Evidence Part 2: Evidence for Jesus

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Evidence for Jesus’ Existence

Moving logically from the evidence for a God, we then need to focus on if we should believe in the Christian God. Why not Islam? Why not one or some of the Hindu gods? Well, I do not intend to write a discourse on other religions, but suffice it to say, if Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected, then none of the other world religions are true. Again, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” However, if he never existed, then we’ve only arrived at the fact that there is a God, and we would have to investigate all of the other religions of this world to see if they have any real truth in them.

So, let us continue with Christ.

First, there is virtually no dispute that Jesus existed. As New Testament Scholar Craig L. Blomberg wrote in “Who was Jesus of Nazareth?”: “An inordinate number of websites and blogs make the wholly unjustified claim that Jesus never existed. Biblical scholars and historians who have investigated this issue in detail are virtually unanimous today in rejecting this view, regardless of their theological or ideological perspectives.”(Blomberg, Craig, L. as cited in Christian Apologetics, A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, Douglas Groothius, 2011, p. 438.) Even a recent article from 2026, on MSN, a network not exactly known for support of Christian values, acknowledged the same:

Contemporary scholars of antiquity broadly agree that Jesus existed, and biblical scholars and classical historians view theories of his nonexistence as effectively refuted. Even Robert M. Price, an atheist scholar who denies Jesus’s existence, acknowledges that his perspective runs against the majority view. Classicist and historian Michael Grant stated that “no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus, or at any rate very few have, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.” (Fox, Raven, June 3, 2026, “New evidence called ‘strongest ever’ for the historical existence of Jesus” available at: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/new-evidence-called-strongest-ever-for-the-historical-existence-of-jesus/)

Indeed, there is significant evidence outside of traditional Christian writings to support that Jesus lived, performed miracles, and was even seen after this death. For example, one such source is the writing of Flavius Josephus, the Romano-Jewish Scholar who lived from 37 AD to 100 AD. He recorded the history of the First Jewish-Roman War and he wrote the “Antiquities of the Jews,” which recorded world history from a Jewish perspective, writing primarily to the Greeks and Romans. In Antiquities of the Jews, regarding Jesus he wrote:

Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works—a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (The Works of Josephus, translated by William Whiston, Book 18, Chapter 3, p. 480 ¶3.)

To be sure, there is controversy with this passage. Josephus was a Jew, and it seems less likely that he would have included the language that Jesus was the Christ; thus there is speculation that there may have been subsequent interpolation or changes by some Christians; however, there is scholarly consensus that most of the passage is reliable, showing that Jesus lived and even performed works, and many scholars believe such to be accurate as a whole. Indeed, the article cited earlier refers to a 2025 Oxford study that addresses that issue, making a strong case for the authenticity of the entire writing. However, such scholarly debate is beyond the scope of this article.

Further, Josephus wrote of Jesus in additional passages, which have not been contested and are deemed consistent and valid by virtually all scholars. For example, in Antiquities of the Jews, he discusses James, the brother of Jesus:

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. (The Works of Josephus, translated by William Whiston, Book 20, Chapter 9, p. 583 ¶1.)

Additionally, in Book 18, Chapter 5 his recount of John the Baptist is quite similar to that in the Gospels:

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [with water] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [or the remission] of some sins [only], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. (Id. At Book 18, Chapter 5, p. 484, ¶2.)

Additionally, we have the writings of Cornelius Tacitus, who was a senator and historian of Rome from 56-120 AD. In his Annals, he wrote of Christ. During the time of Nero, the Christians had been getting persecuted for their faith, and were blamed by Emperor Nero for Great Fire of Rome. Tacitus wrote:

But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. 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, (Christ) 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 Judaea, 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. (Annals 15.44.)

We also have the letter from Pliny the Younger, who was the Roman governor of Bithynia et Pontus (now Turkey) and he wrote a letter around 112 AD requesting guidance on dealing with Christians. The letter is quite lengthy, but one of the relevant portions is:

They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind. (Pliny, Letters, transl. by William Melmoth, rev. by W.M.L. Hutchinson (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1935), vol. II, X:96, cited in Habermas, The Historical Jesus, 199.)

This is just a sample of the non-religious, external, historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. Frankly, it would be foolish to even consider the argument that Jesus never existed. One simply only need to look at the impact that he had globally, the martyrs of the early Christian faith, and the abundance of internal and external written documents about him to easily acknowledge that he existed.

This, then, brings you to the bigger question: even if he existed, is he who he claimed to be?

Evidence: Jesus as the Christ

So even if Jesus existed, how can we know what was true? Maybe he was just a man, a moral teacher who started a religion. We could argue the same for Mohamed, Joseph Smith, or other religious leaders in the past.

