In one of the villages in northern India a missionary was preaching in a bazaar. There is naturally a good deal of discussion after such meetings, for India is a land of culture. A Mohammedan came up and said, "You must admit that we Mohammedans have one thing that you Christians have not. We at least can take our people to Mecca where they can see the coffin of Mohammed; but when you Christians go to Jerusalem you have no coffin. You have an empty tomb.”
To this the missionary replied, "Praise God, you are right! That is the difference between our faith and yours. Your leader is in his grave; but Jesus Christ, whose kingdom is to include all nations and kindreds and tribes is not in any grave. He is risen! And He says from the resurrection side of an empty tomb, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." Matt. 28:1818And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. (Matthew 28:18).
You ask, "Did Christ really live?" That is one thing that all agree upon—that this Person who claimed to be the Son of God really lived here on earth among men.
We know when He lived—from about 5 or 6 B.C. until about 30-32 A.D.
We know where He was born—in Bethlehem, of Judea, a real town, not a mythological one. We know where He lived for most of the years of His life in Nazareth, in northern Galilee. There He worked as a carpenter.
We know many of the characters of His day—their names appear in other historical writings outside of the Bible: Herod the Great, his son Herod, Agrippa, Salome, Pontius Pilate, Tiberius Caesar, Gamaliel, Felix, Festus.
Every history of the ancient world, every encyclopedia, records the fact that Jesus lived during the first century of our era. H. G. Wells has a contempt, indeed a hatred, for almost every article of the Christian faith; but he is compelled to give pages to Jesus of Nazareth in his Outline of History.
All dates of history are now designated by the letters B.C. or A.D., both of which refer to the time of the birth of CHRIST—not Plato, not Julius Caesar, not Mohammed.
Millions in each generation have had their lives gripped and changed by the firm belief that Christ has given the world the most perfect revelation of God, the only gospel that does deliver men from the power of sin, the only assurance of forgiveness of sins, the only positive hope of life to come.
Christ has done more to lift and empower the ethical standards of men than all the philosophers of Greece combined. Among all the great men of history, He "is above all.”
JESUS CHRIST LIVED!