>I am going to make an exception and engage in a religious debate with you. I respect your religious belief but it defies belief. Jesus has only been dead 2000 years and he's about to come back? He's going to walk the earth again? And he was the son of god, a concept that is arguable in itself? I would actually like to believe that but cannot.

This is a very understandable and logic viewpoint. However, there is a good answer to that question and it is really not that difficult to see how it's supposed to work. Fact is, the Bible is a book of prophecies, you can read in many passages about things concerning the near and far future, and it also records things that have happened during the course of history. The idea is to judge the truth of the Bible by the fact if those prophecies actually happen the way they were foretold or not. Many of those prophecies have been written a long time ago, and also have been fulfilled in the meantime, many have been fulfilled more than 2000 years ago and have been recorded in the New Testament. So if they have not happened or won't happen (if they concern the further future) you would see that the Bible is incorrect. On the other hand, if those prophecies did come to pass (or will be, which is for our grandchildren to determine), then the Bible is correct and you can assume that the rest of the Bible is true as well, which is not directly linked to a testable prophecy. This is actually a very scientific approach.

To make the test more secure, the format of the Bible is in a way that it is written by more than 40 different authors, in a large timespan over thousands of years, in different countries, different languages and different societies. Some kind of double blind test if you will.

So in code it would look like this:

PROCEDURE IsChristComingAgain
*
LOCAL llProphecyIsTrue, llBibleIsTrue, llChristWillComeAgain
*
llProphecyIsTrue = THIS.DetermineIfProphecyIsTrue() && So that is where the test is done.
*
IF llProphecyIsTrue
    llBibleIsTrue = .T.
ENDIF
IF llBibleIsTrue
    llChristWillComeAgain = .T.
ENDIF
RETURN llChristWillComeAgain
ENDPROC

So it all boils down to the question of fulfilled prophecy. I'm not trying to prove now if indeed the prophecy would be fullfilled or not, I'm just trying to explain the technicality of using the Bible as foundation of someones faith. I personally have come to the conclusion that the Bible is indeed without error, and that those things that concern our future indeed are prophecied in the Bible.