In Defense of the Christian Faith

In reading the Gospels I have become increasingly fascinated with the names, places, dates, and history of the world surrounding Jesus. While I am by no means a historian or a scholar, for Christmas this year I wanted to put forth some interesting facts (a dissecting of the Gospel accounts) surrounding the birth of Christ. Luke's Gospel is the best place to start for he says that, "having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first," he is writing "an orderly account." That is, Luke was painstakingly accurate -- down to the most minute detail, as one scholar says. Adam Clark's Commentary says this of Luke's accuracy: Having accurately traced up-entered into the very spirit of the work, and examined every thing to the bottom; in consequence of which investigation, I am completely convinced of the truth of the whole. Though God gives his Holy Spirit to all them who ask him, yet this gift was never designed to set aside the use of tho...

Those of you who have been following the last few posts in the series "The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus" , know that I draw my material heavily from the book by the same title co-authored by historian Michael Licona. Here is a short video in which he explains why the Resurrection is the only thing that fits the facts portrayed in the New Testament of Jesus' death and resurrection. Happy Resurrection Day! :)

If you've been into apologetics for any length of time, you've probably heard the skeptics compare believing in God to believing in unicorns, right? Well, it may surprise you that unicorns actually DO exist -- but they are not like the mythical horse character with a horn on the top of his head that no one has ever seen before. It's much simpler than that; unicorns are actually mentioned in the Bible nine times, and from this, we can deduce what the unicorn actually was/is! Watch this very interesting video entitled "Of Course There Are Unicorns: Part 1" to learn more:

"Anybody who tries to use the argument that Jesus of Nazareth never existed [as a verifiable historical figure] is simply flaunting his or her ignorance. There is no serious question in the mind of any serious scholar, anywhere in the world that there certainly was a historical personality named Jesus of Nazareth. Now you can argue if he was the Son of God or not, argue about the supernatural aspects of his life, but in terms of the historical character of Jesus, all the evidence is in favour." - Historian Paul L. Maier   Hat Tip: Apologetics315 

I once encountered an atheist who asked for proof of God's existence outside of the Bible. He claimed that he truly wanted to find God, but he did NOT want to look into the Bible to read about Him (didn't really want to talk about the Bible either); he said that if God were real, he could find Him outside of the Bible, too. He claimed that the Bible was a second-hand account, and the only reason he would give was that no historians were present to write down things as they happened. (I didn't think of it then, but that is TOTALLY FALSE -- Luke was there, and we have evidence that he was a very accurate historian !) Anyway, after going into a rather long speal about the different aspects to his questions, I brought up the topic that Jesus was God. I said, "Jesus is God's Son -- He is God. Jesus is the Truth and truth has to correspond to reality, so if Jesus really is the truth, than God is real. If you can believe this, you will know that God exists, so I want to p...

Matthew 17:27 "Nevertheless, lest we offend them, go to the sea, cast in a hook, and take the fish that comes up first. And when you have opened its mouth, you will find a piece of money; take that and give it to them for Me and you." I learned something interesting about this Scripture... thought it was interesting, so I decided to share it with you all... Grant Jeffrey gives some interesting information about this type of fish: This species of fish belongs to the Cichlidae family and flourishes in this warm freshwater sea. St. Peter's Fish is occasionally called the "mouth breeder." It is found naturally in only three places, all of which lie along the geological zone extending from the Sea of Galilee thousands of miles to the south in Lake Victoria, Uganda.... Dr. Jim Fleming, a professor of archaeology and historical geography at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has taught about the unusual nature of this fish in connection with Matthew 17:24­27. The femal...