Is there a God?

Yes, there is a God. He’s real, and He’s wonderful.

Is there evidence that God is real? Absolutely – how much evidence do you want?

The Universe is evidence that God is real. Expert scientists almost all agree that the Universe had a finite beginning a long time ago that lead to all galaxies, stars, planets. An infinite and powerful creator explains how a huge and complex Universe appears out of nothing. How else would a person explain the singular creation point of the universe if not for a creator? And even though the universe is amazingly huge and complex, it is incredibly ordered and regular. If a person rejects a creator as the originator of the universe, then the only other alternative belief is that all of the vastness, order and perfection of the universe is the result of chance and coincidence (and the mathematical statistics show this is so far from possible it is beyond imagination).

Do you know that the planet we’re on is spinning at just the right speed and orbiting at just the right speed and just the right distance to stay the perfect distance away from the Sun to balance the gravitational pull against the force to fly away? Think of it this way - if we shrink the sun down to the size of a basketball, the earth shrinks down to a 2mm BB pellet and it will be about 83 feet away. If that BB pellet moves 1% or 10 inches it’ll come screaming into the basketball sun. But God has us at the perfect distance to balance a somehow endless orbit around the sun while we somehow endlessly rotate to give day and night. Oh, and by the way, that orbit just happens to create the perfect elliptical shape so that we are close part of the time for a summer and further away part of the time for a winter, which gives the right level of snow and rain and sunshine and warmth so that food comes up out of the ground – go figure!

I could tell you 100’s more things, but OK, maybe the Universe is not your thing. Well, here’s what over 15000 members of the Christian Medical Doctors and Dentists (CMDA) have studied and found – the human body is an incredibly complex design that only a great designer could fathom how to put us together. That’s not just what I think, that’s what a lot of the really, really smart people who have studied this think. Like Dr. James P. Gills, one of the invited speakers at the Do You Believe event in Clearwater, Florida. He’s a world renowned eye surgeon – a pioneer in new types of eye surgery. He has looked into the human body design and concluded there is no doubt about it – we are the handiwork of an incredible designer. Or Dr. Alexander Metherell, who spoke at Do You Believe 2008 – He has a PhD in Engineering from Bristol, and a Medical Degree from University of Miami.

Did you know that when you have a little paper cut on your finger, hundreds of processes take place to repair it? Can you imagine? Did you know that your skin cells are talking to each other all the time, and when one of them doesn’t answer your body knows something's wrong (a cut!) and it sounds the alarm? Or how about your heart? With all of our technical knowledge, we still can’t make a pump that just runs and runs without intervention for 80 years. There are tons of things that are beyond explanation unless a great designer put them together.

God is real and He has already revealed who He is

With an amazing universe designed by God and an amazing body that was designed by God, we’ve heard compelling evidence that God exists and He is the Great Designer, but who is He? People have claimed that God came down to the earth He created, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But is there evidence of this?

Before we dive into that, let me make sure that everyone understands there is no question that a guy named Jesus from Nazareth claimed to be the Son of God, God, and King of the Jews in the year 33 AD. There is no question that people claimed he did miracles, and there is no question that he was submitted to Roman floggings and ultimately death by crucifixion. Right?

Dr. Paul Maier, a Professor of History at Western Michigan University, follows History, Archeology, and Geography in his series: Jesus – Legend or Lord, and he points out the hard evidence that Archeology brings. He points out that whenever an archeological dig is related to the biblical record, 85-90% of the time it supports the biblical record. We have found the bones of Caiaphas the High Priest, one of the Prisons of Paul, the charred layers of Jericho, columns naming Pontius Pilate. Etc. Send us an email and we’ll send you a list of 50 new testament archeological finds and a list of 50 old testament finds.

But let me go right to the heart of the matter: the proof that Jesus is the son of God needs to be broken down into smaller questions. Those smaller questions are along these lines. Since Jesus claimed he is the son of God and he claimed that he would rise from the dead, and then he did:

1. How do we know Jesus actually died instead of almost dying?
2. Was he actually buried in the tomb and then the tomb was empty?
3. Was he seen alive by credible people after he was dead – proving that he rose from the dead?

