There are many religions with different founders, prophets, and teachers going back thousands of years. But only one of them, Christianity, has a founder who professed to be the Messiah - the son of God - who provided irrefutable proof of who he was by conquering death through resurrection. Easter is the celebration of Christ's resurrection.    Christ is also the only person in history who was pre-announced starting a thousand years before he was born, with 18 different prophets from the Old Testament between the tenth and the fourth centuries BC predicting his coming birth, life, and death. Hundreds of years later, the details of Christ's birth, life, betrayal, and manner of death validated those prophesies in surprisingly accurate and minute detail. One thousand years BC, David prophetically wrote about the crusifiction of Christ at a time crusifiction was unknown as a means of execution.      Every other consequential person in history came into the world to live. The death of other religious leaders-such as Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Mohammad, and Confucius-brought an anticlimatic end to their lives and their work. But Christ came into the world as God's son in order to pay the price for man's sin. His sacrifice was the ultimate climax of his life, done for the benefit of all mankind - opening the way to eternal life in heaven for all who believe.     Of the four major world religions built on personalities, only Christianity claims its founder is still alive, having overcome death through resurrection. As for Mohammed and his teachings that are the basis of Islam, there is no trace of this founder appearing to his disciples or followers after he died at age 61. His occupied tomb is located in Medina and is visited by tens of thousands of devout Muslims every year.    Christ is unique in that he gave up his life as a sacrifice to fulfill why he came into the world. Christ set the high standard of love possible, both in his teaching and in making the ultimate sacrifice - giving his life to rescue and save mankind. Then, to provide "seeing is believing" evidence, God brought Jesus back from being dead in a tomb to being alive - resurrected - so people would have living proof of who he was.               The New Testament provides accounts from multiple sources who witnessed Jesus firsthand after the resurrection. In fact, Jesus made ten separate appearances to his disciples between the resurrection and his ascention into Heaven, over a period of 40 days. Some of these appearances were to individual disciples, some were to several disciples at the same time and once even to 500 at one time. Particularly noteworthy is that there were no accounts of witnesses who came forth and disputed these appearances or called it a "hoax." Not a single one. Nor do we find any historical record of any witness accounts that were contradictory. There's actually far more reliable historical evidence for his life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection than any other historical fugure of ancient times.                         About 1,000 times more manuscripts preserve the deeds and teaching of Jesus in the New Testament (about 25,000 total) than there are preserving other classical ancient works of historical figures who lived at approximately the same time, wirh the exception of Homer, who's "Iliad" is backed by 1,800 manuscripts. But that is still less than one-tenth the number of ancient manuscripts that back the authenticity of the New Testament. We know of historical Jesus mainly throygh four different accounts known as the gospels - Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John - not written hundreds of years later, but within a generation or two of Jesus's life. Additionally, the apostles' willingness to die for their claims had tremendous evidential value, also confirming the truth of the resurrection. No one will die for something he invented or believes to be false. Seeing, talking to, and touching the risen Jesus transformed the apostles, who then committed the rest of their lives to educate and advocate for the truth about the message of salvation through Christ. It turns out that Easter, which has its ultimate meaning in the resurrection, is one of ancient history's most carefully scrutinized and best-attested events. The resurrection is real and changes everything. Easter is the commemoration and celebration of the single event that transformed the world forever.           - Scott S. Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute. This article is a vignette adapted from his acclaimed book "Rediscovering America," now Amazon's No 1 new release in the history genre. Reach him at scott@discovery.org.