If you've ever taken a class in comparative religions, by the time you finished the class you probably had a basic knowledge of the teachings, ceremonies, and traditions of each religion and maybe some familiarity with the cultures that spawned and were impacted by them. But you'd have no way of knowing which, if any, of the religions were correct and which were incorrect. In fact, you would probably come away from the class with the "enlightened" conclusion that while none of the religions are completely true, all have some value in that they provide comfort and moral guidance to their adherents. And as long as those adherents didn't try to impose their belief system on you, everything would be fine.

If you did try to judge the validity of one religion over another, your only measure would be whether the teachings of a particular religion seemed appropriate for your life. Certainly, you would never expect to find proof that one of the religions was true and the others false.

Strangely, comparing religions usually involves only looking at what the religions have in common and ignoring where they are truly different. It would be like comparing a bicycle, a car, a truck, a train, and an airplane. You might look at the number of wheels on each, the different navigational controls, the means of propulsion, the number of passengers each can carry, their maximum speed . . . In fact, as you continued to consider the similarities you might never get around to the fact that there is something that makes one of the vehicles completely different from all the others: the airplane flies.

The same is true when comparing religions. We compare everything about them, but we never get around to looking at whether any of the religions can be proven. My assertion is that it is possible to prove that Christianity is true.

Let me give an example of the kind of proof I’m talking about.

You’ve probably heard or read that at one point Mohammed — who claimed that the truth had been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel — decided to demonstrate that he was God’s messenger by moving a mountain by the power of his faith. According to the story, after three days of trying without success, Mohammed gave up and said, "If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain." Now, if Mohammed HAD moved that mountain, and if geologists today could confirm that the mountain had been, or even appeared to have been moved, then we’d have some tangible evidence of Mohammed’s claim to be God’s prophet, and based on that, it would be reasonable to seriously consider what he taught.

Or let’s look at Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. In 1827, Smith said that an angel named Moroni had shown him golden tablets which were inscribed in elaborate detail with the history of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. This history, Smith claimed, included the complete and "true" gospel of Jesus, who, Smith said, had gone to the Americas after his death and resurrection in Jerusalem.

Unfortunately for our search for proof, there has never been any shred of archaeological evidence to support Smith’s account of the history of the Americas. Oh, Smith’s followers would point to ancient Aztec or Inca ruins or Indian burial mounds and say there was the evidence, but not one non-Mormon archaeologist or scholar has ever found anything to lend even the slightest credence to their claims. And as for the golden tablets, Smith said that after he translated them an angel took them into heaven, so we don’t have any physical evidence that there even were any tablets. There were eleven other people who said Smith had shown them the tablets, but all were either close friends or members of Smith’s family, and the stories these witnesses told did not match in many of their important details.

Fortunately though, the golden tablets were not the only documents that Joseph Smith translated. In 1835, after starting his religion, Smith acquired some ancient Egyptian papyri which he said were the lost books of Abraham and Joseph. At the time very few people knew how to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics and so, just as with the golden tablets, Smith again relied upon God to give him the translation. Incidentally, Smith discovered a number of very interesting things from the papyri, including, he said, that black people were supposed to be servants and slaves to whites and Asians.

Unlike the golden tablets, however, the Egyptian papyri were not taken to heaven by an angel, but were placed in a museum. Thanks to the discovery of the Rosetta stone, (endnote 1) Egyptologists were later able to translate Smith’s papyri and determined that, far from being the books of Abraham and Joseph, they are actually copies of the EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD and another book called THE BREATHING PERMIT OF HÔR. (endnote 2) While not nearly so sensational as promising to move a mountain, Smith’s demonstration of his authority obviously met with no more success than had Mohammed’s.

Of course, most religious leaders have not been so willing to go out on a limb to prove themselves or validate their teachings. Their claims to authority are generally based on the visions or experiences of their founders. Siddhartha Gautama, the father of Buddhism, based his authority on having achieved "nirvana" and "bodhi." Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, said that he had a mystical experience in which he visited heaven and spoke with a god named Sat Nam. Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism, and Confucius, the father of Confucianism, simply claimed to know the truth based on their own acquired wisdom. Thousands of New Age groups throughout the world today purport to have the truth as it has been revealed by such entities as angels, space aliens, inner selves, ascended masters with names like Ray-O-Light,(endnote 3) and even a 35,000-year-old warrior from Atlantis.(endnote 4) The founders of Hinduism and Shinto are unknown, leaving those religions to stand entirely on the merits of their teachings. We have, therefore, nothing on which to base our decision about the truth of any of these religions except what the founder of the religion said and whether the teachings seem to work in our own lives. Whether we reject one religion or accept another is simply a matter of blind faith.

