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Evidence
to Support Jesus was the Son of God.
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Jesus
lived his life preaching and teaching. Even if he wasn't the Son of
God, what he said was pretty good stuff and hasn't been improved on
in over 2000 years. What he said was wise, profound and
inspired. |
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Jesus
produced many 'miracles' and signs. These could have been 'tricks'
of a clever magician but healing people, turning water into wine and
raising the dead is really clever magic, particularly in a time when
he
could not rely on technical wizardry and support. |
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His
character was gentle, loving and forgiving. If Jesus was a
'con-artist' its difficult to imagine he would have this type of
character. A con-artist tries to deceive people for selfish reward.
Jesus did the very opposite - giving not receiving. |
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What
Jesus did was prophesised in the Old Testament 100's of years before
Jesus was born. Perhaps Jesus read these prophesies and somehow
managed to make them come true. Some success might have been
possible, but there were so many prophecies it would have taken a
lot of planning, resourcing (even if he had a computer) and lots and
lots of luck.
Jesus would also have had to plan and have managed his own death; the time, place and
circumstances - which is stretching it a little bit. How could you
be certain people would do exactly as you wanted when you wanted
them to? The real stumbling block however, would be in arranging your own birth, at exactly the right time and place before
you were actually born. |
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The
Resurrection Of Jesus - now that really does take some believing!
Christian faith hangs on believing one
simple fact - which is that after Jesus died on the cross he came back to
life before eventually ascending to Heaven.
Either you believe this simple fact or you
don't. Here are some thoughts to help you decide!
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 Perhaps
Jesus did not actually die on the cross. This is a non-starter
- the flogging Jesus endured would have been enough to
see most people off. The nailing of Jesus to the cross would have
been excruciating and the loss of blood immense and its difficult to
imagine
how Jesus could have survived this. Also consider Jesus was left
hanging on the cross for many hours, effectively bleeding to death
before his body was removed. Finally, before the body of Jesus
was removed from the cross he was 'speared'. A Roman guard thrust a
spear into the body of Jesus which produced a 'gush of water and
blood to flow from his body'. Modern forensic evidence shows that
blood and water only mix after death when the body's' functions have
switched off. Even if Jesus had survived the cross, how in such an
awful state and pain, could he have physically rolled away the
massive stone that was used to seal his tomb? |
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Perhaps
the disciples stole the body of Jesus after it had been placed in
the tomb and then pretended he had come back to life. After Jesus
had died the disciples continued to have their faith, to believe in
God. Why would their faith have survived and continued if they knew
the resurrection of Jesus was a lie because they had actually stolen
the body of Jesus from the tomb? This makes no
sense! More so, the disciples after Jesus had died,
themselves suffered greatly, including crucifixion, beheading and
agonising deaths. Once again, why would they have suffered in this
way if they did not believe in what they were saying and preaching,
if they knew it all was a lie? Why
would they go through all of this for no reason, surely at least one of the disciples would have owned up in
order to save their own life. The fact that no one ever did confess
to stealing the body of Jesus, even under such suffering and hardship must
lead us to the conclusion that the disciples didn't steal the body of Jesus. |
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So the disciples didn't steal the
body, perhaps the authorities
stole it instead. This theory makes even less sense. Why would the authorities want to steal the body of Jesus? They
opposed Christianity. Once Christianity started to grow the best
thing they could have done to stop it in its tracks was to produce
the body of Jesus BUT they never did this. They most certainly
would have done so if they had his body. |
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So perhaps robbers stole
his body. This one is feasible,
although there would have had to have been many robbers to help with
the removal of the heavy stone that sealed the tomb. The value of the
burial clothes (the only thing worth stealing) would not have been
of sufficient value to a gang of thieves though. Perhaps the main
evidence to suggest robbers did not steal the body of Jesus was the
fact the only things that remained in the tomb were the burial
clothes. These were not missing, only the body of Jesus was
missing. Robbers would
have had no interest in the body of Jesus, the burial clothes would
have been the only thing they would have wanted - so why would they
steal the body of Jesus and leave the burial clothes in the tomb? |
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Jesus
appeared before the disciples, was seen by
over 500 different people on at least 10 separate occasions, over a
period of 6 weeks - all of this after he had died on the cross.
Even if Jesus had not died on the cross how could he have recovered
so quickly from the terrible injuries he had endured on the cross
and the terrible flogging beforehand? If it had been just the odd
person or so that saw Jesus it could be described as a hallucination
but so many people saw him, on numerous different occasions. Is it possible
for them all to be wrong or mistaken? Jesus was also alive
when he reappeared - he ate fish - something a hallucination could
not do. And, just for the record, the resurrection of Jesus had been prophesised 100's
of years
beforehand. Everything that had been prophesised happened exactly in
the way it had been predicted. What human is capable of stage
managing this kind of event before they are actually born? |
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From
these simple facts the growth of Christianity was immediate and
continual. Within the first 300 years following the death of Jesus
there was massive growth in the Christian Church. Currently, it is
estimated there are over 1.7 billion Christians in the World. What
is it that all these people have felt, witnessed and seen that makes
generation after generation believers? |
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Numerous
Scholars have studied the facts of the crucifixion and resurrection,
most with the intention of proving it did not happen. No one
has been able to disprove the existence of Jesus. On the
contrary most Scholars have, in the pursuit of trying to disprove the
resurrection, reached the conclusion it happened exactly as it says in the bible. Scientific evidence now leads to support
much of what is stated in the bible to be true. The facts speak for
themselves. |
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