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6 Bad Reasons to Reject the Traditional Authorship of John’s Gospel

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Nearly every shred of evidence that we have from the early church fathers tells us that the Apostle John wrote the fourth Gospel. And in a previous video, we saw plenty of internal evidence that points to John being the genuine author. Despite all this, there’s a lot of pushback offered from the critics. You’ll often hear there’s a vast scholarly consensus against the traditional authorship of John.  But when you dig into the arguments from biblical critics, they often turn out to be pretty weak. In this video, I address some of the more common ones.  Erik ManningErik is the creative force behind the YouTube channel Testify, which is an educational channel built to … Read more

Video: 6 Reasons Why Peter is the Source of Mark’s Gospel

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Many of the early church fathers say that Mark’s Gospel is based on Peter’s preaching. If that’s the case, it’s understandable why an apostle like Matthew or someone like Luke would use Mark as a source. You can’t get much closer to the life of Jesus than through the eyes of Peter.  We’ve looked at what the early church fathers had to say about Mark before. However, skeptics like Bart Ehrman say that this whole idea that Mark based his Gospel on Peter’s preaching stems from Papias, and Papias doesn’t know what he’s talking about.   OK, so now what?  While I don’t think that argument works, what if I said there was a way to … Read more

Video: 3 Bad Reasons to Doubt the Traditional Authorship of Matthew

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Skeptics like Bart Ehrman say that we don’t know who wrote Matthew’s Gospel. In Bart’s own words, “Whoever wrote Matthew did not call it “The Gospel according to Matthew.” The persons who gave it that title are telling you who, in their opinion, wrote it…” Now, the early church fathers all agree that Matthew wrote it. And all the ancient manuscripts we have attributed it to Matthew. We’ve looked at this in previous videos. So what are the main reasons Ehrman thinks that someone other than Matthew wrote it? In this video, I look at three bad reasons why many biblical critics reject the traditional authorship of Matthew and why they fail. Erik ManningErik is … 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

James was Jesus’ Brother. Deal With It, Mythcists.

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James the brother of Jesus

It’s a pretty amazing historical fact that Jesus’ brother — who probably wore the Savior’s hand-me-downs — later in life converted to Christianity. What would it take to convince you that your brother was the Messiah? Suffice to say that would take some pretty miraculous evidence, right? The Gospel writers tell us that Jesus’ own family thought he was crazy and doubted his claims. (Mark 3:21, John 7:5) But after believing he saw the risen Jesus, James had quite the change of mind. (1 Corinthians 15:7) He became an apostle, led the Jerusalem church, and was even martyred for the faith. This is pretty compelling evidence for Christianity. Here is where Jesus-mythers try and burst our … Read more

No, the Argument From Miracles Has Not Been Debunked – a Reply to Rationality Rules (Pt. 1)

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Is the argument from miracles full of fallacies? Popular atheist YouTuber ‘Rationality Rules’ argues that’s the case. Rather than examining miracles on a report-by-report basis, he opts to say that the case for miracles is doomed from the start. This reasoning follows the tradition of the famous 18th-century philosopher David Hume. For those of you who aren’t into YouTube, Rationality Rules has had his channel since March of 2017. In that short time, he’s gained over 200k subscribers and has had nearly 15 million views. There’s a cottage industry of channels similar to his and we shouldn’t underestimate their influence. These are sharp skeptics making entertaining and digestible videos packed with thought-provoking content. As believers, … Read more

Is Jesus Alive?