I think The Case for the Real Jesus is Lee Strobel’s best book so far, and that’s saying a lot. Josh McDowell claims, “Whatever Lee Strobel writes, God reads!” 🙂
David Limbaugh has posted a review of Lee’s book that challenges skeptics to take a fair look at the evidence.
Why do most scholars think the last twelve verses of the Gospel of Mark (Mk. 16:9-20) were not written by Mark? Lee Strobel calls on manuscript expert Dr. Daniel Wallace to answer here. Wallace, who thinks the last 12 verses were added later, has an interesting insight:
One can easily see why scribes would want to add to Mark’s original ending, however: he wrote his gospel in such a way that would make the story open-ended. He wanted the reader to step into the sandals of the disciples and make a decision about Jesus themselves. Mark’s original ending was a brilliant maneuver on his part for he was drawing the reader into the narrative, showing that it was impossible to accept Christ in his glory unless one also accepted him in his suffering.
What does the inclusion or exclusion of verses 9-20 mean theologically? Nothing. If they are included, nothing new is taught. If they are excluded, nothing is lost because the resurrection appearances are described elsewhere.
Bill Hybels , the unofficial father of the seeker movement in the United States, recently admitted that seeker churches have done a very poor job of making disciples. This is damning because making disciples is what Jesus commanded us to do! Why has the seeker movement failed in the church’s central purpose?
I attended a seeker church this past weekend. As I was sitting there watching the pastor perform his way through his presentation, props, film clips and all, the thought struck me that the seeker church is in many ways a Protestant form of Roman Catholicism (I grew up Roman Catholic and the Roman Catholic church is having the same problem). I know the connection is not immediately obvious because of the major differences in liturgy, hierarchy and theology. But there are several significant similarities:
Now before I get hate mail from my Roman Catholic and Seeker-oriented friends who can cite several exceptions, let me grant that there are exceptions, but they simply prove the rule. We’ve got to stop defending our church practices if they are not doing what Jesus told us to do. If you’re not making disciples, you’re not doing church the way Jesus commanded it. As Jesus warned, we can’t let our traditions nullify the Word of God.
Unfortunately, most other denominations are not doing much better. We’re loosing 75% of our young people because– instead of making disciples who are in awe of God and devoted to His purposes– a majority of churches from most denominations are producing shallow narcisists obsessed with themselves and their own happiness.
We fail to realize that what we win them with we win them to. If we win them with entertainment and low commitment, we win them to entertainment and low commitment. Charles Spurgeon was way ahead of his time when he implored the church to start “feeding the sheep rather than amusing the goats.”
In disussing Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, Sam Donaldson makes the common mistake of confusing religion and morality. Donaldson seems to think that anyone with traditional moral views (such as Romney and Huckabee) is trying to set up a Christian “theocracy.” But this is nonsense as pointed out in the post below (“You can’t legislate religion, but you must legislate morality!”). No major candidate for President wants to impose the Old Testament law on the United States, have the Church run the government, or force U.S. citizens to obey religous rites and practices. But every candidate for President (including every Democrat) wants to impose certain moral values into law (don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t rape, etc.).
In fact, all Democrats and some Republicans argue that abortion is a moral right. Rudy Giuliani goes so far as to say that since abortion is a constitutional right, the government ought to pay for abortions for those who can’t afford them! (I wonder if Rudy thinks the government ought to pay for the guns of those who can’t afford them. After all, the right to bear arms is a constitutional right).
But I digress. The main point is that all this talk about theocracy is just plain wrong. Yes, some candidates are Christians or Mormons, and some may have the religious worldview of an atheist. But that doesn’t mean that their religious worldview (Christian, Mormon or Atheist) is going to be legislated on the country. All laws legislate someone’s moral viewpoint, but that’s not the same as establishing a “theocracy.” If you want to know what a theocracy is like Sam, take a trip to Iran.
Lee Strobel has put up several short video clips of some of my presentations on his website. Click here for a clip on Why Don’t People Believe in Miracles?
