Day 2: Living Daily in Reality: Historicity of Christ
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We’re talking about living daily in reality – and we’ve been saying that
reality was explained to us by a unique human being who lived in
Palestine in the first century of our era. Although certain Western
religions have tried to turn him into a figurehead for their particular
beliefs, he himself was a well-known public figure to ordinary people and
political leaders of the first century.

Four different eye-witness accounts of his life were written and
circulating throughout the Mediterranean world just twenty years after
his execution by the Romans. The writers themselves were written about
and quoted by dozens of contemporaries while the opposition of the
authorities is part of the general literature and government records of
the period. Eventually his explanation of reality was accepted by the
Emperors of Rome and became the accepted explanation of reality for the
known world.

This Jesus of Nazareth said that His father created the universe and made
you and me inside him so that he could live in us here on earth the life
he had planned. These eyewitness accounts were collected as the first
four books in the New Testament part of the collection known in Greek as
TA BIBLIA – the Bible. The authors themselves are quoted at the end of
the first century by men like Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and Papias,
while thousands who had seen the man himself and read the original
accounts were still alive.

The Roman historians Pliny and Tacitus in the second century communicated
with their Emperor about this man Christ and what they should do to stop
the spread of his teaching. But all the time, the personal chain of
witnesses increased the confirmation of the historical facts – men like
Irenaeus (born about 97 A.D.) talked about Polycarp (born in 70 A.D.) and
said: “I can tell the place in which Polycarp sat and related his
conversation with John and others who had seen Jesus.”

Similarly, the unbroken chain of personal transmission of historical
facts is attested by accounts of men like Papias, who was alive in the
first century and wrote: “Mark being the interpreter of Peter wrote
exactly whatever he remembered; but not in the order in which things were
spoken or done by Christ. For he was neither a hearer nor a follower of
the Lord; but, as I said, afterwards followed Peter, who made his
discourses for the profit of those that heard him, but not in the way of
a regular history of our Lord’s words. Mark however committed no mistake
in writing some things, as they occurred to his memory. For this one
thing he made his care – to omit nothing which he had heard, and to say
nothing false in what he related.”

So the existence of this unique human being is part and parcel of the

historical records of the Jewish nation, the Roman government, and
attested by thousands of manuscripts written in Greek, Latin and Syriac
and confirmed by international crowds who heard him and his disciples.
The significance of this man’s life and influence has been so universal
that our history is measured by the number of years preceding and
following his birth – B.C. and A.D.. The Old Testament prophets which he
respected and trusted and the New Testament writers who respected and
trusted Him have been the basis for the world’s laws and ethics for
centuries. And this man has said that he existed before the creation of
the universe and that you and I were made inside him and are part of him.
But how could this be if he is simply an ordinary human-being like us?

If this man was born of an ordinary woman and died the way we die, how
can we possibly believe that we were created inside him before we were
born here on earth? How can we believe that he is alive now if he was
executed by the Romans almost two thousand years ago? Let’s discuss this
again.