The ‘Bible’ Blunder in the Book of Mormon

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The following is a guest post by Eric Wendt. Eric is a former member of the LDS Church and a current graduate student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. You can follow him on Medium and Twitter. I grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) and had some doubts when I was a teenager. When I asked about these doubts to leadership and the missionaries, I was told to “pray about it.” That was a very unsatisfying answer to me, and I grew more and more frustrated with religion. After a few years, I began to investigate the claims of Mormonism and Christianity. My motivation was to prove that Mormonism was … Read more

Video: Money Matters in Matthew’s Gospel

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Skeptical critics like Bart Ehrman tell us that we have no idea who wrote the Gospel of Matthew. They argue that all the internal evidence tells us it had to be written by someone else. But is that really so? The Gospels tell us that Matthew was a tax collector. So if Matthew did write a Gospel, we’d expect to see an unusual degree of interest in financial matters. And as it turns out, that’s exactly what we find to be the case. Matthew is all about the Benjamins, much more so than any Gospel writer. And it isn’t even close. In this video, I look at the internal evidence of money-mentions in Matthew’s Gospel … Read more

Video: Who Wrote The Gospels? These 6 Ancient Sources Tell Us

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Skeptical New Testament scholars like Bart Ehrman argue that the Four Gospels in our New Testament are anonymous. In his bestselling book Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman writes: “Some books, such as the Gospels…had been written anonymously, only later to be ascribed to certain authors who probably did not write them (apostles and friends of the apostles).” But wouldn’t the early church be in a better position to know who wrote the Gospels than contemporary critics? I’d certainly think so, and as it turns out, the early church fathers were unambiguous and united about who wrote the Four Gospels.  In this video, we look at the witness of 6 early church fathers and learn that the authorship … Read more

Video: There’s No Excuse for Abortion Unless You’re Certain the Unborn isn’t a Person

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In Roe vs. Wade, Associate Justice Harry Blackmun, speaking for the majority, said the Court was unable to determine when life begins. He wrote: ‘‘When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus…the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.” So since we’re skeptical about when life begins, it should be the mother’s decision right? Well, no. Philosopher Peter Kreeft argues that “abortion agnosticism” is actually a reason why we should be pro-life, not the other way around. In this video, I take a ten-minute snippet of Kreeft’s trilemma and set … Read more

Manuscript Evidence Proves the Gospels Were Not Anonymous

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Skeptical New Testament scholars argue that the Four Gospels in our New Testament are anonymous. There was no original “Gospel According to Matthew,” and the same goes for Mark, Luke, and John. Their titles were left blank originally. Or so the theory goes.  These four gospels allegedly were distributed without titles for almost a hundred years before scribes attached them to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, well after these apostles were dead. Names got assigned to give the four gospels more prestige. Skeptics like Bart Ehrman go on to conclude that because these books were anonymous, they probably aren’t based on eyewitness testimony.  While many NT critics have latched onto this anonymous Gospel theory, I … Read more

Answering Ehrman: Did the Temple Curtain Rip Before or After Jesus Died?

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The following is a guest post by Jacob Varghese, who is the director of SAFT Apologetics. (Seeking Answers, Finding Truth). You can find his website at saftapologetics.com and also follow him on Instagram at instagram.com/saftapologetics/. Recently a friend of mine placed before me a couple of Biblical contradictions raised by Bart Ehrman, in his presentation at the 2019 Defenders Conference, for me to try and solve. One of the contradictions was concerning the tearing of the veil and its temporal placement in relation to Jesus’ death on the cross. The account is recorded in Mark 15:37-39, Matthew 27:50-51, and Luke 23: 45-46. Admittedly this alleged contradiction had me puzzling in the beginning. As I couldn’t … Read more

George Park Fisher on The Hallucination Hypothesis

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George Park Fisher (August 10, 1827 – December 20, 1909) taught theology at Yale and was a noted historian. He was president of the American Historical Association while he also served as the pastor at the College Church at Yale. His book, A Manual of Christian Evidences, is an awesome, short introduction to historical apologetics that I highly recommend. Below was Fisher’s take on the hallucination hypothesis, which had become one of the more popular naturalistic explanations for Jesus’ resurrection during Fisher’s time. Fisher on The hallucination theory “Were the Apostles deceived? Were these manifestations to them (and to the five hundred) a delusion of their minds? A hallucination is a disorder of the senses, … Read more

9 Famous Thinkers Who Said They’d Rather Go To Hell than Worship God

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CS Lewis famously remarked that “the gates of hell are locked from the inside.” In other words, the residents of the damned are there based on personal preference. It’s not because they’d rather be in heaven but only lacked sufficient information.  Echoing Lewis, Christian philosopher Dallas Williard wrote that hell isn’t “an ‘oops’ or a slip. One does not miss heaven by a hair, but by a constant effort to avoid and escape God.”  But are these famous Christian thinkers correct? Doesn’t it seem crazy that anyone would prefer hell? Based on the statements of many influential skeptics and atheists, the answer might surprise you. Many hardheartedly reject the Biblical picture of God. If such … Read more

Are There Any “Good” Atheists?

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One of the most popular arguments for God’s existence is the moral argument. It can take different forms, but a popular version runs like this:  If God doesn’t exist, there are no objective moral values or duties.  But moral values and obligations exist – objectively.  Therefore, God exists.  It’s not unusual for someone to say, “Are you saying that all atheists are bad people? Rude!” The Christian apologist will often reply that the issue isn’t about belief in God but whether or not God exists. After all, we all know moral atheists.  It’s true that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the argument. But do we really know of many good atheists?  Relatively so, absolutely. … Read more

Are the Accounts of Jesus’s Ascension Contradictory?

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Bart Ehrman says that the author of Luke can’t seem to get the story of the Ascension of Jesus right. In his Gospel, Luke says that Jesus ascended into heaven the day of his resurrection. In The Acts of the Apostles, Jesus hung around for 40 days before leaving his disciples. Dr. Ehrman writes in his blog:  “In Luke 24 (you can read it for yourself and see) Jesus rises from the dead, on that day meets with his disciples, and then, again that day, he ascends to heaven from the town of Bethany. But when you read Acts 1, written by the same author, you find that Jesus did not ascend on that day … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?