These are the same questions posed by an attorney and legal editor for the Chicago Tribune named Lee Strobel after his wife became a Christian and he did research to try and save her from what he thought was just another religion. Mr. Strobel realized that the linchpin of the Christian faith is the resurrection. He states in his book The Case For Easter , “if someone could substantiate that assertion [claiming to be the Son of God] by returning to life after being certifiably dead and buried – well, that would be a compelling confirmation that he was telling the truth. Even for a skeptic like me.”

Here’s what he found on the first question. Did Jesus actually die?

Interviewing Dr. Alexander Metherell, who has a Medical Degree from the University of Miami, and a Doctorate in Engineering from the University of Bristol in England (yes, the same person who spoke at Do You Believe 2008), he found:

• The Roman floggings were so terribly brutal, that parts of the spine were sometimes exposed by the deep cuts of the whips with sharp bones and metal balls braided into the leather. We know many people would die from this type of brutality before they ever were crucified on the wood, and many would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock from large amounts of blood loss. This would do 4 things:
  • Heart races to pump blood that isn’t there
  • Blood pressure drops causing fatigue or collapse
  • Kidneys stop producing urine to maintain volume left
  • The person becomes very thirsty
• The crucifixion was so painful, they had to invent a new word to describe the pain – excruciating. Five to Seven inch nails were hammered through the wrists crushing the median nerve. Also,
  • Nails through feet, crushing those nerves (archeology also revealed this).
  • Shoulders dislocated
  • Death by asphyxiation
  • To exhale, the person must push up on his feet where nail would tear through feet and lock up on tarsal bones. When exhausted, can’t exhale any longer – respiratory acidosis. Leads to cardiac arrest.
  • Hypovolemic shock causing sustained rapid heart rate would result in the collection of fluid around the heart, called pericardial effusion, as well as around the lungs, called pleural effusion. This is the water and blood spoken of in the gospel of John, seen when the Roman soldier thrust a spear into Jesus side piercing the lungs and the heart.
  • Spear in the heart would further leave no doubt that Jesus died on the cross

Was He dead? No doubt about it and no one questioned it.

Second Question - Was He placed in a tomb and then the tomb was emptied?

Lee Strobel’s interview with Dr. William Lain Craig, PhD, D.Th. in his book “The Case For Easter” gives Craig’s 6 most compelling evidences that Jesus’ tomb was vacated as:

1. The empty tomb is definitely implicit in the early tradition that is passed along by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 which is a very old and reliable source of historical information about Jesus (whether you believe it to be words from God or not).

2. The site of Jesus’ tomb was known to everyone. So if it weren’t empty, it would be impossible for a movement founded on belief in the resurrection to have come into existence in the same city where this man had been publicly executed and buried.

3. We can tell from the language, grammar, and style that Mark got his empty tomb story from an earlier source, which is much too early for legend to have seriously corrupted it.

4. The simplicity of the empty tomb story in Mark has no additional flowery narratives that would accompany legend.

5. The unanimous testimony that the empty tomb was discovered by women argues for the authenticity of the story, because this would have been embarrassing for the disciples to admit and most certainly would have been covered up if this were a legend.

6. The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the historicity of the empty tomb. In other words, there was nobody who was claiming that the tomb still contained Jesus’ body. The question always was, ‘What happened to the body?’ They always started with the assumption that the tomb was vacant because they knew it was.

Strobel quotes Sir Norman Anderson – educated at Cambridge, lectured at Princeton, offered a fellowship for life at Harvard, served as dean of the Faculty of Laws at the University of London – “The empty tomb, then, forms a veritable rock on which all rationalistic theories of the resurrection dash themselves in vain.” (JND Anderson, The Evidence for the Resurrection, Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press, 1966 pg20).

Was Jesus dead body placed in the tomb and then later the tomb was empty? YES!

Third Question – The Resurrection – Was Jesus seen alive after He was obviously dead?

