The Following is and excerpt from the book Just Looking: Christianity - Your Chance to Believe it - or not, by John Allan

What can you know for sure about Jesus Christ? If you believe everything you hear, you might think the answer is "Not very much." Most people assume that there are so many myths and legends surrounding Jesus Christ, it's impossible to know the truth.

A few years ago, most scholars would have agreed with them. But we've found out a lot of things this century, which have shown that you can actually know a great deal about Jesus Christ. For instance:

• He really lived
• There's no possibility that he was just a myth.

Jesus is mentioned by many non-Christian writers of the time:

• Suetonius
• Josephus
• Tacitus
• Pliny
• Lucian
• Thallus

Also, we now know that the Gospels were written too soon after Jesus died to have been fakes. People still remembered him very clearly, and would not have accepted a lot of exaggerated claims. One scholar, pofessor J. Jeremias, has shown that the Gospels bear the traces of Jesus' own speaking style - it is as if we are listening to the voice of Jesus himself.

He Was a Brilliant Thinker

You cannot find any teacher equal to Jesus in any of the great minds of this day. It had been hundreds of years since the Jews had produced anyone with such a lively mind. And the statements of Jesus have been more quoted than any other words in history. Look in any dictionary of quotations, and check how much space is given to the words of Jesus Christ. He was unique. He was a genius.

He Was a Miracle-Worker

"Oh, come on," you might complain.
"Water into wine?"
"Feeding five thousand people?"

These were not legends, which were made up afterward. It is interesting that Jesus' opponents did not deny he had done some miraculous things. They claimed he had done it all by the power of Satan - but they did admit he had done it! A hundred years afterwards, one Christian writer told the Emperor Antonius Pius that if he did not believe the miracle stories, he only had to look in the official records of Pontius Pilate - it was all written down in there. We no longer have those records, so we cannot look at them; but it would have been stupid for the Christian writer to make that claim if it wasn't all officially noted down!

He Claimed to be Perfect, and He Was

Even more incredible? Well, hang on. This was a claim which Jesus' followers made right from the very start. You find it all over the new testament. All his enemies had to do was drag up one piece of dirt about him and his credibility would have been shattered. They never did. Remember that Jesus' followers were a very shrewd bunch of fishermen and peasants - people who knew how to see through fancy claims - and they spent three years traveling around with him, living closely with him, sleeping in rough conditions, as well as sharing food and money. If Jesus had once done something morally bad, they would have spotted it - and then left him.

He Changed People's Lives

The Bible claims that six weeks after Jesus' death, 3,000 people became his followers in one day in Jerusalem. Certainly we know that the Church spread rapidly - just as Jesus had predicted - all over the ancient world. Christianity began as a small sect with a handful of followers, and the Romans tried to stamp it out by killing believers and feeding them to the lions. However, by 329 AD, so many lives had been changed by Christianity that the Emperor made it the council religion of the Roman Empire!

Why was there such a tremendous impact on so many people? Because Christians believed Jesus had risen from the grave, was alive again, and could give people a new life. Nobody else could explain what had happened to the body of Jesus; it was a genuine mystery. When thieves, prostitutes, philosophers, housewives, Roman governors, and Jewish priests all started to claim that this dead man had changed them into better people - the whole world had to sit up and take notice!

According the world Christian Encyclopedia, 59, 200 people every day are having the life-changing experience of meeting Jesus. He can change your life too.