Reasons to Believe in Jesus – a Summary

This page lists basic reasons to believe without seeking to drive the points home. Driving them home would require articles for each point. So you might want to do your own research on these:

The Universe didn’t make itself. That isn’t reasonable. Modern physics points to even time having a beginning. The fine tuning of physical constants in the Universe to allow life to happen is so specific and unlikely in a non-designed scenario as to beggar belief.

The more we discover in science, either at the microscopic/subatomic level or at the macro level, the more we realise that there are more and more crazy mysteries pointing to a God who is far wiser than we can imagine.

Darwinian evolution can’t be observed, and seems so improbable as to be really a kind of fairy tale for grown ups.

It seems reasonable that the creator of human personality is a Creator God is personal and wants to interact with the persons He has created. It seems reasonable that if a personal God existed from eternity He is triune so because without persons in the godhead there would be no relationship and no love within God for eternity past. So it is very reasonable that a loving God existing from eternity could not be a single person. It is reasonable to believe in an eternal Son of God, something that even the Book of Proverbs (chapter 30) alludes to.

If God is personal we would expect He has the power and desire to communicate with us using WORDS. Jesus Christ is called THE WORD OF GOD (John 1:1). 

Jesus’ existence is a matter of public record better established than any other person from that time or before. Jesus was referred to in Roman and Jewish history as well as in the eyewitness accounts of the Bible. Yes, they had different beliefs about Jesus – they were against Him and His followers – but that confirms His actual existence in history. His death on the cross is likewise confirmed not only by the Bible but by secular history. From Wikipedia:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

The manuscripts we have of the New Testament are of greater number and better quality and greater agreement than any other manuscripts of ancient history. Even though many date a few hundred years after the event, other copies of historical documents we trust date often to many hundreds or some thousands of years later. This means we can be quite confident that the documents were not majorly changed to invent a Jesus radically different than the real one.

If a group of people tried to fake a history of Jesus – and many did – for example with the so-called gnostic gospels, enough people who knew the facts and were closer to the eye-witnesses would be around to reject such falsifications. And this is what they did in some cases.

The things that happened with Jesus – like his miracles and his crucifixion, were not “done in a corner” or in some place where no one would be in a position to know if they really did happen. These events are not like theories which some espouse that there are Giants in secret bases in Antarctica. Generally we can’t go to Antarctica or top-secret military bases to check out these ideas. But the people of the time of Jesus all knew about him, and no one could invent all these stories so close to the event without the general public throwing it out.

The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ looks well established when you consider that no one could find the body, many disciples said they saw Him resurrected, some said they ate fish with Him after the resurrection, and no eyewitness denied the story of Jesus on pain and threat of torture and death. People who trust a second hand report might die for a deception – but the authors of a deception would never be willing to die for something they knew to be false.

Moving forward into the present day, millions of former muslims have risked their lives and their family relationships by forsaking Islam and publicly identifying with Jesus as the Son of God whom they claim to have seen in an open vision, or in a dream. This phenomenon cannot be explained by wishful thinking. People do not wish to become social outcasts and risk their lives by believing in something they were indoctrinated against all their lives!

People would not be attracted to believe in a made-up doctrine which is very unflattering to and condemning of basic (universal but perverted) human instincts like pride, greed, lust and self-will. Yet multitudes say they have been changed by faith in Jesus Christ and are willing to lay down their lives for Him and His cause. Why is this if He is not real?

Miracles of healing and deliverance which continue to this day all confirm the reality of the power of Jesus Christ.

Archaeology continually and progressively confirms the veracity and historicity of the Bible account with each new discovery.

The internal consistency of the Bible, written by many different diverse authors over 1600 years or so is a powerful evidence that the message was divinely inspired. It is hard to get 10 people to write on religion without there being some major inconsistencies or disagreements, yet the Bible can be harmonised with itself.

Fulfilled prophecy, especially in the life of Jesus, points to the divine inspiration of the Bible and also to the truth of Jesus’ claim to be the promised Messiah to the people of Israel. The discovery of portions of the book of Isaiah, as well as other literature, in the Dead Sea Scrolls which are dated from before the time of Jesus, confirm the reality of the existence of these prophecies before the time of Jesus.

So many people have had so many prayers answered in the name of Jesus that it is not reasonable to believe that it all these unlikely or sometimes impossible things happened by chance simply because people were hopeful.

In the end, even after facing all this evidence, people can choose to doubt. You can also find reasons to doubt everything that you think you know. But the question to ask is: what is reasonable to believe on the balance of probabilities?