Why Should I Believe in Jesus?

Why Life with Jesus is the Best Life

Think about the world we live in, furiend. There is so much pain, sadness, and darkness. Even people who have great wealth and many blessings still struggle to be happy, and we see this when they lose themselves in drugs, other bad ways of living, and sometimes even hurt or kill themselves. There is a lot of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in our world, wouldn’t you agree, hooman?

That is because this world is fallen (Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned”) and can never fully satisfy (Hebrews 11:16 “But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.”). We also see that hoomans really like to have something they really love and support. It might be a celebrity or a sports team or a hobby, but there is something within hoomans that makes them crave lifting something up. That is because hoomans were made to love and lift up God.

The world can never fully satisfy, but God can. The more we “obsess” over Him, the happier we will become because He can give the satisfaction and purpose nothing else can give. The way He tells hoomans to live is the best way to live; it is all about love, and if the whole world followed it, we would live in a beautiful paradise! Since the world is fallen and He gives everyone free will, we can’t have that right now, but He gives His children peace, joy, and other blessings while we’re on earth and then we have the purromise of living forever in a purrfect world after death.

Evidence for the Existence of Jesus as a Historical Person

Even if you don’t believe Jesus is the son of God, there is enough historical evidence to prove that He was a man who lived on Earth. Some hoomans have started to believe that Jesus wasn’t a real person, but purrlease don’t believe that, hooman. Scholars who spend all their time studying and researching agree that Jesus was a real person, and that is both Christian and non-Christian scholars, so don’t let the devil or your mind trick you into believing the opposite. Even George Albert Wells, who was one of the most influential people teaching that Jesus was just a myth, eventually accepted that Jesus did exist based on his research.

Quote from a smart hooman: “Today nearly all historians, whether Christians or not, accept that Jesus existed and that the gospels contain plenty of valuable evidence which has to be weighed and assessed critically. There is general agreement that, with the possible exception of Paul, we know far more about Jesus of Nazareth than about any first or second century Jewish or pagan religious teacher.” — Stanton, Graham (2002, p. 145)

A book that does a good job of explaining how evidence and eye witness testimonies work in the justice system and how we can use the same method to investigate Christ is Forensic Faith, written by J. Warner Wallace, who is a former cold case detective. Wallace says, “Everything counts as evidence, including the behavior of the people who originally witnessed the life of Jesus, the testimony of those who listened to the statements of these witnesses, the touch-point corroborative evidence of archeology, the internal confirmation of geography, politics, proper noun, and the deficiency of alternative explanations,” and he also explains that eye witness testimony is considered “direct evidence” in court whereas all other evidence is “indirect” or “circumstantial.”

In addition, witnesses are considered reliable unless demonstrated otherwise. If it can be established that (1) a witness was actually present to see the event, (2) can be corroborated (even in a limited way) by another witness or additional evidence, (3) has not changed his story but has been honest and accurate over time, and (4) doesn’t possess a bias that might cause him to lie, you are to consider the witness reliable.

Knowing this, the testimony of Jesus’s disciples becomes very trustworthy statements, and think about this, hooman. The twelve disciples, the apostle Paul, and the early Christians had nothing to gain by writing and speaking about what they saw and knew about Jesus. Eleven of the disciples and the apostle Paul were killed for speaking about Jesus, sometimes in very painful ways. The only disciple who was not killed was John, but that was not because hoomans didn’t try to kill him. They actually tried to boil him alive in oil, but he survived (!) so they exiled him to an island instead.

