Jesus Rose From The Dead

So I’ve been watching videos on YouTube lately. Someone will be like “Go watch this 3 minute video” and I’ll go watch it, and then YouTube will be like “Hey, you should watch these other videos too.” So I’m like “Well, you are YouTube so you must be smart, I will watch those videos as you have suggested.” Yes, I have conversations with a website.

Well, some of these videos I have watched have really challenged my faith. One says “If there is a God, why does THIS happen in the world?” or “If God is really loving, why doesn’t he do THIS?” or “Here is how to prove there is no God,” or “Here is how to prove a Christian wrong.” Sometimes they’re just complete baloney (I think bologna is a ridiculous spelling for the lunch meat, so I spell it my own way), but sometimes they ask some pretty tough questions, questions we can not answer and will never be able to.

So I start asking God questions too, “Why DOES that happen? Why doesn’t that OTHER thing happen? What about all the things those videos said?” You guys might think that because we work at Yes FM we’re super-spiritual, but we’re just like you and have the same questions and struggles you do, so I was legitimately asking God some questions. His answer to me was this: Jesus.

“Jesus? But that doesn’t answer all those questions,” you may be thinking. Well maybe not, but knowing what I know about Jesus makes me not NEED an answer to all those questions. Some people believe in the Bible because they were raised to believe it, they believe the stories because they’re in the Bible so they must be true. I think that is great, it is having child-like faith just as Jesus told us to. But I am sort of an intellectual thinker (although you wouldn’t know it by talking to me probably). I like to look at the facts, historical evidence, how we know things really took place, ect. And here’s what I have found.

Of all religious books ever written, the Bible has the most reliable manuscripts. People question the writings of the Bible which have thousands upon thousands of identical manuscripts, but they don’t question the writings of Plato or Aristotle, when they have very few writings (in comparison to the Bible). Also, the Bible has thousands more identical manuscripts than the religious book with the NEXT largest number, which is only in the hundreds. So the Bible’s reliability is much much higher than that of any other religious book.

Not only that, there is no other explanation for Jesus’ body disappearing than the resurrection. He didn’t have a twin who poked holes in his wrists and feet to make people think he was Jesus resurrected. If so, people might have noticed that Jesus had a twin at some point before then. You can’t really hide something like having a twin from your friends, and ESPECIALLY not from your family (since, you’re twins).

Another theory is that His disciples stole the body of dead Jesus and made up a story about how He rose again. Let me ask you a question, if you made up a lie and someone said “Admit to your lie or I will kill you,” would you really be willing to die for the sake of your lie? I doubt it, you’d probably fold and beg for mercy. But even if you were willing to die for a lie it would be pretty hard to find 10 other people to do the same thing. But I’ll tell you what, Jesus DID rise from the dead, and 11 out of 12 of his best friends were KILLED because they saw it, and they REFUSED to deny what they knew to be true. (The only disciple that didn’t die for his faith died of old age.) They didn’t just see Jesus once and then He vanished or something, but they had multiple conversations with him, He even ate a meal with them to prove he was real and not some kind of spirit or ghost that just looked real. Peter was so sure His Lord rose from the dead that when Peter was sentenced to be crucified, he insisted on being crucified upside down because he was not worthy of dying the way his Savior did.

So you know what, I may not have all the answers. I may never understand why good people starve to death, while bad people become more successful. I may not be able to tell you why God intervenes in some situations and not others. I may not always have an answer to questions people throw at me. But one thing I do know is that Jesus Christ came in to this world, He was killed, and He defeated death. Other religious leaders have come and passed, but none of them PROVED that what they said was true by rising from the dead. And I believe He rose from the dead, and I believe there is plenty of logical evidence to support that. And as long as I know that, I’m going to believe everything He said. And if that means I don’t agree with the way someone lives, or I don’t agree with what someone believes, then that’s what it means. I will still love that person, I will still try to answer their questions to the best of my ability, but I will not back down on what I believe to be true.

Hopefully if any of you have questions about God and the world and why things take place, you can just remember Jesus dying on the cross because He loved us, and rising from the dead to prove that love. And hopefully that will help everything else fall into place.

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