The Romans who crucified Christ were experts at execution. Those soldiers would have lost their heads if they did not do it right, so they always made sure they did. Christ was dead when He was removed from the cross. They placed Him in a tomb and rolled a stone so heavy that three healthy women were concerned they would not be able to move it away enough to get in. They sealed the tomb with wax and placed a guard around it that, again, would loose their heads if they did not do their job right. Christ was not in a coma, as some have clamed. There is no way He could have moved that boulder to get out, even if He had been perfectly healthy, and especially not just three days after the ordeal of the cross (with no water, food or medicine in the mean time).
The disciples did not steal the body. The soldiers (somewhere between 12 and 20 of them) would have killed them if they had tried (besides, these are the same men who had just run away when Jesus was arrested. Hardly the examples of courage necessary to attack trained soldiers.)
Every disciple but John was executed for claiming Christ was alive.
Again, these men's teachings were those of sane men (“Love your neighbor as yourself”), yet they died for the belief that Christ rose from the dead. They obviously believed it. In addition, they had just spent three and a half years living day and night with Christ. They could not have been fooled about His identity.
Can we believe the Bible? The Bible was written by eyewitnesses to the events they record. This is the gold standard for historical evidence. No other document in the history of the world has been as thoroughly challenged, examined, torn apart, and criticized. Yet it has NEVER been proven wrong. There have been times when people claimed to have proven it wrong. "King David never existed. He was just a legend". Within two years of this statement, archeologists dug up his signet ring; positive, proof he did exist. They have said the same thing about Nineveh, Babylon, and the Hittites. Same results. It almost looks like God is withholding the physical evidence until someone says something in the bible doesn't exist and then He allows the remains to be discovered to make the scientists look like fools. Who says God does not have a sense of humor?
The fact is that, whether they like it or not, science is continually proving more and more of the Bible to be right.
Do you know why so many scientists refuse to believe in God? If they believe in God, they must believe there is a right and a wrong. If there is a right and wrong then they must change their lives and their religion. Many scientists who have been challenged to honestly examine the real evidence of science have ended up giving their hearts to God. Others go to extreme lengths to continue to believe in their religion of atheism. Ever heard the reasons an atheist scientist gives for why older fossil layers are often found on top of younger layers? It has to do with multi-thousand ton boulders playing leap frog over thousands of miles without leaving debris trails, skid marks or stress fractures. This is more logical than Noah's flood?!
You know, if we can't believe the Bible, than we can't believe any other ancient document. None of them can stand up to the same standards of examination. If the Bible isn't true, than Buddha, Confucius, Caesar, Hannibal, Justinian, Nero, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and many, many others never existed. There is no proof of their existence that even comes close to being as reliable as the Bible.
There are many prophecies in the Bible that have been fullfilled. Only Someone who knew the beginning from the end could have told Isaiah that a man named Cyrus would send the Israelites back to their homeland…seventy years before he was born! Jeramiah prophecied that Judah would be in captivity for sevety years, and they were. Abraham received word that his decendents would be in Egypt 400 years and they were. Joseph received interpretation of dreams that came true. Daniel received and recorded several prophecies about the rise and fall of Babylon, Meda-Persia, Greece, Syria, and Rome, plus an exact time table for the time of the Messiah. The prophecies concerning Christ Himself are mathmaticly impossible for one man to fulfill (He shall come from Nazarene, come up from Egypt, come from Bethlehem for example) and yet Christ fullfilled EVERY ONE!
If the Bible is true historically and scientifically and its prophecies have proven true in the face of astronomical odds, there is no logical reason to doubt it spiritually.
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