Erik Manning

Erik is the creative force behind the YouTube channel Testify, which is an educational channel built to help inspire people's confidence in the text of the New Testament and the truth of the Christian faith.

If Jesus really was a miracle-working teacher who rose from the dead, why isn’t He mentioned by more 1st century historians?

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Jesus of Nazareth was a highly influential teacher. He allegedly was a prophet with miraculous powers. He cast out demons, healed the sick, and even raised people from the dead. Then there’s the whole matter of his own resurrection. If Jesus was such a big deal, why isn’t he mentioned in the first and early second century beyond a few Christian sources? Wouldn’t Jesus have made more of an impact in his times? This is a common complaint of skeptics, especially from the internet infidel crowd who question whether Jesus ever even existed. On the face of it, these questions appear reasonable, but history just doesn’t work this way. THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE IS STILL … Read more

6 Strong Reasons Why Isaiah 53 Describes Jesus Alone

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Here’s a spiritual conversation starter for you. Print off Isaiah 53 on a piece of paper. Take out the headings and verse numbers. Then grab a non-Christian friend and have them read it with you. 99 times out of a hundred, they’ll identify the Suffering Servant described in the passage as Jesus. That would be a great time to let them know that the chapter comes is out of the Jewish Bible and was written 700 years before the time of Christ!   The Bible says that one of the things that separate Yahweh from the nation’s idols is his ability to tell us the end from the beginning. (Isaiah 46:10) But not everyone is … Read more

Do arguments for the existence of God fail because they don’t give us a full picture of God?

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Raise your hand if you’ve ever had this experience: You’ve learned a thing or two about the cosmological argument or the design argument. You eagerly share it with a friend of yours who doesn’t believe in God, and they accept all the premises. But they aren’t moved. They’ll reply with something like: “Even if these arguments work, they don’t prove enough. They show there was a first cause of the universe or a designer, but that is a far cry from the God of traditional theism.” Or they might say “well, that doesn’t prove that the first cause or designer was Jesus or Yahweh. Try harder.” How do you respond to that? This reply is at least as … Read more

7 Reasons Why Belief in God Isn’t “Wish Fulfillment”

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“You’re only a Christian because you’re afraid of death!” “You only believe in God because you need a magical sky daddy figure to make you feel better about yourself!” Have you ever heard accusations like these before? If you’ve been on the internet for very long, then I’m sure you have. Skeptics often accuse believers of wishful thinking. For example, here’s the late Christopher Hitchens: “Freud made the obvious point that religion suffered from one incurable deficiency: it was too clearly derived from our own desire to escape from or survive death. The critique of wish-thinking is strong and unanswerable.” To give you a better idea of what Hitchens is referring to here’s the father … Read more

How could an all-loving God command Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac?

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is god into child sacrifice?

In 2003, Deanna Laney stoned two of her young children to death. She tried to kill her third child, who was only 14 months old, but the child survived his injuries. During the police investigation, Laney claimed God ordered her to kill her sons. Horror stories like this often get co-opted by anti-religionists. The question posed to the believer goes like this: If God told you to kill your children, would you do it? If you say yes, you’re deranged and insane. If you say no, then you’re not as faithful as God’s man Abraham. According to the critics, the story of Abraham and Isaac shows that God is not above child-sacrifice. How could an … Read more

3 times archaeology has confirmed the Gospels and shut the mouths of skeptics

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Liberal scholars and radical skeptics like to say that gospels have more holes than swiss cheese. Aside from the gospels being full of unresolvable contradictions, they also make grave historical blunders. If they were reliable historical documents based on eyewitness testimony, they’d get the details right. Therefore, they’re mere religious fictions. But in recent times many of the holes that critics have tried to poke through the gospels have been filled by the shovel of archaeology. Excavators have come to the rescue and provided a counterbalance to suspicious views against the gospels. Here I’m going to share three examples where biblical archaeology has made the critics look flat-out silly. If that whets your appetite for … Read more

No, Jesus could not have been raised supernaturally by any other being but God.

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The argument for the resurrection of Jesus goes like this: Jesus’ disciples sincerely believed he rose from the dead and appeared to them. External evidence and events support their belief: Paul was a church persecutor, and he converted. James was a skeptic and he also became a believer. Plus there are good arguments for the empty tomb. There are no plausible natural explanations. The disciples didn’t hallucinate, and they weren’t deluding themselves. The facts are best explained by a miracle. Usually, the skeptic will either say there’s a better explanation or insist that miracles aren’t possible and simply refuse to look at the evidence. But here’s an odd objection. Skeptics will pick and third way … Read more

Can there be a religiously neutral test for miracle claims?

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Following the tradition of the famous 18th-century philosopher David Hume, skeptics will often accuse Christians of special pleading. We eagerly accept the resurrection of Jesus and other miracles reported in the Bible. But we’re just as swift to reject miracle claims made by other religions. Critics will say if you accept one miracle, you have to open up the floodgates to them all. But is that true? Could there be a way to sift through all the noise? Enter Charles Leslie’s terse yet powerful book A Short and Easy Method With the Deists. This booklet is around 40 pages, but it packs a punch. Leslie’s method is a religiously neutral test regarding how we can … Read more

So the Next Generation Would Know: A must read for every parent, pastor and youth minister.

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Have you ever read the book of Judges? It’s one of the gloomiest books in the Bible. The prelude says: “After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel”. (Judges 2:10) Not to sound alarmist, but the last part of that verse sounds a lot like Generation Z, at least according to many polls. Today, incoming college freshmen, when surveyed before they enter college, are three times more likely to report that they are religiously unaffiliated than freshmen who entered college in the 80’s. It’s said that 50-70% of Christian youth will abandon their faith once they leave … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?