• Yes, He was seen alive –History shows that people of that time and place reacted to the sightings of the dead man on the cross coming back to life – proving his deity and his claims.
• In his book, “The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict” , Josh McDowell, another person who was challenged to disprove Christianity, writes that the proof of Jesus’ appearances is also proved in the silence of the opponents.
  • He writes on page 251, “The silence of the Jews speaks louder than the voice of the Christians, or , as Fairbairn notes: [“ The silence of the Jews is as significant as the speech of the Christians"] Fairbairn, SLC 357)
  • McDowell quotes Professor Day “The simple disproof, the effective challenging, of the fact of the Resurrection would have dealt a death-blow to Christianity. And they had every opportunity of disproof, if it were possible.”
• The reactions of Jesus’ followers is further proof of His resurrection. History records that a group of people went out claiming a resurrection and the ultimate King of Kings even while under Roman rule that forced people to bow to Caesar instead of another king. This “startup religion” then, was cruelly punished and yet the disciples continued.
• They could not have just laid their lives on the line for a lie. Chuck Colson, lead council for the Nixon administration, points out in his book, “Loving God”, as the 7 most powerful people in the US and perhaps the world, when Mr. Colson and the others were threatened with white collar prison, they gave up their fabrications and sang like canaries. The disciples, on the other hand, were some of the least powerful people in the world, and they never changed their story that Jesus rose from the dead even to their last dying breath having been threatened, beaten, imprisoned, and killed.
• McDowell points out (on page 283) that Simon Greenleaf, the famous Harvard professor of law, says: All that Christianity asks of men… is, that they would be consistent with themselves; that they would treat its evidences as they treat the evidence of other things; and that they would try and judge its actors and witnesses, as they deal with their fellow men, when testifying to human affairs and actions, in human tribunals. Let the witneses be compared with themselves, with each other, and with surrounding facts and circumstances; and let their testimony be sifted, as if it were given in a court of justice, on the side of the adverse party, the witness being subjected to rigorous cross-examiniation. The result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability, and truth. (Greenleaf, TE 46)

Was he seen alive by credible witnesses, the reaction of His followers show us He was. There is absolutely no credible answer for the reaction of His followers, and no credible answer was offered by the enemies of Christ at that time or at any time for the reaction of His followers, except that He did indeed raise up from the dead as He said he would.

What about you? What do you say happened? Jesus always make it personal – “Who do you say that I am?”, Jesus asks. Was He a liar that started a wave of people lying unto death that changed the whole world somehow even though they went against everything – the Roman empire, their friends, family, and culture for a lie? Or is He God’s gift to you and to me, to get us through God’s required Justice.

Some people have been told that Jesus was just a good man or a prophet, but Jesus left no room for anything in between. If a prophet speaks the truth of God and Jesus said he is the Son of God, He can not be just a prophet. Telling us ahead of time and then being raised from the dead, He can not be just a man.

Did you know the Bible has over 300 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled through His life, death, and resurrection. Mathematically, the odds of anyone fulfilling this are astronomical. The Christian Broadcasting Network writes in their pamphlet titled The Passion – Prophecy Fulfilled,  “Mathematicians put it this way: 1 person fulfilling 8 prophecies: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. 1 person fulfilling 48 prophecies: 1 chance in 10 to the 157^th power. 1 person fulfilling 300+ prophecies: Only Jesus!”

The Bible says that God is Holy and can’t be with sin. It also says that “all have sinned and fall short” – everyone. That means no one can be with God. The Bible also says that the punishment for sin is death,  so all of us deserve death. But best of all, the Bible says that God loves us all so much that He sent his one and only son Jesus, to take the punishment for us all, and if we believe that and turn away from sin and let Jesus be our Lord (leader, master), God will forgive our sins and will, at that moment place His Holy Spirit in us and set us aside as a child of God – washed completely, completely clean – as though we never did anything wrong at all, ever – and we will live forever with God in Heaven and be lead by His Spirit today. Do you understand that God’s steadfast system of justice can not be circumvented, but God’s incredible grace  - His free gift – satisfied the justice requirement by dying in your place? If you do, won’t you accept that free gift right now? Won’t you open the door of your heart right now? The Bible says Jesus is continually knocking at the door, and if anyone opens the door to Him, He will come in and begin a relationship with that person. That person can be you right now.