“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” --C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Serious historians of the early Christian movement—all of them—have spent many years preparing to be experts in their field. Just to read the ancient sources requires expertise in a range of ancient languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and often Aramaic, Syriac, and Coptic, not to mention the modern languages of scholarship (for example, German and French). And that is just for starters. Expertise requires years of patiently examining ancient texts and a thorough grounding in the history and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity, the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, both pagan and Jewish, knowledge of the history of the Christian church and the development of its social life and theology, and, well, lots of other things. It is striking that virtually everyone who has spent all the years needed to attain these qualifications is convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure.” --Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument For Jesus Of Nazareth

“Now around this time lived Jesus, a wise man. For he was a worker of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people who gladly accept the truth. He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. Pilate, when he heard him accused by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, (but) those who had first loved him did not cease (doing so). To this day the tribe of Christians named after him has not disappeared” --Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews

“Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.” --Tacitus, Annals

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“In every way that mattered, in speaking to his own culture and, as we will see, to our own as well, Jesus claimed clearly and directly to be God, utilizing the stories, questions, symbols, and activities that were recognized in the world in which he lived and taught.” --Mark Clark, The Problem of God (p.223)

John 17:3 – And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

Mark 14:61-62 – But Jesus was silent and made no reply. Then the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus said, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven.

John 8:56-58 – Your father Abraham rejoiced as he looked forward to my coming. He saw it and was glad.” The people said, “You aren’t even fifty years old. How can you say you have seen Abraham?” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I am!” 

John 17:5 – Now, Father, bring me into the glory we shared before the world began.

John 5:18 – So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.

John 10:30 – The Father and I are one.

John 10:33 – They replied, “We’re stoning you not for any good work, but for blasphemy! You, a mere man, claim to be God.”

The Nicene Creed

We believe in one God,

     the Father almighty,

     maker of heaven and earth,

     of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ,

     the only Son of God,

     begotten from the Father before all ages,

          God from God,

          Light from Light,

          true God from true God,

     begotten, not made;

     of the same essence as the Father.

     Through him all things were made.

     For us and for our salvation

          he came down from heaven;

          he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,

          and was made human.

          He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;

          he suffered and was buried.

          The third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures.

          He ascended to heaven

          and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

          He will come again with glory

          to judge the living and the dead.

          His kingdom will never end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit,

     the Lord, the giver of life.

     He proceeds from the Father and the Son,

     and with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.

     He spoke through the prophets.

     We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church.

     We affirm one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

     We look forward to the resurrection of the dead,

     and to life in the world to come. Amen.

Celebrated historian and atheist Robert Wright says, “We can be pretty sure the Crucifixion [actually] happened, in part because it made so little theological sense.” --The Problem of God (p. 236).

1 Corinthians 15:14, 17 – And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless…and if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 – I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.

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1 Corinthians 15:5-7 – He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. 

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“The resurrection also puts a burden of proof on its nonbelievers. It is not enough to simply believe Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternate explanation for the birth of the church.” --Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

"After the death of Jesus the entire Christian community suddenly adopted a set of beliefs that were brand-new and until that point had been unthinkable. The first Christians had a resurrection-centered view of reality." --Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

“Every effort to account for the birth of the church apart from Jesus’s resurrection flies in the face of what we know about first-century history and culture.” --Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

“The early Christians did not invent the empty tomb and the meetings or sightings of the risen Jesus…. Nobody was expecting this kind of thing; no kind of conversion experience would have invented it, no matter how guilty (or how forgiven) they felt, no matter how many hours they pored over the scriptures. To suggest otherwise is to stop doing history and enter into a fantasy world of our own.” --N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God

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John 11:25 – Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”

1 Peter 1:3 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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