Jesus is Alive

Jesus is Alive!

What difference does it make to us if Jesus is alive?

Scripture says that God has “placed eternity” in every person’s heart. That means that everyone at their most basic level of understanding realize that we are eternal beings and therefore we are going to exist forever—somewhere! We were created to spend eternity with God, but mankind's “federal head,” Adam, broke the relationship between mankind and God making it impossible for any humans to ever enter God’s prescence on our own merits. Since we are unable to repair the relationship ourselves, God had to come repair it for us—which is why Jesus died on the cross. The fact that He came back to life is God's stamp of approval confirming that Jesus' sacrifice fixed the problem between mankind and God. Any person who is willing to turn away from their sins, trust whole-heartedly in Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection, can once again look forward to spending eternity in God’s presence when our short stay on Earth is over.

How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah?

First, it’s important to understand that nothing Jesus did was done in secret. All through the Scriptures, Jesus does things that point to the fact that He had come from heaven and was intent on completing His mission of redeeming the human race. Notice some of the claims that Jesus made about Himself:

To be Yahweh (the Eternal One in the burning bush Who spoke to Moses) -
John 8:58
Equality with God - John 5:18
To be the Messiah - Mark 14:61-64
Equal authority with God - Matthew 28:18
Prayer should be made in His name - John 14:13-14

Making claims is easy to do, but producing evidence to prove your claims is what’s needed! Jesus of coarse knew that, so He provided four powerful areas of evidence:

1. Fulfilled prophecy

In the section called “The Bible Tells the Future Perfectly,” I showed how it only takes 4 predictive prophecies to demonstrate that Jesus has to be the Messiah sent from heaven to save mankind. I also showed how the science of probability dealing with only 8 prophecies demonstrates with mathematical certainty that Jesus must be the Messiah. God gave us roughly 300 to help us figure it out, yet many people remain willfully ignorant of what God has done for them!

2. A sinless life

Enemies and friends alike kept coming up with the same assessment of Jesus of Nazareth:

Pilate said, “I find no guilt in this man.” - Luke 23:4
One of the thieves on cross said, “This man has done nothing wrong.” - Luke 23:41
Peter called him, “a Lamb without blemish or defect.” - 1 Peter 1:19
John called him, “Jesus Christ the Righteous One.” - 1 John 2:1; 3:7
Paul said that Jesus “knew no sin.” - 2 Corinthians 5:21
The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus was tempted “yet without sin.” - Hebrews 4:15
Jesus once asked his accusers to name his sins, but they could not. - John 8:46

3. Miraculous deeds

Jesus walked on water, stopped a storm, multiplied bread for thousands, opened blind eyes, cast out demons, healed every kind of sickness, raised the dead—and much, much more.

4. Rising from the dead

Jesus’ greatest miracle was conquering death—humanity’s greatest fear and enemy! Giesler and Brooks, in their book When Skeptics Ask, point out that, “Nothing like [the Resurrection] is claimed by any other religion, and no miracle has as much historical evidence to confirm it.” This miracle is so foundational to the Christian message that virtually every sermon in the N.T. is based on the claim that “three days later, He rose from the dead.” Paul even went so far as to say, “...if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless.” (1 Corinthians 15:14 NLT)

God has given us overwhelmingly powerful evidence that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead. Use the buttons in the left column to explore three groups of evidence, and we will use the phrase “Jesus WON!” to help us remember what they are:

W - Witnesses

O - Open Grave

N - New Men

Use these links for more details