"You Ask Me How I Know He Lives
Parts #'s 1-3"

Scripture reading:  Is. 53:1-12; Ps. 16:1-11; Zech. 12:8-11

Opening text:  Matt. 28:1-10, 11-15, 16-20

Additional reading:  II Tim. 3:16; Titus 1:2; I Cor. 15:3-4;

Luke 9:26

    Christians believe that Jesus Christ is indeed the Savior Who gave His life for all of humanity as our perfect sacrifice for sin, and that He conquered sin, death, hell, and the grave through His resurrection because God (Who cannot lie) told us so in His Holy Word.  Having said that, God went out of His way to give us multiple supplementary proofs to support the claims of Scripture.  [Just a few of them that were mentioned during this series will be discussed in this short synopsis.]  Using the secular rules of literary criticism (in which the reliability of an ancient text is determined by the total number of manuscripts we have of that document as well as how close to the time of the originals those manuscripts were written) the NT accounts of the life of Jesus come in first place by a landslide!  The writings of Josephus (who was a historian during the time of the early church and who never claimed to be a follower of Christ) support the record of Jesus' miracles, death on the cross, and resurrection from the dead.  The fact that the testimony of the women who first saw Jesus after His resurrection is recorded in the biblical account is powerful considering the original cultural view of a woman's testimony not being legally binding in the court systems of that time.  (It is powerful, because if Jesus' resurrection was a hoax, this detail would not have been stated so as to avoid additional scrutiny.)  The conversion of some of Jesus' most prominent skeptics-- especially Saul/Paul-- after having an encounter with Jesus following His resurrection is rather compelling.  And a very strong confirmation that Jesus is exactly Who the Bible claims Him to be is the martyrdom of His early disciples, especially when you consider that in general people do not willingly, knowingly, die for a lie!