in awe when Apollo 11 left the launch pad and humans began a journey that had previously belonged only to science fiction. That moment shaped the way I would come to approach problems and instilled a desire to take on challenges that felt larger than life. Alongside science, another love has been history-not as a collection of sterile dates and facts, but as lived experiences. When history is viewed without preconception through the eyes of those who lived it, something closer to the truth can emerge. This perspective influenced how I came to examine-and ultimately accept-that the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth were historical. Yet for me, belief cannot be blind, nor should it excuse me from asking whether the evidence can bear the weight placed upon it. This led me to an unusual comparison: the Resurrection of Jesus and the Apollo Moon landing. Though both events are extraordinary, they are clearly very different. The central question is whether the same historical tools we use to discover the truth about the past can be applied to both. I would use the Moon landing only as a methodological mirror. Even so, it would seem blatantly unfair to compare an ancient event with a modern one that is supported by both video and photographic evidence. However, time is the great equalizer. Whether it be the epic or the mundane-or even something so extraordinary and thoroughly documented as Apollo-all eventually becomes history. If we are to evaluate historical events honestly, even the surprising ones, we must ultimately rely on the same tools we use to examine everything else that has faded into the past. With this in mind, to level the playing field between the Moon landing and the Resurrection, I thought of a realistic scenario that is not only plausible but increasingly likely-one that would enable them to be compared on more equal footing. Even so, I still assumed the historical evidence for the Moon landing might vastly exceed that for the Resurrection of Jesus, and that any comparison would quickly collapse. It did not. That unexpected result is the reason this book exists.