Proof of Jesus and Bible

Proof of Jesus and Bible

Proof of Jesus and Bible. Is it crazy to believe that there was a man named Jesus who actually lived died and then rose from the dead? Is believing in the Bible just based on myths and legends of something that happened and was written down thousands of years ago? Well my goal in this article is not to merely provide you with my opinion, my goal is to provide you with a set of historical facts that lead to incredibly strong evidence that Jesus is who he said he is. This article is packed with good info. I am going to talk about his life the reliability of the Gospels and New Testament, his skeptics, his miracles, fulfilled prophecies and his death and resurrection.

Is there any proof that these things actually happened? Well you might be surprised so let's find out to start off. I want to take a look at the New Testament Gospels which for those of you who don't know are biographies of Jesus.

The New Testament Gospels

The New Testament Gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. How do we know that these Gospels are telling us the truth about Jesus and aren't just some man-made fairy tale? Many of you reading this may not accept the New Testament as being the inspired Word of God but what you can't deny is that they are an ancient set of historical documents. What we want to know is are these historical documents reliable and how do we know that they are accurate? This may come as a surprise to many of you reading but all of the New Testament Gospels were written in the first century which is remarkably close to when Jesus was actually alive.

The Gospel of Mark was the first which was only written about thirty years after Jesus died and then Matthew Luke and John shortly after that. What's crazy about this is that at the time of these writings eyewitnesses of Jesus were still around. If these writers were passing along false information, if they were passing along unreliable history we would expect eyewitnesses to say wait a minute this is not what actually happened. All of the Gospel writers were either eyewitnesses or they were interviewing eyewitnesses to gain information about Jesus.

If you think about that in today's terms, 9/11 was almost 20 years ago. It would be very difficult for someone to be passing along historical writings about 9/11 that were not accurate because everyone that lived through it would be there to confirm or disprove whatever they were passing along.

Now a good way to test the New Testament Gospels is by seeing if there's any evidence outside of the New Testament that corroborates what the New Testament tells us. What's really cool is there is actually a remarkable amount of documents in corroboration outside of the New Testament.

Evidence to prove Bible

The writings of Josephus are among the most incredible. He was a Jewish historian in AD 93. He published the work called ‘The Antiquities of the Jews’ and this is one of his writings. “Now there was about this time Jesus a wise man for he was a doer of wonderful works a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. Pilate condemned him to the cross those that loved him first did not forsake him and the sect of Christians are named for him are not extinct to this”.

So that's pretty cool that here we have a reliable Jewish historian outside of the Bible confirming that there was a man named Jesus and he was a man of wonderful works and that he had followers who did not leave him and that he was condemned to the cross.

Is Jesus real?
So changing gears a little what about the miracles that the Bible claims Jesus performed? Is there any way to corroborate those the Gospels claimed that Jesus walked on water, healed the blind, and raised the dead and many other miracles? Really good evidence of this is that Jesus' contemporaries which is people who liked him people who were indifferent towards him and even the people who opposed him. All acknowledged that he did extraordinary things. Now of course those who liked him and believed in him said he did these extraordinary things because of the Spirit of God while the people who opposed him would admit that he did amazing things but they said that it was because the devil was helping him.

The Talmud which is not a biblical text says that Jesus performed magic. So here we have another source outside the Bible confirming that Jesus did perform amazing signs but they called it magic because these people did not believe he was from God. However, they are acknowledging that he did perform extraordinary miracles.

I once heard a story of a man who wrote down this verse and he took it to his work and read it to all of his co-workers and asked them who is this verse talking about. The verse reads "he was pierced for our transgressions he was crushed for our iniquities the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" and everyone's response was immediately yeah that's talking about Jesus from the New Testament. And then the man excitedly responded no it's not from the New Testament it's from the Old Testament and was written eight centuries before Jesus even came and you can google this this verse was written in Isaiah 53: 5-6 prophesying Jesus' hundreds of years earlier. So this brings us to one of the most amazing things we find about the Bible which is that against all mathematical odds Jesus fulfilled dozens of prophecies that were written centuries before he was born.

Fulfilment of Prophesies 

Scholars have determined that Jesus fulfilled at least four dozen major prophecies. Some skeptics claim that he somehow engineered this or that they were self-fulfilling prophecies which is really quite silly because some of these prophecies were ones he couldn't have possibly fabricated such as being born of a virgin in Bethlehem or living as a suffering servant. These would have been quite difficult to engineer. 
Other prophecies include that the Messiah's ministry will begin in Galilee, he will perform miracles, rise from the dead, be betrayed by a friend, die a violent death and one of my favourites in Zechariah 9:9, “the messiah will ride into Jerusalem on a donkey” which was written 500 years earlier. The reason I love this one so much is if you look at a donkey's back there's actually a black cross on it and what's really incredible is that one of the prophecies written in Psalm 22:16 was dogs have surrounded me, a band of evil men has encircled me. They have pierced my hands and my feet. This was written about 300 years before crucifixion was even invented and while Jesus was here on earth he made some really radical claims. He claimed to be the Son of God and he claimed that the only way we could get to God would be through him and that him and God were the same being.