Personally, I never cared for blind faith. I want something that can prove itself worthy of my trust before I put my trust in it.

There’s the key difference. All the other religions stand or fall on something which no one can prove or disprove. No one can prove whether angels appeared to Mohammed or Joseph Smith. No one can tell if Siddhartha Gautama achieved nirvana, or whether Nanak visited heaven. No one can tell if a New Age channeler is just putting on an act or is really channeling a spirit, or for that matter, if it is a real spirit, is it a benevolent one or a malevolent one? It’s left entirely up to the faith of the follower.

Christianity isn’t based on what someone said. It’s based on what someone did at a specific time in a specific location. As such it is historically provable or disprovable.

Jesus staked his whole claim to authority on his resurrection. Everything else he said and did stands or falls on this. If he didn’t rise from the dead, then you might as well take everything else he said and use it to stuff fortune cookies.

Since the very beginning, belief in Jesus’ resurrection formed the core of Christian teachings.(endnote 5) And remember, Jesus’ followers weren’t telling people about what had happened in some heavenly realm. They didn’t talk about what had happened on Mount Olympus or in some far-off land. There’s no "once upon a time" in their story. They talked about what had happened right there, in the very same city where they lived. If Jesus’ resurrection had not happened, if the body of Jesus were not, in fact, missing from the grave, then all anyone had to do to disprove it and discredit the apostles was simply to go to the tomb. All that the Jewish or Roman authorities had to do to crush the growth of Christianity was to produce the body. But they couldn’t. And since there was no body, the only thing they could do to try to stop Christianity was to persecute and then finally kill its leaders.

It has been suggested that perhaps the apostles removed the body. But if the apostles HAD removed the body, would such men as followed Jesus —fishermen, carpenters, a tax collector, a rabbi — or any men for that matter, willingly have been tortured and killed as martyrs for something that they knew was a lie? And remember, I’m not talking about those who came later, those Christians who died because they believed what they had been told or because of some religious experience. Every major religion has those. I’m talking about people who, if the resurrection was a lie, would have known it. These were people who said they had seen Jesus resurrected from the dead and chose to die themselves rather than change their story. Some people may be willing to die for what they believe, but no one gives up his life for what he knows to be a lie.

Now consider this, if a man testified that he was innocent of some crime — that he had been somewhere else at the time — it would prove nothing. He might really be innocent, or he might simply be lying.

If the man’s friends substantiated his alibi, you still might have some doubts.

But if the man’s enemies also supported his alibi . . . well, then you could reasonably conclude that he was probably innocent.

In the same way, if I show you in the New Testament where Jesus said that he was the Messiah, I will have proven nothing. And if I then show you where Jesus’ followers said that he was the Messiah, I still will have proven nothing. But if I could show you that Jesus was the Messiah based on the OLD Testament — a book which has been preserved through the centuries by people who have rejected Jesus — then I might just have something.

Of course, since the Old Testament was completed 400 years before Jesus was born, anything I could find there to prove Jesus was who he said he was would have to be prophetic.

Before you object, remember that prophecy is inherently historical. It stands or falls based only on whether it does or does not accurately predict future historical events. God used prophecy to prove the authenticity of the Bible as his word. Of all the religious documents in the world, the Bible is the only one that deals with events of the future with the same certainty that it deals with events of the past and present. No other book, religious or otherwise, includes the minute details and the grand scale of prophecies as does the Bible; whether discussing the rise and fall of empires and kingdoms that had not even been created when the prophecy was written, or prophecies of individuals who would not be born for hundreds of years afterward.

One of these individuals — the most important one — is the Messiah.

