Did Jesus Really Exist? The search for the historical Jesus continues to be headline news. Any speculative theory seems to get instant attention as the debate rages about His real identity and the claims made in His name. Did Jesus really exist? Is there real historical evidence that demonstrates that He lived and actually said and did the things the Gospels record? Is there any validity to the speculative claims that the Jesus story was a myth, borrowed from a variety of pagan cultures of the ancient world? In this follow-up to the book God’s Not Dead (that inspired the movie), Man, Myth, Messiah looks at the evidence for the historical Jesus and exposes the notions of skeptics that Jesus was a contrived figure of ancient mythology. It also looks at the reliability of the Gospel records as well as the evidence for the resurrection that validates His identity as the promised Messiah. Man, Myth, Messiah will be released concurrent to the God’s Not Dead movie sequel, which will cover the same theme. Rice Broocks is the cofounder of the Every Nation family of churches, with more than one thousand churches in more than 73 nations. The senior minister of Bethel World Outreach Church, Nashville, Tennessee, Rice is also the author of several books, including Man, Myth, Messiah , God’s Not Dead , The Purple Book , and Every Nation in Our Generation . A graduate of Mississippi State University, Rice has a master’s degree from Reformed Theological Seminary and a doctorate of missiology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Man, Myth, Messiah Answering History's Greatest Question By Rice Broocks Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2016 Rice Broocks All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8499-4856-5 Contents Foreword by Gary R. Habermas, PhD, xi, Introduction: It Is a Thing Most Wonderful, xv, Chapter 1: Man, Myth, or Messiah?: History's Greatest Question, 1, Chapter 2: The Minimal Facts: What Even Skeptics Believe, 23, Chapter 3: We Can Trust the Gospels: Why the Bible Is Reliable, 43, Chapter 4: The Crucifixion: Why Jesus Had to Die, 67, Chapter 5: The Resurrection: The Event that Changed Everything, 91, Chapter 6: Dispelling the Myths: The Uniqueness of the Jesus Story, 117, Chapter 7: Jesus the Messiah: Son of Man, Son of God, 141, Chapter 8: Miracles: Evidence of the Supernatural, 171, Chapter 9: Following Jesus: Answering the Call to Discipleship, 193, Chapter 10: Defenders of the Faith: Prepared to Share the Gospel, 217, Epilogue: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, 243, Acknowledgments, 251, Notes, 253, Index, 267, About the Author, 271, CHAPTER 1 Man, Myth, or Messiah? History's Greatest Question There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus. — Albert Schweitzer IT'S ONE OF THE STRANGE QUIRKS OF HUMAN NATURE that we tend to believe wild and absurd things while doubting and dismissing the credible and important. This tendency to give credence to foolish and baseless speculations was satirized on the long-running US TV show Saturday Night Live. It ranks as one of my favorite comedy skits of all time. It was the one where there was an exchange between an angel and someone who had recently died and gone to heaven. The new arrival was quizzing the angel on all the unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries of his past existence. The dialogue went something like this: "What happened to the fifty-dollar bill I lost at graduation?" and "Who had a crush on me that I didn't know about?" You get the picture. Finally, heaven's newest inductee asked "What is the one thing that would surprise me the most if I knew it?" The character playing the angel dramatically paused and then said, "Professional wrestling is real." I guess what struck me as funny is that I've actually met people who believed that TV wrestling was authentic (and not staged entertainment); my grandmother was one of them. Of course, there are many people who consider silly things, such as UFOs or Elvis sightings, to be real. As Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensées, "The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, indicates a strange inversion." This highlights the tendency to deny events that should be believed, like the Holocaust or Americans walking on the moon and the fact that 9/11 was a terrorist attack carried out by radical Muslims, not a conspiracy of the US government. Regrettably the amount of misinformation and rumor is rampant in an age where every outlandish viewpoint has its own website and Facebook page. Finding the truth becomes hard work. It also requires our being willing to accept it, regardless of our own personal preferences or biases. In other words, we must be willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. While many spurious beliefs are relatively harmless and inconsequential, others could have devastating consequences, especially if real history is obscured or ignored. This was never more obvious to me than when visiti