Would you EVER consider being tortured to protect a lie?  How about this – would you be willing to let someone kill you – even if it was painless – just to keep a lie alive?

I’d say that dying for a lie is highly doubtful, problematic, improbable and unthinkable.  To use an atheistic term – I’d just say that dying for a lie is flat out unbelievable.

Yet we know that thousands of Christians in the first 300 years of Christianity were willingly fed to lions, boiled in oil, skinned alive or beheaded because of their belief in Jesus as the Risen Christ.  Trust your common sense – these folks didn’t die for a lie any more than you would.

And it all started on the very first Easter Sunday.  The disciples hid in a locked room, afraid for their very lives after watching their leader get brutality tortured and killed.  Their leader – the one they had trusted – the one who did all the miracles was murdered dead in front of the masses.

Now he was alive in the room with them!!  Jesus talked to them.  He let them touch him and ate with them.  And most of all, he still loved them even though they had all abandoned him.

What else could possibly transform these disciples from fearful to fearless?  Why else would they write that the resurrected Jesus appeared to 500 people unless it was the ask your neighbor, it really happened, verifiable, undeniable truth.

The living Jesus changed the lives of those people two thousand years ago, and today he continues to transform the lives of millions around the globe from hopeless to hopeful, from sickness to health, from broken to restored.  Jesus heals relationships, inspires compassion, and opens closed wallets to freely give to those in need.

The evidence deserves to be carefully and thoughtfully examined.  There is only one undeniably true conclusion:  Jesus is our Risen Lord!