Except Jesus is different.

Jesus did not say he was a prophet for a god of some sort. He did not claim he saw a vision and was sent to reveal some truths. He said that he was the Son of God and one with God, thus equal to God himself!

Mic drop.

Thus, Jesus is quite different from any other person in history, regardless of religion. This brings us to the famous quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 55-56.)

In other words, Jesus cannot be just some leader; he claimed to be much, much more than that. Thus, he was either a liar, a lunatic, or he was the very person he claimed to be. If he was a lunatic, then one would have expected his fame to have died out very quickly if it ever started at all. If he was a liar, then he was not a “great moral teacher” or even a good person; indeed, he would be evil if he were claiming to be the Son of God and was not. If you do not believe he was evil or a lunatic, then he must be who he said he was.

Smart Liars

I believe continuing the previous comparison to other faiths is appropriate. Unlike Islam, Mormonism, and other religions, the origin story for Christ and the New Testament, is quite different. Jesus never went out into the wilderness and then claimed to have received some divine revelation from God that he must reveal to all people. The people who did that are asking you to blindly follow them, to trust that their unwitnessed narrative is true. In other words, there is no external proof of anything they say. Mohamed went to a cave; Joseph Smith went to a thicket of woods. Neither had any witnesses. Unlike Mohamed or Joseph Smith, Jesus never claimed to have had an individual revelation from God; indeed, he claimed to be God. He never asked you to blindly follow what he said, as demonstrated in the earlier chapters, he demonstrated everything by proofs. Indeed, the evidence and proof came before his declaration as to who he was and is.

In my line of work, I deal with a lot of work-related injuries; people who have been hurt at work and may be entitled to workers’ compensation benefits. Sometimes, the cases I’m involved in surround an employee who had a legitimate injury, but there may be a difficulty with the provisioning of disability benefits. In other cases, the work-related injury is disputed entirely. In other words, the employer denies that it even happened and doesn’t believe the claims of the employee that he or she got hurt at work; the employer believes the employee is perpetuating a fraud. In general, the claims that are clearly legitimate are not fought and no attorney is needed. I tend to get involved when there is a problem with the claim or when the claim is questioned entirely. In many of the cases that I deal with, there are no witnesses and the employees tend to be fairly questionable people.

The bad employees who are smarter and trying to fake a work-related injury claim they suffered the accident when no one else was around. If there are no witnesses, it is harder to contradict the claims of the employee. For example, a man may allege that he had to go to the back room and that’s when he tripped and fell. The individual employee asks you to trust his set of events. In those cases, if I suspect the claim is fraudulent, I have to dig up other evidence to test out my suspicion that he may be lying. I would have to depose the employee, see if he would contradict himself or if I could catch him in a lie to discredit him. I would research his past, see if he has had similar claims previously. I would research his medical records and see if there is any information about pre-existing problems. If I could not come up with something, he would probably end up getting disability benefits and the claim would be deemed compensable.

A few years ago, I had a case involving someone who claimed to have slipped in a stairwell at work and injured her knee. She knew the facility she worked at had security cameras everywhere, so she went to the one place, she believed, had no cameras. She wanted to obtain disability (money) benefits and be taken off of work while she “recovered.” As indicated, generally, it is difficult to refute these allegations. Indeed, in such cases there are no witnesses to say otherwise. In that specific case, however, there happened to be a hidden security camera that captured the whole incident. The video revealed that the employee walked into the stairwell, waited for the door to close behind her, pulled out a plastic cup out of her bag, and she then banged it repeatedly against her own knee in order to cause abrasions and signs as though she had fallen down the staircase and injured her knee. She then put away the cup and laid on the ground and begin to cry out as though she had fallen. Needless to say, she did not get any disability benefits and was terminated immediately. I suspect she was criminally prosecuted as well, but I did not follow the case beyond that.

Unlike most religious founders, Jesus never went into the metaphorical stairwell, had an incident, and demanded that you believe him. Such belief would amount to blind faith, something that the Bible does not require and even teaches against. Jesus came out and performed miracles, healed the sick, raised the dead, and then declared that he was the Christ. Jesus never asked you to take his word for it, stating, “[i]f I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:37-38 (ESV)) As discussed, the smart false prophets and leaders of religion received their alleged revelations from God in isolation, and they were never foolish enough to make such a bold statement to be God, only to have received revelation from him. Historically, the false leaders who claim to be someone divine fizzle out quickly because their divinity can be directly challenged and proven to be false. The false leaders who claim isolated divine revelation are harder to challenge and they often succeed in leading many blindly along.

