(Book: On Guard, by William Lane Craig. Chapter 9: “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?”)
In John 7:24, Jesus cautions his disciples, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge [with] righteous judgment.” Appearances can be deceiving—especially when they’re the “appearances” of a recently-deceased loved one.
In the next section of Chapter 9, William Lane Craig takes us through the so-called “appearances” of Jesus. His intention is to prove that Jesus really did rise from the dead, but if we take care to “judge with correct judgment” (as more modern translations put it), then I think we’ll see that the postmortem “appearances” of Jesus are indeed a (self-)deception.
Evangelical Realism 