How and why do people believe this?
How do people believe this?
How???
Do you just mean why?
Go read or listen to the audio book of “The Case for Christ”.
It is a matter of historic record that Christ was crucified and then seen alive by thousands of people.
Also, accounts of this historicity were written by eye witnesses during the lifetime of other eye witnesses, many of whom were hostile to the concept of Christ’s divinity.
How and why do people believe this?
How do people believe Christ existed or how do people believe He rose from the dead? Believing He existed is pretty easy. If you question His existence, you may as well question the existence of people like Plato, Leonidas, or Confucius. It's well documented that Jesus existed not only in Jewish text, but also in Roman. Here are a couple links to check out as starters:
Historicity of Jesus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
Tacitus (Roman historian) on Christ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ
His resurrection, however, is where faith ultimately comes in. People can give you all the facts that mattered to them, but they may not matter to you. You may check out books like "The Case for Christ" where they go through and logically reason out if Christ really could have done all the things He did. I'm pretty analytical so I wanted to see everything laid out to make a decision for myself. In the end, I got tired of excusing everything in the Bible as coincidence and accepted that Christ was born, lived on this Earth, performed miracles, died on the cross, and was resurrected after 3 days.
I can tell you why I believe it:
1) There are over 600 prophecies about Christ in the Bible, and nearly 400 of them were fulfilled at His first coming - all in the most exact detail (born of a virgin; born in Bethlehem; lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David; etc.; etc.; etc.).
2) Many of those were fulfilled at His death (coming into Jerusalem on a donkey on the exact day; marred more than any man; falsely accused; side peirced; bones not broken; etc.; etc.; etc.) and resurrection.
3) The tomb is empty - even the skeptics at the time didn't dispute this.
4) The tomb was covered by a heavy stone that took several men to move (a few women could not have done so).
5) Ten of the 12 apostles, who all cowered during Jesus' "trial" and crucifixion, died because of their belief in a Risen Saviour (something they would not have done had they not believed with all their heart).
6) He appeared to several people after His resurrection, including 500 people at one time.
7) He appeared to Saul (who presecuted believers), who became the apostle Paul. If there were anyone who would have not wanted the resurrection to have occurred, it was he. But, he became a devoted follower and died for his belief in a Risen Christ.
The evidence is overwhelming!!!
That’s easy. Just read the Bible. Read the Gospels which show the account of what was celebrated yesterday Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
It’s not ‘War and Peace’ It’s as long a story as a novel. Just pick it up and read it, catholic or protestant version.
Then pick up a copy of the current ‘In conversation with God’, Fernandez (http://www.amazon.com/In-Conversation-God-Meditations-Volume/dp/0906138191}
Not the whole set, one at a time, just the current (we’re in Easter until Pentecost, which is a month and a half from now. And read just one of the three entries each day after reading the daily readings .
http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/inspiration.asp
It takes 10 minutes a day. In two months you’ll have a totally different question.
And don’t confuse it with Conversations with God, which is considered heretical.
And don’t let all the other stuff around it freak you out, just read the readings. They’re from the Bible. And they tell the story
You will figure out the answer to your own question
There is a lot to ponder about this. Let’s start with this one:
Jesus raised HIMSELF from the dead. No one else did it.
He could only raise Himself from a state of death if there is an afterlife. One cannot return to existance from a state of non-existance. Thus there has to be a state of existance after life.