Here are some of the historical evidences of Jesus:

Quadratus of Athens (ca. AD 60-129) was a disciple of the apostles and offered as evidence the existence of people healed by Jesus who were still alive in his day
Thallus (ca. AD 5-60) was maybe the earliest secular writer to mention Jesus; he is so ancient his writings don’t even exist anymore, but the historian Sextus Julius Africanus quotes Thallus’s attempt to explain the darkness that happened during Jesus’s crucifixion (AD 221): “On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.”
The Roman historian Tacitus (ca. AD 56-117) confirms that Jesus lived in Judea and was crucified under Pontius Pilate
Stoic philosopher Mara Bar-Serapion (ca. AD 70-?) wrote to his son and compared the life and persecution of Jesus with that of other famous philosophers
Phlegon (ca. AD 80-140) was a Greek writer who also described the darkness surrounding the crucifixion; he was also mentioned by Origen, an early church theologian, who said of him, “Now Phlegon, in the thirteenth or fourteenth book, I think of his Chronicles, not only ascribed to Jesus a knowledge of future events … but also testified that the result corresponded to His predictions.”
Pliny the Younger (ca. AD 61-113) was a lawyer and imperial magistrate under the Emperor Trajan who described the lifestyles of early Christians, how there was a great number of them and that many of them would not deny Christ despite torture
Suetonius (ca. AD 69-140) was a Roman historian serving under Emperor Hadrian who described Christians’ treatment under the Emperor Claudius. From this account and the above we know Jesus had an immediate impact on His followers; they were committed to their belief that Jesus was God and withstood the torment and punishment of the Roman Empire
Celsus (ca. AD ? – 180) was a Greek philosopher who was antagonistic to the claims of the Gospel but referenced nearly eighty different biblical quotes which confirmed their early appearance in history and admitted the miracles of Jesus were generally believed in the early second century

Evidence for the Historical Accuracy of the Bible

The Bible was written by approximately 40 different authors who were spread across 3 continents, over a period of nearly 2,000 years, and despite that its message is uniform from start to finish, and despite the many people who disbelieve and the opposition the Bible has faced, it is still the bestselling book in the world. That’s purrty powerful!

Historians who study ancient texts, including the Bible, commonly use three tests to gauge the reliability and accuracy of ancient documents: the bibliographical test, the internal evidence test, and the external evidence test. Applying these tests to the Bible reveals that–even if you don’t believe the Bible is the inspired word of God–it is an accurate and historical document. If you want to read about the tests as applied to the Bible, you can do that here: https://makinghimknown.tv/the-bible-truth-or-fiction/

Archeological records and non-Christian historical records often confirm what is written in the Bible. An archeologist named John Elder reported: “It is not too much to say that it was the rise of the science of archeology that broke the deadlock between historians and the orthodox Christian. Little by little, one city after another, one civilization after another, one culture after another, whose memories were enshrined only in the Bible, were restored to their proper places in ancient history by the studies of archaeologists… The over-all result is indisputable. Forgotten cities have been found, the handiwork of vanished peoples has reappeared, contemporary records of Biblical events have been unearthed and the uniqueness of biblical revelation has been emphasized by contrast and comparison to the newly understood religions of ancient peoples. Nowhere has archeological discovery refuted the Bible as history.” (John Elder, Prophets, Idols, and Diggers, Bobbs-Merrill, Co. 1960, p. 18)

One such record is a fragment of a lump of clay with a seal impression, known as a bulla, which was found in a part of the Old City of Jerusalem, where the “City of David” stood. The bulla is about 2,600 years old and dates back to the time when Solomon’s Temple still existed. The inscription on it bears the name of an official: Gedaliah son of Pashur. This hooman is mentioned in the Bible in the book of Jeremiah! “Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jehukal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malkijah heard what Jeremiah was telling all the people …” ( Jer. 38:1)

The details in the Bible about ancient laws, customs, geography, and other details match historical records. For example, Old Testament (OT) scholar Robert Dick Wilson noted that there are twenty-six pagan kings of various nations that are mentioned in the OT. The names of these rulers are also found on the monuments of these kings as well as in documents of their own times. The names of the pagan kings are spelled correctly in the Hebrew text whereas the secular (non-christian or worldly) literature of the same period often spelled the names wrong. Ptolemy was an ancient writer who drew up a list of eighteen Babylonian kings, and on his list, none of the names of these eighteen kings is spelled correctly. So this means that if people were just making the Bible up, they did it very carefully, making sure to get all the world details right, and that isn’t how hoomans usually write fiction! And what would be their reason to make this all up? Just to trick other hoomans? It was obviously a duty they cared about very much, recording even the failures and sins of their nation and heroes, and the prophets of the Bible wrote God’s words and shared them with the world even when it put their own lives in danger.

