Restoring Apostolic Faith

Every so often someone asks me why I am a Christian rather than Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or simply agnostic.

My answer usually surprises them.

Without Jesus, I would likely be agnostic.

That may sound strange coming from someone who spends so much time studying Scripture, theology, and Church history, but it is true. Remove Jesus from Christianity and Christianity ceases to exist. He is not merely its founder. He is its entire claim.

Many people throughout history have taught morality.

Confucius taught morality.

Socrates taught morality.

Buddha taught morality.

The question is not whether Jesus taught people to be good.

The question is why one Jewish teacher from an obscure Roman province changed the course of human history in a way no one before or since has managed to replicate.

The historical facts themselves are remarkable.

Jesus never commanded an army.

He never held political office.

He never wrote a book.

He never owned land.

He never founded a city.

He never led a nation.

He never accumulated wealth.

Yet two thousand years later, His name remains among the most recognized in human history.

The Roman Empire executed Him as a criminal.

His earliest followers were largely fishermen, laborers, tradesmen, and common people. They possessed no military power, political influence, or cultural prestige. By every normal measure, the movement should have died with its founder.

Instead, it expanded.

Within three centuries, the empire that crucified Him largely identified itself with His movement.

His teachings profoundly influenced Western concepts of charity, mercy, forgiveness, human dignity, care for the poor, hospitals, orphan care, and the value of the individual. Even people who reject Christianity often live within moral frameworks shaped by Christian assumptions.

The calendar itself remains anchored to His life. Modern scholars may prefer BCE and CE rather than BC and AD, but the dividing point remains exactly the same.

History still turns on Jesus.

Billions of people from every culture, language, ethnicity, and nation have ordered their lives around Him.

None of this proves Christianity is true.

Influence is not evidence of divinity.

Alexander the Great changed history.

Julius Caesar changed history.

Muhammad changed history.

Influence alone cannot determine truth.

Yet Jesus presents a unique historical challenge.

Alexander conquered through armies.

Caesar ruled through political power.

Empires spread through force.

Jesus possessed none of those things.

Yet His influence ultimately surpassed them all.

Historian Jaroslav Pelikan famously observed:

“Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries.”

Whether one believes Jesus was the Messiah, a prophet, a teacher, or something else entirely, the historical question remains:

How did a crucified Jewish teacher from a tiny corner of the Roman Empire become the central figure of world history?

That question becomes even more fascinating when we consider the survival of the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.

The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 ended the Temple-centered system that had defined Jewish life for centuries. The later Bar Kokhba Revolt (AD 132–135) brought another devastating defeat and accelerated the dispersion of Jewish communities throughout the Roman world.

Ancient Israel as it had existed under the kings, the Temple, the priesthood, and the tribal structure was gone.

Rabbinic Judaism survived by adapting.

Christianity survived by expanding.

As the Christian movement spread across the Roman Empire and beyond, it carried with it the writings of Israel—the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. Christian scribes copied them. Christian translators preserved them. Christian teachers studied them. Christian missionaries carried them into lands the ancient Israelites could scarcely have imagined.

This creates one of history’s great ironies.

The movement many Jewish leaders rejected became one of the primary vehicles through which the Scriptures of Israel were preserved and introduced to the nations.

Christianity did not erase Israel’s story.

It carried Israel’s story across the world.

Without Christianity, the Hebrew Scriptures may well have remained the treasured writings of a relatively small religious community scattered throughout the nations. Instead, they became some of the most copied, translated, studied, and influential writings in human history.

Again, none of this proves Christianity is true.

But it does make Jesus impossible to ignore.

Every person eventually has to answer the same question:

Who was He?

A failed revolutionary?

A gifted teacher?

A mistaken prophet?

The Messiah?

The Son of God?

Christians answer that question one way.

Others answer it differently.

But no honest reading of history allows us to dismiss Jesus as merely another religious teacher whose influence ended with His own generation.

History simply will not allow it.

And that is why, before I concern myself with denominations, traditions, theological systems, or church politics, I begin with Jesus Himself.

If Christianity is true, it is true because of Him.

If Christianity is false, it is false because of Him.

Everything rests on that question.