The evidence Jesus existed (pt1)

[00:00:00]Men do not die for a lie they know is false. Throughout history, people have died for mistaken beliefs. But no one willingly endures the rack, the lion's den, and the cross for a story they manufactured themselves.

[00:00:16]2,000 years ago, thousands of devout Jews did the unthinkable. They abandoned a 1500year-old covenant to follow a man they claimed was God in the flesh. For centuries, the Jewish people lived under the law of Moses. A system of animal sacrifices, strict dietary laws, and the Sabbath. All centered on a stone temple.

[00:00:40]It was their entire identity. The fulfillment. Jesus didn't just start a religion. He claimed to be the fulfillment of over 300 specific prophecies.

[00:00:51]The sacrifice. Instead of endless animal blood, he was the Passover lamb whose one-time sacrifice ended the old system.

[00:01:01]The temple he taught that the true temple was his own body and now the hearts of his followers.

[00:01:09]The shift. Devout Jews who for generations would rather die than eat unclean food or miss the Sabbath suddenly began worshiping on Sunday and declaring that the law was written on their hearts. This was a massive documented cultural upheaval.

[00:01:29]Critics often say the disciples stole the body and made up the resurrection.

[00:01:35]But psychologically, people only die for a lie if they think it's true. The apostles were in a unique position. They were eyewitnesses. They knew for a fact whether they had seen him alive or not.

[00:01:50]The historical evidence. Polycarp 155 AD. An 86-year-old student of the Apostle John. When told to sacrifice to Caesar's statue to save his life, he famously replied, "80 and 6 years have I served Christ, and he never did me any injury. How then can I blaspheme my king and my savior? He was burned at the stake.

[00:02:15]Ply the younger around 112 AD. This Roman governor wrote to Emperor Traan frustrated that Christians refused to curse Christ even under the threat of execution. He noted they met before dawn to sing to Christ as to a god.

[00:02:34]the choice. To the Romans, Caesar was a god. To the Christians, Jesus, not Caesar, was Lord. They didn't die for a feeling. They died for a historical fact they had witnessed. Jesus isn't just a figure of faith. He is a figure of history. Even if we lost every Bible in the world, non-Christian historians of the first and second centuries document him clearly.

[00:03:03]Flavius Josephus 93 AD. In his antiquities of the Jews, this Jewish historian records that Jesus was a wise man, a doer of startling deeds and was condemned to the cross by Pilate. He even mentions Jesus's brother James.

[00:03:23]Cornelius Tacitus 116 AD, the greatest Roman historian. He recorded that Christ suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate Talis 55 AD a secular historian who attempted to explain away the darkness during the crucifixion as a solar eclipse unwittingly confirming the gospel account of darkness over the land. The Old Testament was the foundation. Jesus is the cornerstone. The Jews expected a political king to crush Rome. But they got a suffering servant who crushed death itself. The evidence isn't just in the ink of a scroll. It's in the blood of the martyrs who saw him, touched him, and chose a gruesome death over a comfortable lie.

[00:04:16]The psychological evidence for the truth of Jesus's resurrection rests on the distinction between a sincere belief and an eyewitness conviction. While many die for sincere but mistaken beliefs, the apostles were in a unique position to know if they were lying about seeing Christ alive. The psychology of the eyewitness. Knowledge versus belief. The apostles did not just believe in the resurrection as eyewitnesses. They had firsthand knowledge of whether it occurred. The risk versus the reward.

[00:04:49]Psychologically, humans are motivated by reward. If the resurrection were a lie, the apostles gain nothing but beating, imprisonment, and gruesome deaths.

[00:04:59]Rewards that do not motivate a fabricated conspiracy.

[00:05:04]The chain of credibility, their willingness to endure suffering until the end indicates they were not liars.

[00:05:11]They truly believe they had seen Jesus risen. The psychological evidence of the great shift. The timeline is crucial.

[00:05:19]This wasn't a oneweek fad. It was three centuries of pressure. Secular documentation. Ply the younger, a Roman governor, wrote to Emperor Trajan in 112 AD expressing confusion that even under torture, Christians refused to curse Christ. He noted their stubbornness and unyielding flexibility was their only crime.

[00:05:43]The result, the more the empire struck them down, the faster the church grew.

[00:05:49]As the North African writer Tertullian famously put, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

[00:05:58]They were torn by beasts, turned into human torches, and fed to the flames for 300 years. Yet, not once did the movement break. They didn't die for an abstract philosophy or a political revolution. They died for a man they knew had conquered the grave. They chose the extreme penalty because they knew Caesar was a man who claimed to be God, but Jesus was the God who became man.

[00:06:24]This was no surprise to them. The New Testament had already warned, "They will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, but he who endures to the end will be saved." That's found in Matthew 24:es 9 to13. And do not fear what you are about to suffer. Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life.

[00:06:46]That's found in Revelation 2 verse 10.

[00:06:48]The history is written in blood. The documentation is carved in Roman stone.

[00:06:54]And the truth remains. You do not die like that for a lie.