Why I know Jesus lives (feel free to add to this in a comment)

Because of the last post, I had a few requests in comments and emails to complete my story with how I know Jesus lives. These will be short answers, because I'm a novice apologist, so please feel free to add your convictions to the list in a comment:

• The congruencies yet distinctions of the gospel accounts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all record Jesus appearing to many people after His resurrection. The stories (as with the other stories contained in more than one gospel) are similar, yet not exact, just as eyewitnesses to an event all see the same thing, but notice and observe it from a different point of view.
• Jesus first appears to women. Good Jewish (Greek, orRoman, for that matter) men who were making up a story would NOT include this. Women's credibility as eyewitnesses would not hold up in court.
• Hundreds of people attested to seeing Jesus alive after He had been crucified, spent their lives proclaiming this event, and died defending it.
• Thousands and thousands more during the first few centuries after Christ's death believed and spread the doctrines of the disciples despite the most grueling persecution of any religion known to date. Under decrees of Nero and others, Christians were tortured, crucified, burned, stoned, drowned, etc. for being followers of Christ, and despite this, the faith in Christ as sinful man's Savior spread faster than Nero's fiddle-playing fire.

Those are the historical reasons I can think of off the top of my head to back up the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The spiritual reason is even more convincing (or is it more convicting than convincing?). The outright logic in God's plan of mankind's redemption is mind-boggling to me, and leaves me shaking with awe every time I think about it. The doctrine of propitiation, wherein God's wrath for sin is satisfied through His own sacrifice, is ineffably magnificant. Any person who is not an idiot or deranged knows that people are not perfect or even really good. God is a holy (perfect, set apart) Judge, who not only cannot allow anything less than perfect in His presence, but also cannot stand evil (which, let's face it, we are). However, to save fallen humanity and glorify Himself, He became one of us, through Jesus Christ, and lived a life without any tarnish of sin. Though He was without fault - and because He claimed to be God - the people crucified Him, fulfilling prophesy. Through the crucifiction of Christ, the undeserving One was punished in place of the deserving many. "He who knew no sin became sin" to satisfy the wrath of a just God. "The wages of sin is death," and mankind's sin brought the Messiah's death, because "the gift of God is eternal life in [the death and resurrection of] Jesus Christ our Lord." So that to those who look upon Him as their Savior, God sees the perfection of His Son. Our sins were imputed to Him on that cross, and His righteousness is imputed to those who know we have no righteousness in ourselves.

The fact that Jesus did, then, rise from the dead the following Sunday, shows that this propitiatory act was indeed successful. Hallelujah! Because He lives, I too can LIVE! Praise the Lord in His merciful Providence!