Also, we saw how when God told his people to do something, and they did’t listen, how that disobediance effected generations way down the line. For example, Hamon, a Persian noble, wanted to have all the Jews executed during the time of Esther. Hamon could have been avoided all together if the Jews had dealth with Hamon’s ancestor as they were instructed to by God.

It is very logical to question what you believe so I hope and pray all who visit this page find what their looking for, The God who give us the peace which passes all understanding.

Peace and love to all.

i believe that god is alive. but it is not from the bible but logical. it is the need of just that there should be a god and a life hereafter.

the credibility of bible is not proved so far. i found lot of mistakes. Just read Mark 16:17-18. It is the test to become a real christian. It is illogical unless it is proved. I think we have to prove it ourselves to attract more people to christianity. Let us start from top.

Incidentally, I don’t spend much time on the prophecies re Jesus in my ebook because, on one hand, the topic isn’t strictly related to the reliability of the texts of the NT themselves (and would also require a defense of OT reliability which I wasn’t interested in doing) and also on the other hand because I don’t think the prophecies are as strong evidence as other people claim. I did include Isaiah 53 because (along with another Isaiah passage I can’t recall right now) it seems to be the strongest one. (Well there is an argument for Daniel 9:24-26 also mentioned in CforC which may be stronger.)

That said, since you’ve read Case for Christ you may remember the story of Louis Lapides, a Jewish man who, when he read the Isaiah 53 passage, was so taken aback by it that he thought it must be a Christian fraud and so he got a Jewish Bible to verify the text hadn’t been changed by Christians! So I would be hesitant to dismiss it entirely.

It is a small world, since I started at Guelph in Sept 1999 we probably would’ve passed eachother on campus at one time or another! :) I don’t think William Lane Craig has ever debated in Guelph, though he actually had a couple debates in Ontario universities lately, I know one was in Waterloo and another was in Toronto, unfortunately I couldn’t make it to any of them. And of course there was his big “debate” with Christopher Hitchens, which wasn’t much of a debate at all unfortunately but probably pretty entertaining: http://www.doesgodexistdebate.com I’d much rather he debated Richard Dawkins, at least Dawkins is knowledgeable and would present proper arguments. (Yes, I have read The God Delusion!)

There’s two resources that I might suggest for you or others who are interested in these issues. I don’t come to this subject as an uninterested observer: I was an atheist/agnostic for most of my life until I started investigating religion for myself. The first resource I’ll suggest is Dr Gary Habermas’ “Minimal Facts” approach. This approach attempts to use only facts which are nearly universally agreed upon regarding the biblical texts, by both Christians and non-Christians. It doesn’t assume the Bible is inerrant, inspired, or even generally accurate:
http://www.growthtrac.com/artman/publish/1the-facts-concerning-the-resurrection-815.php

A second resource, and I hope this isn’t considered shameless self-promotion, is a free little ebook I wrote called “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament”. It’s available here:
http://www.whyfaith.com/nt/
Since you’re familiar with Case for Christ some of the arguments won’t be new to you, but hopefully it will be interesting nonetheless. (I do briefly mention Ehrman’s previous book Misquoting Jesus.)

While I don’t think the Christian faith can be argued for based on reason & facts alone (if only because the barriers we have towards it are often also not based on reason & facts, I know some of my barriers weren’t) I do think they certainly have a central a role to play.

Thanks again for adding constructively to the discussion!

I do not have any formulated doubts concerning Jesus Christ. However, I am prone to having doubts concerning today’s definition of Christianity. I see as much error in denominational religiosity, as I do in the Hollywood confusion. As I said before. I subscribe to faith in God, not religion. So, much talk and rhetorical fancy in today’s Christianity. So much so, that we cannot seperate it much of the time, from many world secular views. Jesus outlines dispensationally what the Church will look like near the end times. Take a long hard look at your Church. Because, I am not sure if I want to attend some of these so called sanctuary’s or see Tom Hank’s new movie, “Angel’s and Demon’s. Read Revalation Chapter Three and take another long, hard look at what Jesus say’s about his endtime Church. How their eye’s and ear’s are in need of salve. How they need nothing, including Him– save they have their materialism/riches. How they need His “white robes” of righteousness in place of their “filthy” rags and garments. I think before we attempt to seperate ourselves from the world. We may want to define just what this seperation be constructed of in the first place. Because if we are pointing a finger at the “outsiders”, then perhaps we may need to remove the “Hollywood” from our own eye’s. We have a long way to go for a people saved by grace. Because we all should know what “faith without works” should really mean? Lest we abuse the one-time propitiation? I am beleiveing more and more, that we need to live our faith. Walk more and talk less. St. Francis said many centuries ago; “Go out today and preach the gospel, and if you must–use words”! Talk is cheap–so c’mon Church–start loving the unloved–and living your faith–in action?

Marc Wildman