Three Areas Of Historical, Prophetic, And Personal Evidence That Prove Jesus Existed - Part 2 Series

A. What is the Gospel?

B. The Great News about Jesus Christ.

C. The basics of the Gospel. (Without these you lose the Gospel)

-1. God the Son became human in Jesus Christ so I can relate to Him and He to me (Romans 1:3-4; Hebrews 4:15).

-2. Jesus died for my sins, so I don't have to (1 Corinthians 15:3-4; John 3:16).

-3. Jesus destroyed death so I can have eternal life (1 Timothy 1:10).

-4. Salvation is a gift that I do not have to earn. I am made right with God (Romans 3:23-25).

-5. All of this is by the grace of God through faith, believing in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9).

You don't have to be a Bible Scholar or Theologian. You don't have to prove Jesus to people (occasionally perhaps for a very few, and then you work through a relationship). You share the Great News and ask if they believe!

• Don't try to be "spiritual" or preachy.

• Be you. Be normal.

• Don't try to be like someone else.

Keys to remember:

• Salvation, although a one-time experience, sometimes feels like a daily process of being transformed.

(i.e. Sanctification for the Born-Again Christian)

• People are spiritually hungry at different points in their lives. Think of your experience.

• Some people are resistant. This is ok!

• The work is done by God, the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5).

CONCLUSION

The New Testament never underwent redactions to fit in with the needs of the early church. It is not conjecture, hearsay, selective truth, or full of lies. It can be trusted as both actual eyewitness testimony and historical evidence that is not an argument from silence nor a logical fallacy.

There was never any debate in the ancient world about whether Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure. The evidence is overwhelming for the existence of Jesus and stands up under examination and can be trusted in both secular and biblical history. In the earliest literature of the Jewish Rabbis, Jesus was denounced as the illegitimate child of Mary and a sorcerer. Among pagans, Jesus was dismissed as a scoundrel, but we know of no one in the ancient world who questioned whether Jesus lived.No objective historian questions the existence of Jesus. In addition to the direct reference discussed, numerous archaeological discoveries affirm and illuminate details about Jesus' life as recorded in the Bible, such as the discovery in 1968 of a heel bone of a crucified man that affirmed the description of Jesus' Crucifixion in the Bible, the Tomb of Jesus, and the Nazareth Inscription that was a marble slab, acquired in 1878, which had inscribed on it a mandate in response to the story of the resurrection of Jesus as King of the Jews, from Claudius Caesar, and imposed a death penalty in Israel for anyone caught moving bodies from family tombs, and specifically "sepulcher-sealing tombs," such as the one Jesus was buried in.

The evidence for Jesus cannot be ignored or written off as fantasy. Jesus was not a literary construct or theological creation but an actual historical figure. He was so well-known in the first century that word of Him reached seven of the Roman emperors.