Transcript:

“Where does he claim to be God? It took me a while, but I began to realize that when I read the New Testament the way it’s supposed to be read from the perspective of those who understand the Old Testament, then Jesus very clearly claims to be God. I didn’t want to go to John. Most people said, ‘Look at John: In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory the only begotten.’ Look, clearly, Jesus is claiming to be God here. Well, number one, no, it’s not Jesus talking, it’s John talking. But number two, that’s the Gospel of John. That’s really, really late. I want to look at the beginnings of Christianity. I want to see how, from the very first part of the Christian message, Jesus is proclaimed as God. And so I went to the first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, and it was precisely there where I read Mark chapter 14, verse 62, which, when I understood what that verse was, it blew my mind. Here, Jesus claims to be the Son of Man from Daniel, He claims to be the ‘I am’ from Exodus, and He claims to be the one sitting at the right hand of the power from Psalms 110, verse 1. Jesus very clearly claims to be God in Mark chapter 14, verse 62, when you understand its context. So I said, ‘Alright, fine, but how do we know He died on the cross? Did He actually die on the cross?’ Because the Quran told me Jesus did not die on the cross. The Quran says in chapter 4, verse 157, ‘Well, mark at the Lu Hamas Allah boohoo, we killed him not nor did they crucify him, but so it was made to appear to them.’ So as a Muslim, I believed what the Quran told me: Jesus did not die on the cross. But Christians think Jesus certainly died on the cross. So this was a good litmus test right here. Which one is true, which one’s false? So I said, ‘I’m gonna study Jesus’s death on the cross from a historical perspective. I want to see, did He actually die on the cross?’ And no matter how you look at it, whether you’re an atheist, agnostic, Jew, Buddhist, however you look at it, if you’re a historian and you’re studying the evidence of Jesus’s life, you have to conclude that He died on the cross. Every scholar who studies Jesus’s life concludes that Jesus died on the cross. In fact, what they say is that if we can know anything about Jesus’s life, it’s that we know He died on the cross under Pontius Pilate. And the third thing, the issue of the resurrection: Did Jesus rise from the dead? Again, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, the Christian faith is in vain. So how can I know whether Jesus rose from the dead? Well, as luck would have it, God brought to town a debate. It was a debate on whether Jesus rose from the dead. It was between a Christian named Michael Licona and a Muslim, Shabir Ally, both very respected in their fields. And as I was watching the debate, I was still a Muslim. As I was watching the debate, I concluded that the Christian case was far stronger, and I’m not the only one who concludes that. The argument that he uses, the minimal facts argument—an atheist by the name of Michael Martin, a very well-known atheist philosopher, says that the minimal facts defense for the resurrection is the strongest defense for the resurrection that has ever been provided in history.”