Evidence in Creation for God

The Bible says that “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork,” (Psalm 19:1), and “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–His eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made …” (Romans 1:20-21).

When you look at the sky, the sun, mountains, oceans and all the amazing and breathtaking things that exist in nature, isn’t there something that stirs within you that thinks, “It seems like there is something out there greater than me or anything I know”? There is! It’s God! This is why all over the world from the beginning of time so many cultures have believed in and worshipped gods. It’s just that not all of them knew who the one true God was.

This might not seem like “evidence” to you, but isn’t a house evidence that someone must exist who built the house? Our world had to come from somewhere, furiend. The Big Bang Theory suggests that everything came from nothing, but that’s asking us to believe in something we can’t prove and that we don’t fully understand–just like God! In fact, the Big Bang Theory, if you simplify it, says that creation came from a sudden explosive expansion of matter, and … um … hooman, that’s basically how you could describe Biblical creation. There was nothing; then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was. He kept speaking, and creation kept exploding into life, expanding out to create the world. Both the Big Bang Theory and Creation Theory say there was nothing and then something, but the Big Bang Theory says there was nothing-nothing, which we don’t see as a concept in nature, whereas Creation Theory says there was nothing except God, and if God is a being that is beyond our understanding, outside of nature, and with greater power than everything, it makes sense that He can exist even when nothing else does.

Some Neat Facts That Show How Amazing God Is

Albert Einstein, who was a meowy smart hooman and scientist, is often said to be an atheist, but he was not. He was not a Christian and did not believe the Bible was the Word of God, but he said, “In view of such harmony in the cosmos, which, I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” (Einstein: The Life and Times, quoted by Ronald W. Clark according to the testimony of Prince Hubertus of Lowenstein) He also said, “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.” (“What Life Means to Einstein,” Interview with G. Viereck, Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929)
The Bible says there was one landmass in the beginning (Genesis 1:9), and the existence of the supercontinent “Pangea” is confirmed by geology and fossil evidence.
The Bible also claimed the world was round in a time when most people did not believe that fact. Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth.” In fact, the Scriptures inspired Christopher Columbus to sail around the world. In his diary he wrote: “It was the Lord who put it into my mind…There is no question the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures…”
Even though hoomans didn’t understand the concepts of gravity and outer space until 1687, the Bible describes this concept in Job 26:7, which says, “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.” Most ancient peoples believed the earth had to be suspended on something as we don’t see anything just floating around on nothing in nature.
The book of Job also describes the water cycle (Job 26:8; 36:27-28) which wasn’t researched and experimented fully on until 1674 and wasn’t widely accepted until the early nineteenth century.
Matthew Maury (1806–1873) is a hooman considered to be the father of oceanography. He noticed the expression “paths of the sea” in Psalm 8:8 (“…and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas.”) He decided to search for the paths and discovered the existence of ocean currents in the 1850s, which had previously been unknown.

If God is Real & Loves Everyone, Why Do We Have to Accept Jesus to be Saved?

You might be thinking: If God really loves me, why can’t He accept me like I am? Why did anyone have to pay for my “sins”?

God is purrfect. More purrfect than we can even understand, and the world He wants us to live in with Him is purrfect too. But are you purrfect? No. We can all admit we’re not purrfect. We can also understand that wrong actions have to be paid for. You wouldn’t want hoomans who hurt other hoomans to get away with it, would you? Of course not. Neither does God. So a price has to be paid. Otherwise, God wouldn’t be good because He’d be okay with evil! And everything compared to Him is not good. Just because He’s sooo good!

I hope that you helps you understand, furiend. But if it doesn’t, tell God you don’t get it. Ask him to show His love to you so than you can understand. He won’t be mad.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.”