As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

Jesus claimed He had the power to raise himself from the dead and His followers would be raised from the dead. That's a unique claim in the literature of religion.

The New Testament witnesses were fully aware of the background against which the resurrection took place.

Now, whenever you read any historical document, you always evaluate it in light of the historical context.

As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

Why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn't claim to be God, but Jesus did.

On that Sunday morning the first thing that impressed the people who approached the tomb was the unusual position of the one and a half to two ton stone that had been lodged in front of the doorway.

Prayer is talking with God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart.

Both Jewish and Roman sources and traditions admit an empty tomb.

Christ appeared alive on several occasions after the cataclysmic events of that first Easter.

I once had a lot of hatred, mainly toward my father, an alcoholic.

After I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn't, I came to the conclusion the Bible was true and Jesus Christ was God's Son.

Because the New Testament provides the primary historical source for information on the resurrection, many critics during the 19th century attacked the reliability of these biblical documents.

Here's the simplest answer: Within weeks, the disciples proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He had been bodily raised from the dead and appeared to them.

Paul the apostle recounted that Jesus appeared to more than 500 of His followers at one time, the majority of whom were still alive and who could confirm what Paul wrote.

I am not a Christian because God changed my life; I am a Christian because of my convictions about who Jesus Christ is.

If Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be, and He did die on a cross at a point of time in history, then, for all history past and all history future it is relevant because that is the very focal point for forgiveness and redemption.

Where I once constantly lost my temper, I found myself arriving at a crisis and experiencing peace.

Where I once believed people were there to be used, I started thinking of other people first.

If they had connived a scheme, and Christ had not been raised from the dead, where would have been the hardest place on the face of the earth to convince anyone? In Jerusalem.

The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes - undisturbed in form and position.

For centuries many of the world's distinguished philosophers have assaulted Christianity as being irrational, superstitious and absurd.

Anyone with sincere religious beliefs cannot say that all religions are true. That is so illogical it is pathetic. All religion cannot be true because some of them are so diametrically opposed to each other.

Few people seem to realize that the resurrection of Jesus is the cornerstone to a worldview that provides the perspective to all of life.

I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God.

I've never had anyone define purity. You probably can't define purity. Purity is to live according to original design.

If there were more than one path to salvation then it would totally negate Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, his life, his teachings.

My greatest asset now is my focus.

My greatest platform is not with all my degrees, everything else, it's not all my books, everything. It's that I'm known as a man who loves his wife and spends time with his children. That opens more; I speak as a daddy.

My joy in life is not because I have not had any problems. I have joy because I have learned there is nothing too great for God's power to deal with, nor anything too small or insignificant for His love to be concerned about.

No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary.

No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary. No matter what happens to you, no matter the depth of tragedy or pain you face, no matter how death stalks you and your loved ones, the Resurrection promises you a future of immeasurable good.

We've had a major shift in what truth is and where it comes from. We've gone from being God-centered to self-centered, from being objective to being subjective, and from being internal to external.

When it comes to my salvation, all I need is Jesus; after my salvation, everything is Jesus plus the church... When people preach that all you need is Jesus, they cut you and I off from one of the greatest sources of healing, which is the body of Christ. Don't go it alone - you won't make it.

While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain, guilt and loneliness of our present life.

You better arm yourselves to answer your children's and grandchildren's questions... no matter what the question is... without being judgmental.

To know that one has never really tried - that is the only death.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

When you break up, your whole identity is shattered. It's like death.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

Death is a distant rumor to the young.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

I don't sit in the corner waiting for death: death has to pursue me. I'm going strong. I hope to reach 100 and ask for an extension, just like my grandmother did.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

I'm Irish. I think about death all the time.

I don't fear death because I don't fear anything I don't understand. When I start to think about it, I order a massage and it goes away.