John 14:6-7
Jesus is the Truth, the Way, and the Life
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”
John 18:36-37
Jesus Came to Earth to Testify to the Truth
36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Many People Saw Jesus After His Resurrection
1 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2 By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
Luke 21:33
Jesus Teaches Us that His Words Will Never Pass Away
33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
John 15:1-17
The Vine and Its Branches
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
To believe in Jesus, one of the first steps is that you must believe in the Bible, and and New Testament...If one does not believe in the four gospels and the New Testament writings, they probably will not believe in Jesus...(Why would they?)...So as one reads the New Testament and Jesus who makes several claims either directly or indirectly that He personally knows God and came from God and that He and God are One -if you do not believe what He is saying then you will have trouble believing in Him...
Many people as they read the gospels they do not believe them as being historical and true...One of the four gospel writes purposely Luke set out to write a book about Jesus for Theophilus, and from a historical-type perspective...I am certain that Luke set out to write a book that was full of truth...Luke would wind up writing two books about Jesus...One was the Gospel According to Luke, and the other book was the Acts of the Apostles...Luke said that he would carefully investigate everything from the beginning about Jesus...As we read through Luke’s gospel and the Acts, we see that he wrote and included as much historical information about the time of Jesus’ birth, life, and death as he could to help others see the history in the Story of Jesus...
Luke wrote mostly about Paul and Peter in the Acts of the Apostles...Paul was a friend of Luke...As we read through Paul’s epistles, we see that Jesus died on the cross, and was resurrected...Then Jesus appeared to His Disciples, to His brother James, and then to Paul (who had to be converted, before he would believe in Jesus) and also to another five hundred different people...This Resurrection Story and Jesus being raised from the dead is a fingerprint of God...Jesus had predicted His resurrection, and the Old Testament had many prophecies about there being One who would be the One Who Would Come from God...And He would be called the Messiah, the Messiah from God...
As one thinks about how Jesus started Christianity, and the Apostolic Fathers that followed His teachings in the first and second centuries to get this new religion going, of course they believed that He existed and in the early writings of the New Testament...Peter and Paul, John and Luke knew that Jesus existed...And they wrote about Him...They wrote twenty two of the twenty seven books of the New Testament...As time has passed and two thousand years have gone by, some if not many people do not believe in Him, and do not give Him much time out of their day...Time can be a great destroyer...But Jesus is alive and His Words will not pass away with time...Two thousand years of time does not take away true facts, if they are indeed facts...And two thousand years does not take away the Truth about Jesus...
So as these first writings of Jesus were coming out and the Early Apostolic Fathers were reading them, they would not have allowed for lies to come out about their Teacher and Master, and the One who called Himself the Son of the Blessed One, and who testified to the Truth...There would have been a backlash, if the truth was not being written about Jesus in these books...After all, He called Himself Truth, and that He came to earth to testify to the Truth...Jesus ask His Twelve Disciples to remember Him and to pass down His teachings so that they too, could produce fruit as He did with His teachings and to those He had touched...He wanted them to add to their numbers of people believing in Him and God...Jesus wanted His Disciples to love one another, to love God and to love their neighbors...
Jesus had touched most people in such a Way that they saw Him as the Son of God and the Messiah...And so these Eleven men would add another Disciple later and with Paul with them would teach the world a new religion called Christianity...