I hadn't thought much about Christianity before I went up to university. Jesus was, well … nothing.

Rob Gordon's story

I met some Christians for the first time and found that they didn't fit the caricature I had of them, that of sad inadequate people with one foot in the grave. Instead I was very attracted by the quality of their relationships, their sense of purpose and their certainty of a life after this one.

Something was obviously producing this in them and they said it was Jesus. The problem I had with this is that they did not mean Jesus in the sense of an historical figure like Shakespeare, but Jesus in the sense of the Son of God, risen from the dead and living for ever. Still something was obviously affecting them. Had these guys discovered the ultimate truth or were they just nice people with a few screws loose?

I decided to read through the gospels, the accounts of Jesus' words, actions and training of the disciples. The main thing that struck me was the realness of it all. It all seemed so down to earth. The disciples weren't super heroes but were slow on the uptake, quarrelsome and alternated between seeing Jesus as the Son of God and being scared of what the authorities would think and do to them. When Jesus was arrested before his execution they all ran away and hid.

If Jesus had just died and left it at that, I could have dismissed him as an OK person but not someone whose words had to be taken seriously. As I read on, the gospel eye witness accounts described Jesus rising from the dead, much to the amazement of the disciples who took a lot of convincing. Perhaps this is why he appeared to them, not in a dream or as a ghostly figure, but as a flesh and blood person, doing mundane things like preparing a meal, eating and talking with them. My resistance was beginning to crumble around the edges, but was still quite firm in the centre. The disciples I reasoned must have made it all up. After all Jesus did disappear into heaven. How very convenient!

I continued to read on past the gospels, to eye witness accounts of what the disciples did next. The main things that struck me were how insistent the disciples were that Jesus had risen from the dead and was still alive and how suddenly courageous they were in the face of beatings, torture and even death for some of them. They were no longer hiding from the authorities, but proclaiming this message everywhere they went. I expected at least one of the disciples to crack and confess under torture that it had all been a hoax, that Jesus was dead. I expected one of them to reveal where his body was and say, 'Hey, it's been good while it lasted.' Instead the more they were oppressed, the more they claimed Jesus was still with them giving them strength, joy even in the face of all the authorities threw at them. It wasn't that they enjoyed pain or wanted to be martyrs but that Jesus was so great a reality that they couldn't do anything else but follow him.

I hadn't expected this. No matter how much I squirmed I couldn't explain the change in the disciples' thinking and behaviour in any other way than the fact that they were convinced to the core of their being.

It seemed unbelievable, preposterous, but I kept coming back to it… Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus is alive, Jesus is real. There had been plenty of other philosophers, moral teachers and even founders of religions, but none of them had come back form the dead. I had to take Jesus' words seriously.

That is one of the reasons why I decided to become a follower of Jesus Christ. That was 23 years ago now and I have talked to a lot of people and read many books arguing against the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Nothing I have come across has made me change my mind.

Take a look at the evidence for the resurrection yourself and see what you think. It could literally change your life forever.