By the way, LeeStrobel.com has hundreds of other short videos related to apologetics. I highly recommend you check it out.
Here is a great column by my friend David Limbaugh in response to those who criticize people such as Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney for allegedly infusing their religious views into politics. But, of course, Huckabee and Romney are not trying to legislate religion on anyone– they want to legislate morality which is what everyone in politics is trying to do (including political liberals).
Religion has to do with our duty to God, but morality has to do with our duty to one another. No one wants to require by law when, where, how, or if you must worship. That would be legislating religion. But everyone in politics is trying to tell you how your ought to treat one another, and that’s legislating morality.
Even on abortion– the most divisive issue of the day– both sides want to legislate or impose morality. The pro-life side wants to impose continued pregnancy on the mother. But the pro-abortion side wants to impose death on the baby whenever abortion is chosen. Both sides argue from moral positions (a right to life/a right to “choose”) and want to impose it via law. When Hillary Clinton, for example, argues that a woman has a right to choose, she is arguing from a supposed moral position. The problem for Hillary is that there should be no “right to choose” the death of another innocent human being. The right to life is the right to all other rights– if you don’t have life you don’t have anything. What do you think Hillary would want the law to be if we could put her back into the womb?
The criticism of politicians like Huckabee and Romney could be answered if they would just distinguish between religion and morality. Most moral principles are consistent with religious teachings, but that doesn’t prevent us from legislating them. If you couldn’t legislate a moral value because it’s found in the Bible, then we couldn’t have laws against murder, rape and theft! In fact, nearly every good law we have is in someway consistent with one of the Ten Commandments.
Another in a long list of discoveries that affirm the historicity of the Bible: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8T7ORS00&show_article=1. Archaeology so confirms the Bible, that it’s been said that “every time a spade goes in the ground an atheist gets converted.” If atheism were just a matter of the mind and not the will, that would be true. (BTW, Israel Finkelstein, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, tries to discount the discovery at the end of the article. I’m not sure anything would convince Finkelstein who is a self-proclaimed skeptic.)
If we could find a way to create embryotic stem cell lines without destroying human embryos, advocates of the old ESCR method would immediately embrace such new technology and the ethical debate would end, right? One would think so– unless careers, money, and justification for abortion are connected to the old method. Well, that’s exactly what some are predicting will happen. A new discovery has been made, but advocates of the old method may refuse to embrace it. Look at this fascinating exchange from Special Report with Brit Hume posted on the STR blog.
The Apostle Paul was right. People are willing to “suppress the truth” if the truth will get in the way of something they covet (See Romans 1:28-32.).
The default position among NT scholarship is that most of the NT documents were written after 70 A.D. I think the exact opposite is true– most, if not all, of the NT documents were written BEFORE 70 A.D. Here’s why http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BhjJQciq-A.
Atheist Christopher Hitchens is morally outraged with the Christian belief that God created us and put us under Him without our consent. (This is typical of atheists– they have moral objections to God while they have no objective grounds by which to make moral objections unless God exists.) But as John Piper points out, even if God does not exist, we are still here without our consent:
The fact that we had no say in our creation is what creation means. It’s also what birth means. Neither God nor Mother Nature gives anyone the choice to be created or born. There is a lesson in that. We are dependent. That’s not debatable. It’s just the way it is. But if you embrace the reality of dependence and follow it all the way to the free gift of salvation through Christ, it is not condemnation but liberation. It does not feel disempowering to be called a “fellow-heir of God” (Romans 8:17). (For Piper’s complete post, click here .)
Atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris assert that belief in God is our greatest problem. If we could only do away with belief in God we would be liberated. But exactly the opposite is true. Liberation comes from putting our trust in Christ. In other words, we can all overcome the hand we’ve been dealt– each of us can choose to become children of God (John 1:12) and be liberated from this bondage to decay and death. Through Christ we have some control. Through atheism we have none– atheism leaves no way out.