Jesus’s bold claim to be the Son of God should have been easily refuted if there were not clear evidence to support it. The Jews did not dispute that the miracles happened, they simply disputed the source or power for those miracles. He claimed to have died and been resurrected; if there was no empty tomb, there should be no Christianity. Interestingly, historically, there has never been a dispute that the tomb was empty. Frankly, if the tomb was not empty, this would have been the easiest way to disprove the claims of Christ. All the Jews would have had to do when the apostles claimed he was resurrected, would be to go to the tomb, roll back the stone, and show his body. However, instead, they came up with excuses for the lack of his body. Indeed, as it is difficult to dispute the existence of Jesus, it is similarly difficult to dispute the fact of the empty tomb. If you research those antagonistic towards the resurrection, the vast majority of arguments they come up with involve allegations of hallucinations or that Jesus didn’t die; they don’t claim that the tomb had a body in it; the evidence is not there to support that. In the words of D.H. Van Daalen, “It is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.” (DH Van Daalen, The Real Resurrection, Collins, 1972, p. 41).

There is so much more evidence, but because this is an online article, part three will be coming shortly.

Evidence Part 1: Random Nothingness or a Creator?

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Evidence Part 1: Random Nothingness or a Creator?

Most people who don’t believe in God, or a greater power of some sort, do so based on philosophical arguments, not evidence. For example, there must not be a god because:

• “Why would God allow so much suffering in this world.”
• “There is so much evil in this world that a good God, if he or she existed, would not allow this.”

Ironically, as I’ll discuss next, these arguments actually support evidence for a higher power of some kind.

If we’re talking about proving the existing of a higher power or God, I believe you could use both historical and scientific evidence. However, for me personally, I always prefer the strongest form of evidence. In my area of practice, virtually all the work I do is in the form of a trial directly before a judge with no jury. Evidence is presented to the judge and the judge rules on that evidence and renders a verdict based on the evidence and arguments by both sides. Although sometimes I take the approach of “the more the better,” and try to overwhelm the judge with a tidal wave of evidence, often I recognize that the judge’s time is valuable and he or she is, frankly, going to get bored with too much evidence. In those cases, I narrow it down and present the strongest arguments and evidence possible, excluding the less persuasive evidence available.

When it comes to the existence of God, you could interview witnesses, take statements from people who have supposedly seen God and try to present that evidence at trial. However, I would not find that evidence particularly persuasive. Why not? Well, as a Christian, most of the people who have seen God, or the glory of God, like Moses, are dead. The ones who are still living and claim to have seen him recently tend to not be extremely credible. So, in this case, I believe the scientific evidence should be the initial focus for the existence of God.

It is a dramatic understatement to say that there is a lot of scientific evidence for God. There are volumes of scientific literature written by people much smarter than I am. I could present a tidal wave of evidence that would overwhelm and probably bore you to death. However, among some of the literature, there are several common and extremely strong arguments supporting the evidence for the existence and involvement of God in this world. I do not believe you need to go through every argument out there. For me, these were some of the stronger arguments and sufficient scientific evidence for me to be satisfied that God exists and that He created this world. I will present these arguments to you and attempt to do so as concisely and clearly as possible. If you find these arguments less than satisfactory, or if you are one blessed with a scientific mind and a good attention span, feel free to check out the actual books referenced herein.

Teleological Argument
This is sometimes coined the “design argument,” as it is essentially an argument for intelligent design. In other words, it was not just happenstance that the earth was created and is supportive of life. There are characteristics of the earth and the environment which, if altered even slightly, would render the planet entirely uninhabitable. Thus, the argument is that someone or something must have organized the planet into such a perfect position and according to a perfect design in order for life to exist.

There are over a hundred criteria, any one of which, if altered, would make life impossible on this planet. We could go through all of them, but such would be overwhelming and not the purpose of the book. However, to give you a resource for further research and to introduce you to this argument, some of the evidences are as follows:

1. Sun/Earth Distance and Mass: If the sun was at all larger or more massive than it is, then it would burn too erratically in order to support life on the earth. Further, if the earth were even slightly closer to the sun, then life could not be supported; the gravitational pull would be affected, affecting the rotation of the earth, causing portions of the earth to essentially burn up and others to remain too cold to support life.
2. Jupiter’s Interference: If Jupiter did not exist and was not as massive as it is, the earth would be pummeled up to a thousand times more than it is by asteroids and comets. This would prevent life from being able to thrive on the earth, with the surface and the atmosphere being destroyed entirely. Further, Jupiter is the perfect distance from the earth. Not only does its distance from the earth provide for the right interference from space debris, but if it were any closer to the earth, it would pull the earth out of its stable orbit and cause an erratic atmosphere and significant other problems to prevent life on earth.
3. Moon/Axis: The earth has a perfect moon that is the perfect distance from the earth. Not only does the moon prevent the earth from rotating too quickly, but it helps keep the earth’s axis at the perfect tilt to support life on the planet and to support the seasons, avoiding extreme temperatures on the earth. If the moon was larger or the distance was greater, again, life would not be viable on the earth.