The Messiah has always been central to Judaism. The prophet Isaiah said that he would be born to the lineage of Jesse.(endnote 6) Jeremiah narrowed it down further to the descendants of Jesse’s eighth son, David.(endnote 7) The prophecies get incredibly more specific after that. Isaiah said that the Messiah would be born to a virgin.(endnote 8) The prophet Micah said he would be born in the province of Judah, in the small village of Bethlehem.(endnote 9)

Isaiah went on to say the Messiah would be called Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace;(endnote 10) that his ministry would begin in Galilee;(endnote 11) and that he would perform numerous healings and other miracles.(endnote 12)

But to make it even more exact, the prophecies of Zechariah and Daniel even specified WHEN and HOW the Messiah would arrive in Jerusalem, so that no one who was willing to see the truth could miss it. According to these prophecies, the Messiah would come into Jerusalem riding on a donkey (endnote 13) 483 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem,(endnote 14) which had been destroyed by the Persians. That decree was issued by the Babylonian Emperor Artaxerxes in 457 b.c.(endnote 15). When you account for the fact that there was no year zero, that means the Messiah was to come in the year 27 a.d. From the Gospel of Luke, we know that Jesus was born during the first tax taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria,(endnote 16) or about the year 7 b.c.,(endnote 17) so in the year 27 he would have been 33 or 34 when he rode in to Jerusalem and a week later was crucified. In brief, he exactly fulfilled Zechariah’s and Daniel’s prophecies.

But if that’s not precise enough, Zechariah said that the Messiah would be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver; that the money would be thrown on the floor of the Temple; and that it would be used to buy a potters’ field.(endnote 18)

And Isaiah said that at his trial, the Messiah would not defend himself, but would be led as a lamb, silent to the slaughter.(endnote 19)

Writing more than a thousand years before anyone had even heard of crucifixion, King David prophetically described the Messiah’s death in painful detail down to the piercing of his hands and feet, the taunting of the crowds, and the casting of lots for his clothing.(endnote 20) Isaiah gave additional details of the crucifixion of the Messiah (endnote 21) and said that though he would be innocent of any wrongdoing, the Messiah would be executed with criminals, and then buried in a rich man’s grave.(endnote 22)

But the prophets said Messiah’s death would not be in vain. In fact, Isaiah explains that the Messiah would intentionally give his own life as a sacrifice to save each of us: that he was pierced for our sins, and crushed for our iniquities.(endnote 23)

The prophecies also reveal that Messiah would be resurrected.(endnote 24) And though he had been killed, what he had done and said would be told throughout the world (endnote 25) for generation after generation, forever, and that ultimately, all people of all nations would bow down to him.(endnote 26)

It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see that all of these prophecies are describing Jesus. In fact, the only way you could miss it is if you wanted to.

The material above is copyrighted by James BeauSeigneur and reprinted by permission. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

ENDNOTES

1. Discovered in 1799 by Boussard and used by Jean Francois Champollion

beginning in 1821 to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Rosetta stone

is inscribed in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek.

2. Translated by Egyptologists John S. Wilson and Klaus Baer of the

University of Chicago Oriental Institute, and Richard A. Parker of Brown

University. See Fawn M. Brodie, NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY, THE LIFE OF

JOSEPH SMITH, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged (New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1977), pp. 168-175 and 421-423.

3. Elizabeth Claire Prophet, Church Universal and Triumphant.

4. Ramtha, who is channeled by J.Z. Knight.

5. I Corinthians 15:14.

6. Isaiah 11:1-2 & 11:10.

7. Jeremiah 23:5.

8. Isaiah 7:14.

9. Micah 5:2 (written circa 710 b.c.).

10. Isaiah 9:6.

11. Isaiah 9:1-7.

12. Isaiah 35:3-6.

13. Zechariah 9:9.

14. Daniel 9:25-26.

15. Artaxerxes I served as Emperor of Babylon from 464-424 B.C.

According to Ezra, chapter 7, Artaxerxes issued this decree in the

seventh year of his reign, i.e. 457 B.C.

16. Luke 2:2.

17. John Elder, PROPHETS, IDOLS AND DIGGERS, (Indianapolis:

Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), p. 160.

18. Zechariah 11:12-13.

19. Isaiah 53:7.

20. Psalm 22:7-8 and 16-18.

21. Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12.

22. Isaiah 53:9 & 53:12.

23. Isaiah 53:4-6; 53:8; 53:11-12.

24. Isaiah 53:10-11; Psalm 16:10 and 30:3.

25. Isaiah 49:6.

26 Psalm 22:27-31.

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