"I thought this was a farce.   In fact, I thought most Christians were walking idiots.  I'd met some.   I used to wait for a Christian to speak up in the classroom so I could tear him or her up one side and down the other, and beat the insecure professor to the punch.  I imagined that if a Christian had a brain cell, it would die of loneliness.  I didn't know any better.
     But these people challenged me over and over.  Finally, out of pride, I accepted their challenge.  I did it to refute them.  I didn't know there were facts.  I didn't know there was evidence that a person could evaluate.
     Eventually, my mind came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ must have been who He claimed to be.  In fact, the background of my first two books was my setting out to refute Christianity.  When I couldn't, I ended up becoming a Christian.  I have now spent fifteen years documenting why I believe that faith in Jesus Christ is intellectually feasible."

     'On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu (of Nazareth) and the herald went before him for forty days saying (Yeshu of Nazareth) is going forth to be stoned in that he hath practiced sorcery and beguiled and led astray Israel.  Let everyone knowing aught in His defense come and plead for Him.  But they found in Him naught in His defense and hanged Him on the eve of Passover.' (Babylonia Sanhedrin 43a)

     Note that the Jewish authorities did not deny that Jesus performed signs and miracles, but they attributed them to "acts of sorcery."

A quotation from Flavius Josephus (born in A.D. 37; became a Pharisee at age 19; in A.D. 66 was the commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee):

     At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus.  And his conduct was good, and [he] was known to be virtuous.  And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples.  Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die.  And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship.  They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.

     The fifteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica uses 20,000 words in describing this person, Jesus.   His description took more space than was given to Aristotle, Cicero, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed or Napoleon Bonaparte.
     Concerning the testimony of the many independent secular accounts of Jesus of Nazareth, it records:  "These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries."

     To begin, we need to go way back to Genesis 3:15.  Here we have the first Messianic prophecy.  In all of Scripture, only one man was "born of the seed of a woman" - all others were born of the seed of a man. Here is the one who will come into the world and undo the works of Satan.
     In Genesis 9 and 10, God narrowed the address down further.  Noah had three sons, Shem, Japeth, and Ham.  Today all of the nations of the world can be traced back to these three men.  But in this passage, God effectively eliminated two-thirds of them from the line of Messiahship.  The Messiah will come through the lineage of Shem.
     Continuing on to the year 2000 B.C., we find God calling a man named Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees.  With Abraham, God became still more specific, stating that the Messiah will be one of his descendants (Genesis 12; 17; 22).   All the families of the earth will be blessed through Abraham.  Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, but many of his descendants were eliminated when God selected his second son, Isaac (Genesis 17;21).
     Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau, and God chose the line of Jacob (Genesis 28; 35:10-12; Numbers 24:17).  Jacob had twelve sons, out of whom developed the twelve tribes of Israel.  God singled out the tribe of Judah for messiahship and eliminated 11/12ths of the Israelite tribes.  And of all of the family lines within Judah's tribe, the line of Jesse was the divine choice (Isaiah 11:1-5).  One can see the probability of Jesus as being the Messiah building.
     Jesse had eight children and in 2 Samuel 7:12-16 and Jeremiah 23:5 God eliminated 7/8ths of Jesse's family line:   We read that God's man will not only be the seed of a woman, the lineage of Shem, the race of the Jews, the line of Isaac, the line of Jacob, the tribe of Judah, but that He will also be of the house of David.
     A prophecy dating 1012 B.C. (Psalms 22:6-18; Zechariah 12:10) also predicts that this man's hands and feet will be pierced (i.e. He will be crucified).  This description was written eight hundred years before crucifixion began to be practiced by the Romans.
     Isaiah 7:14 adds that this man will be born of a virgin - a natural birth of unnatural conception, a criterion beyond human planning and control.  Several prophecies recorded in Isaiah and the Psalms describe the social climate and response that God's man will encounter:  His own people, the Jews, will reject Him and the Gentiles will believe in Him (Isaiah 8:14; 28:16; 49:6; 50:6; 52:53; 60:3; Psalms 22:7,8; 118:22).   There will be a forerunner for Him (Isaiah 40:3; Malachi 3:1), a voice in the wilderness, one preparing the way before the Lord, a John the Baptist.

     In that year the Roman army under the command of Titus destroyed the city of Jerusalem.  Fires raged through the city and in the temple area itself.   After the flames burned themselves out, the soldiers saw that large amounts of gold had melted and flowed into the crevices of the blocks of the temple.  In order to recover the precious metal, the Romans had to take the building apart, stone by stone.  And so Jesus' prophecy was fulfilled literally; not one stone was left upon another.  
     Some of those stones were later used to erect the wall we see standing today near the edge of the temple mount.   Every time you see pictures of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem -- a shrine that can be seen every day on the Internet (www.thewall.org) -- you see the pinpoint accuracy of Jesus' prediction. (p31., Are We Living in the End Times? by Tim LaHaye & Jerry B. Jenkins).

     At that time, though, I had quite a problem.  My mind told me all this was true, but my will was pulling me in another direction.  I discovered that becoming a Christian was rather ego-shattering.  Jesus Christ made a direct challenge to my will to trust Him.  Let me paraphrase Him:  "Look!  I have been standing at the door and I am constantly knocking.  If anyone hears Me calling him and opens the door, I will come in." (Revelation 3:30)
     I didn't care if He did walk on water or turn water into wine.  I didn't want any party pooper around.  I couldn't think of a faster way to ruin a good time.  So here was my mind telling me the Christianity was true, but my will was somewhere else.
     Every time I was around those enthusiastic Christians, the conflict would begin.  If you've ever been around happy people when you're miserable, you understand how they can bug you.  They would be so happy and I would be so miserable that I'd literally get up and run right out of the student union.  It came to the point where I'd go to bed at ten at night and I wouldn't get to sleep until four in the morning.  I knew I had to get it off my mind before I went out of my mind!  I was always open-minded, but not so open-minded that my brains would fall out.
     But since I was open-minded, on December 19, 1959, at 8:30 P.M., during my second year at the university, I became a Christian.
     Somebody asked me, "How do you know?"
     I said, "Look, I was there.   It's changed my life."  That night I prayed.  I prayed four things to establish a relationship with the resurrected, living Christ which has since transformed my life.
     First, I said, "Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for me."
     Second, I said, "I confess those things in my life that aren't pleasing to You and ask You to forgive me and cleanse me."  (The Bible says, "Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow.")
     Third, I said, "Right now, in the best way I know how, I open the door of my heart and life and trust You as my Savior and Lord.  Take over the control of my life.  Change me from the inside out.  Make me the type of person You created me to be."
     The last thing I prayed was, "Thank You for coming into my life by faith."  It was a faith based not upon ignorance but upon evidence, upon the facts of history and God's word.