These are just three of the teleological arguments for an intelligent design, and thus, an intelligent designer. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross identified 122 constants that were needed in order for life to exist on any planet. Remember, I just gave you three. Using this number, he determined that that the odds of these constants all being present on any given planet by chance would come to a staggering 10 to the 138 power (10138). (Hugh Ross, Why I Believe in Divine Creation, 138-141.) In other words, there is basically no chance that this earth just “happened” out of chaos. I would not go to Vegas with those odds, yet that is exactly what atheists attempt to do.

Moral Argument
This argument is neither scientific or historical, but I suppose would fall into an additional category of philosophical evidence or logical evidence. I have asked some friends who abandoned all faith in a higher power on how they planned to raise their children. One response is fairly common: they intend to raise their children to be “moral people,” but to not have any focus upon “a god.” One of my friends has pointed out that morality has shifted with each generation, pointing out that the Romans of the day had a very different view of morality than we do today. Unfortunately, my friends who have adopted this theory have failed to recognize that this very acknowledgment addresses the problem with morality. If there is no external source of morality, then there is no such thing as morality: only shifting desires that could change any minute.

For example, if I held up my friend at gunpoint and took his money and property, he would surely claim that such was wrong. However, using this philosophy, their judgment has no basis; there is no wrong, only actions and personal preferences. It was my preference that I wanted his money. I could argue that a lion takes down and consumes its prey for its own good. Why is it any more wrong that I rob him of his livelihood in order to sustain mine?

Thus, even though many deny a true standard of right and wrong, deep down, they still know it is there and when it affects them personally, they are more likely to recognize their own trap. Because there is a true standard, that standard has to come from somewhere outside of ourselves, from someone outside of our environment.

One of the earliest apologists I would consider is C.S. Lewis, and he emphasized this point in his book Mere Christianity:

Everyone has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same thing to you?’—’That’s my seat, I was there first’—’Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’—’Why should you shove in first?’—’Give me a hit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’— ‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

 

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

Again, despite some slight shifting in acceptable or unacceptable behavior in some minimal respects, there is within us an inherent knowledge of what is good and what is evil. We know what we are supposed to be doing, even when we do not do it. Although people, and even civilizations, can convince themselves that their circumstance is different or that “times have changed,” when it affects them personally, they usually insist on an outside standard that everyone deep-down acknowledges.

In their book, “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,” (a book that I highly recommend for further evidence and which has been a great resource for me) Normal Geisler and Frank Turek presented an example that I believe best sums up this moralistic argument:

A professor at a major university in Indiana … who was teaching a class in ethics, assigned a term paper to his students. He told the students to write on any ethical topic of their choice, requiring each student only to properly back up his or her thesis with reasons and documentation. One student, an atheist, wrote eloquently on the topic of moral relativism. He argued, “All morals are relative; there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness; it’s all a matter of opinion; you like chocolate, I like vanilla,” and so on. His paper provided both his reasons and his documentation. It was the right length, on time, and stylishly presented in a handsome blue folder. After the professor read the entire paper, he wrote on the front cover, “F, I don’t like blue folders!”

 

When the student got the paper back he was enraged. He stormed into the professor’s office and protested, “‘F! I don’t like blue folders!’ That’s not fair! That’s not right! That’s not just! You didn’t grade the paper on its merits!” Raising his hand to quiet the bombastic student, the professor calmly retorted, “Wait a minute. Hold on. I read a lot of papers. Let me see… Wasn’t your paper the one that said there is no such thing as fairness, rightness, and justice?”

 

“Yes,” the student answered.

 

“Then what’s this you say about me not being fair, right, and just?” The professor asked. “Didn’t your paper argue that it’s all a matter of taste? You like chocolate, I like vanilla?” The student replied, “yes, that’s my view.” “Fine, then,” the professor responded. “I don’t like blue. You get an F!” Suddenly the light bulb went on in the student’s head. He realized that he really did believe in moral absolutes. He at least believed in injustice. After all, he was charging his professor with injustice for giving him an F simply because of the color of the folder. That simple fact defeated his entire case for relativism. (Norman L. Geisler, and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Crossway Books, 2004, pp. 173-174.)

Put simply, because there is an external standard of right and wrong, there must be an external source for that standard, i.e. God. If the standard is merely internal, then it is of no consequence and can change with the weather or your own attitude.

Again, this isn’t meant to be a big diatribe, but is meant to show that the evidence for a higher power is strong, and, in my opinion, stronger than any other argument out there. I’ll get to Jesus later, but for this essay, this will suffice.