CRITIQUE THIS PLEASE.

Dr. James Allan Francis once wrote,  “Here is a man who was the child of a peasant woman. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was a preacher.
He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never went to college.
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Twenty long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.
All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.”
Now, even though you are all agnostics or even atheists, I'm sure you are all aware of who that passage is about. Jesus Christ. This alone goes to show a lot about him, considering many people who don't follow him still know who he is. Most of us know the story of Jesus Christ, I'm sure. But I'm here to prove the relevance of it. To prove that Jesus Christ was not just a man, and that Jesus Christ was not (as many people call him) just a fantastic teacher. Because when it comes down to Him, there's many conflicting opinions as to who He really was. So, who is right? Is belief in Jesus as the Son of God based fabricated legend, or is there evidence to back  it up? When looking into this, one needs to focus on His teachings and claims, the way He lived, prophecies made about the coming Messiah, and finally the crucifixion and resurrection.
Something people know but don't may much mind to is that almost every major world religion, and many smaller religions, have positive things to say about Jesus. He was an extraordinary teacher. He taught many unforgettable things that are vital parts of lives today, to name a few- do unto others as you would have them do unto you, love your enemies, and materialism is empty pursuit. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, even some atheists find these ideas to be important, true, and helpful. But still, Jesus remains only as a fantastic teacher of morals. But what people fail to see is that moral teachers do not make the same claims that Jesus did. And He did just that, made astonishing claims. Examples of these are He could give eternal life, to know him was to know God, He claimed titles exclusive to God (He once told someone, “Before Abraham I was, I am.” that was reserved solely for God to say), He claimed He and the Father were one. Out of everything he said, His most important claim was that He could forgive just as God could. Just think about this for a moment. If a person harmed another person, the harmed has the choice whether to forgive or not. But if one is harmed by another, and a third party comes along to forgive the sinner, what is that supposed to mean? No person has control of forgiveness of something they did not suffer from, unless they're God. Jesus forgave people who did not violate Him, but who violated his children as well. Why? Because sin, even when against people who don't even know God, is still first and foremost a defiance of the Lord and His laws. Jesus would have no business forgiving these trespasses unless He Himself was the Son of God. As you can see, it's evident that Jesus Christ proved himself to be the Son of God just by what he spoke.
But it goes further than that. Jesus, so to speak, walked His talk. He lived His life as He preached everyone should live their own. He was tempted in ways that every human being is every day. He asked his accusers once, “Can any one of you prove me guilty of sin?” The response was dead silence, for it couldn't be done. He was kind and gentle. He touched the untouchable, and He showed compassion and love for the unlovable. He preformed many miracles. He healed the sick, He turned water into wine, He fed a crowd of five thousand people using two fish and five biscuits, He walked on water, He calmed storms, He healed the paralyzed. He broke strict social codes. A prime example of this is when he preformed the miracle of giving sight to a man born blind on the Sabbath. The church leaders became infuriated with Jesus and began labeling him as a sinner. They questioned the once blind man about it, and his response was simply, “I was blind, now I see. I know God doesn't listen to sinners. He listens to Godly men who do his will. No one has ever opened the eyes of a man born blind.” You can clearly tell, Jesus had to be the Son of God based on his lifestyle. He committed no sin, though tempted by Satan himself, and was used by God to do miracles he could not have done on his own.
But still, members of the church condemned him as a liar, when these people should have known better. Why? Because they were well educated on the accounts written in the Old Testament of the Bible, and of these there were prophecies. For the first people to write of Jesus were not the Gospels of thew New Testament. In fact, the first authors of accounts of Jesus did not even know him. But they made prophecies which predicted things about Him. Eight of the most obvious were as follows: the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, He would be proceeded by a messenger, He would enter Jerusalem on a donkey, He would be betrayed by a friend, He would be sold for 30 pieces of silver, He'd remain silent while accused and attacked, He would be crucified, and He'd rise from the dead. In a book by Peter Stoner, they did the math and found out that just these eight predictions coming true about one man were 1 in 10 to the 17th power. Then they looked at 48 prophecies, and did the math again. The odds of Jesus fulfilling 48 predictions was 1 in 10 to the 157th power. That's 1 with 157 zeros following that. But Jesus did not fulfill 8 or 48, he completed over a hundred prophecies. There is no way that they could all prove true unless Jesus was the Son of God.
Finally, there's the issue of the famous crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus was sold out by his good friend Judas, got arrested by Roman soldiers, and was taken to Rome's Prefect, Pontius Pilate. When asked, a crowd chose to crucify Jesus.He was taken away and soon after He was mocked while being beat severely with a whip. The cross he crucified on had a sign on it, bearing the words “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”. Jesus's final words before His death were, “It is finished.” This meaning He, being the Lamb of God, had died for the sins of humanity. On the third day after his execution, He rose from the dead. And the resurrection is one of the most scientifically proven facts from that point in history. And, as stated in Ephesians chapter 4, “Long before the Lord laid down earth's foundations, He had us in mind.” Meaning Jesus intentionally planted the tree for His cross. He put iron ore in the earth so nails could be made to bind him to it. He set the politics in motion so the Pilate could be there to cause the crowd to sentence Him. This means also that Hehad the power to stop it, but he chose not to. He would have nailed himself to the cross if it came down to it. Because Jesus was the promised Son of God to restore the broken relationship between humanity and God.
Whether you believe His true identity or not, Jesus still remains on of the most compelling figures of history. He made astonishing claims, He lived a life free of sin and full of morals, His life was predicted years and years before His birth, and He was killed for our benefit. He was one man who changed the world from the moment He arrived in Bethlehem in a manger. He went through tortures most of us could not imagine, and He did all of it for us. As stated in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son, and that whoever believed in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life.”