Admittedly, this blog has put a lot of trust in the words of the Bible to inform us about life after death. It has especially put trust in Jesus’ message. Why? How do we know that Jesus wasn’t a fictional character, or a first century person with delusional disorder, or a liar, or a charlatan, or just a person with a great imagination, or misunderstood and mistranslated? How would we know the same things about other religious leaders, both living and departed, who claim to have revelation about eternal life. There are plenty of ways to explain away Jesus, if you want to do that.
There are exhaustive rebuttals for every negative theory mentioned above and then some. I will keep it basic. Several layers of objective evidence should make you at least be curious and listen to what He says. The final proof that moves you from skeptic to believer will have to come from God interacting with you directly. Nothing in history, or reality for that matter, is entirely above some skeptic angle of reasoning to reject it. Still truth is truth and reality is reality. Our perception and understanding of it is the thing that can be false.
So here are the “layers of evidence” that I would put before you on behalf of the credibility of Jesus:
- Unlike many other “religious” accounts, the story of Jesus establishes a specific time and place. Jesus did not exist, “Once upon a time.”
- While that time was a long time ago, approximately 2 B.C. to 33B. C.; it was not so long ago that we do not have outside archeological and documented references from outside of Christianity about Christianity and most of the places referenced in the story of Jesus.
- Jesus’ life and many of the specifics of it were clearly foretold hundreds if not thousands of years before they happened. This includes specifics that you would not or could not arrange: place of birth, unique means of birth, general time period of life, location of ministry, miraculous proofs, style of death and more.
- Eyewitnesses recorded acts of Jesus that were clearly miraculous and not likely to be illusions. These eyewitnesses all suffered for their testimony and did not seem to have a reason to lie.
- Jesus’ greatest promoter after his death was a former enemy of the faith who encountered a resurrected Jesus.
- The Bible is the most recorded document from antiquity by far. Detailed study of manuscripts can detect copying errors, but they are few and identifiable by comparison studies. The earliest manuscripts can be dated to within decades of the actual events.
- Both the time of the conception, birth and death of Jesus can be correlated to certain conjunction of stars and a full lunar eclipse, which are verifiable through mathematical means.
While the life of Jesus is full of such things as healing the sick, raising the dead, teaching about God, teaching about good and evil; the main mission of Jesus was connected to doing something specific (and to the sensibility of many, strange) to establish the possibility of a desirable eternal life for human beings, who actually didn’t deserve it according to the Law of God.
Jesus’ death was not tragic and inappropriate. It was what He needed to do. It was not only an example of self-sacrifice. It was fulfilling requirements established by God’s own Law on behalf of our whole species. Jesus’ death and, worse yet, His being forsaken by the Father while on the cross; were all voluntary and planned. Without these actions nobody would be at peace with God. God’s judgement of our sinful rejection of Him would fall on us hard. Death would be something to avoid and delay at all costs.
The way God created us makes us eternally and consciously “alive” in one form or another according to Jesus. Jesus’ sacrifice for us gives us an existence worth having. One cannot go back in time to verify Jesus’ story with your own senses. Usually, you cannot go beyond death to verify what is there or not there either. We depend on God sharing information about these things or we reject that information. The surrounding, verifiable facts should at least make you think.
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