Now anyone can make these claims but what proof do they have? You can claim to be God. I can claim to be God but it doesn't really mean anything. However, if Jesus claimed to be God and died and rose from the dead well that's pretty good evidence that what he was claiming was true. So as you can see the resurrection of Jesus really is the pivotal point of Christianity. That's why Paul wrote in first Corinthians 15:17 and “if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile”.

Proof of resurrection

So if you can prove his resurrection you can prove he really is who he said he is. To weigh the validity of his resurrection we must first consider his death. Many sceptics claim that he merely fainted on the cross and didn't actually die and then escaped later as part of a conspiracy. What that said chances of surviving a crucifixion are extremely low not only that but in the Roman army if you were looking after a prisoner and you let him get away your life would be taken in the place of his. Yeah the Romans were very good at killing people they were experts in it and actually prided themselves on it.

Possibly the most definitive statement of Jesus's death was recorded in the Gospel of John which reads “one of the soldiers pierced Jesus side with a spear bringing a sudden flow of blood and water”. And now medical experts today know that this sign of water and blood is actually a sign of a rupture of heart. Three days after Jesus's death his tomb was empty. In the book of Matthew tells us that the chief priests devised a plan and gave the soldiers money to claim that Jesus's disciples came during the night and stole his body.

Now here's the question if the body is still in the tomb why the chief priests are telling everyone the disciples have stolen it. The claim that the body was stolen confirms that Jesus's enemies acknowledge that the tomb was actually empty. If you have a stolen body you must have an empty tomb and if the tomb was not empty Jesus's opponents would have surely gone and gotten the body and shown it as soon as the disciples began proclaiming the resurrection.

So even though there is strong evidence that there was indeed an empty tomb that still doesn't prove that Jesus rose from the dead. So our next question is, is it really true that hundreds of people really saw Jesus after his crucifixion? The Apostle Paul tells us in the book of Corinthians that Jesus was raised on the third day and appeared to Peter then to the twelve disciples and into more than five hundred others at the same time and last he appeared to me.

One of the strongest facts and greatest circumstantial evidence that Jesus really did rise from the dead was the explosion of growth in the early Christian Church in the face of intense persecution. In the second century the Roman historian Tacitus who is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians of all time wrote this “Nero inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class, hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace”. So you can actually look this up. This is written by a non-biblical source.

So where we are getting at is that even the most sceptical critical scholars recognised that the earliest disciples believed that Jesus was raised from the dead. This is an indisputable historical fact. It's very important to realise this that there is no question that Jesus's disciples and earliest followers actually believed he was who he claimed to be.

Earlier Christian persecutions

Now my question to you is how strongly would you have to believe in something to be willing to be tortured and killed for that belief? After Jesus's crucifixion the disciples of Jesus lived lives of incredible hardship for twenty thirty forty years and suffered greatly and eventually were put to death without renouncing the belief that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. I mean what were they gaining? They were running around abandoning their families being put to death in many cases and you have to remember that they aren't just dying for something they believed in but are dying for something they actually saw with their own eyes. It's much more difficult to explain that way. If someone’s belief is wrong will he or she die for such belief? Even if there is a small doubt in someone’s mind about his her belief then will he die for such belief?

There are two individuals that I want to touch on for a minute who provides such strong evidence that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. What's interesting about James is that he was not a believer in Jesus during Jesus' lifetime but he later became a believer and not only that but was put to death for his faith. In a similar way Saul who was a Jewish Pharisee and serious persecutor of Christians later became the apostle Paul writing most of the New Testament.

So you have to ask the question what led to this radical transformation of these former sceptics. I mean it's easy for someone to end up believing something that they want to believe it. For example if you want to believe that someone is loving and kind and they really aren't, well you can sometimes talk yourself into believing that if that's what you want to believe. But what's very difficult is finding someone who wants to believe something that they were actually standing against.

What's so interesting is James and Saul did not believe in Jesus before the crucifixion. They thought he was insane actually. So what happened after his crucifixion that led them to living a life willing to die for their faith?

When Jesus was executed his disciples were rightfully afraid. They scattered and were fearful for their lives. They had believed Jesus was the son of God but once they saw him dead their hopes were crushed. But shortly after we find them taking a stand in Jerusalem proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah and the son of God. How do we explain this? The only rational explanation is that something happened to them between the death of Jesus and three days later. According to their own words it was that they saw Jesus risen from the dead for themselves.

Now we understand that there's nothing we or anyone can say to convince someone that Jesus is who he claimed to be. Only God can do that or in the words of Jesus after Simon Peter realized he was the Messiah, Jesus said to him, blessed are You Simon, this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood but by my father in heaven. But our hope and our prayer is that through this God will reveal to you that it actually takes more faith to not believe in them than it does to believe in them.

Conclusion

As for us these are not the only reasons we believe that Jesus Christ is a son of God and our Lord and Savior but are just a few. I invite and strongly encourage you to seriously consider whether or not Jesus is who he says and that could be as simple as a prayer asking God to reveal himself to you.

And so I will conclude with this a quote from CS Lewis, Christianity if false is of no importance and if true is of infinite importance. That's some of the reasons why we believe Jesus is who he claimed to be. There's incredible evidence and incredible history that support that belief.
Also read Who is Jesus