If the gospel is the solution to addiction, then the gospel must first be true. But if the gospel is false and Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then we had might as well go back to living for pleasure until we shuffle off this mortal coil. But how can we believe something as incredible as the resurrection of Jesus in our modern age of technology? Hasn’t science disproven Christianity? If the gospel is false, then Christians are to be pitied because we are investing in an eternity that does not exist while letting the sinful pleasures of this life pass us by. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17-19:
“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
I know there will be many people who read this book who are not professing Christians. So, I will build the strongest case that I can for the truth of the gospel in this chapter.[1]
But I Don’t Believe God Exists
Have you ever seen the movie The Sound of Music? There’s a song in it that goes like this: “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.” But atheism would have us believe that everything in existence, the entire universe with all of its stars and galaxies together with all biological life, came from nothing. But from nothing, nothing comes.[2] If God does not exist, then life came from non-life, order from chaos, reason from irrationality, personality from non-personality, and morality from amorality.
We know that the universe had a beginning because the universe is constantly expanding.[3] The galaxies in the universe are moving away from us as observed by what is known as redshift where observable wavelengths of light expand with the expansion of space. Since everything that has a beginning has a cause, the universe must have had a cause and has not eternally existed. Another reason the universe had a beginning is because of the Law of Entropy or Second Law of Thermodynamics. The amount of usable energy in the universe is constantly running down which means that if the universe has eternally existed, then there would be no more useable energy left.
The cause of the universe must therefore be incredibly powerful and exist outside of the known universe. He must likewise be incredibly wise given the fine-tuning of the universe for life.[4] The laws of physics and chemistry point to the impossibility of the universe and all life coming into existence by random chance.[5] The cosmological constant, gravitational constant, strong nuclear force constant, weak nuclear force constant, and fine-structure constant point to an intelligence as the cause of the universe. As the astronomer Fred Hoyle concluded:
“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”[6]
In addition, our planet is located in what is known as the “Goldilocks Zone” at just the right distance from the sun with just the right rotational axis to support the existence of life.[7]
The biological complexity of life points to an intelligent designer as its cause. Many of the organisms on our planet display irreducible complexity or features that are so complex that they cannot be explained by natural random chance processes.[8] Examples of irreducible complexity include the flagellum of the E. Coli bacteria, the immune system and antibodies, blood clotting and the fibrin protein network, the metamorphosis of caterpillars, sexual reproduction, the human eye, photoreceptors, the biochemistry of vision, the human brain, the bombardier beetle, the making of proteins, amino acids, DNA, RNA, mRNA, DNA transcription and repair, gene regulation, the binding of proteins to catalyze a chemical reaction, cilium, the animal cell, mitochondria, ribosomes, vesicular transport, photosynthesis, biosynthesis of the AMP, the symbiosis of cells, and cell membranes.[9]
If our brains are the result of random mutations and irrational causes, then how can we trust our minds to arrive at rational conclusions? This was the question Charles Darwin asked:
“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”[10]
But if we are made in God’s image, then we are called to think God’s thoughts after him.
The existence of the laws of logic such as the law of noncontradiction transcend the material world because they would still be true if life never existed. The existence of transcendental truths point to a creator who transcends the material world.[11] God’s existence is the necessary precondition for knowledge, the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, universally binding morality and ethics, the conscience, human dignity, freedom, love, respect, and beauty.[12]
Our conscience or innate knowledge of right and wrong points to a lawgiver. Paul calls this the law written on the heart (Rom 2:15).[13] In order to have a moral law that is binding on all people for all time, there must be a universal moral law. That is why in atheism, morality is relative, subjective, culturally determined, and derived from the government.[14] Without God as the universal reference point who holds all men accountable for their sin, there is no firm foundation on which universal ethical norms can be built.[15] Richard Wurmbrand explains the relationship between atheism and the loss of hope that leads to addiction:
“The enormous amount of drunkenness in Communist countries exposes the longing for a more meaningful life, which communism cannot give. The average Russian is a deep, big-hearted, generous person. Communism is shallow and superficial. He seeks the deep life and, finding it nowhere else, he seeks it in alcohol. He expresses in alcoholism his horror about the brutal and deceitful life he must live. For a few moments alcohol sets him free, as truth would set him free forever if he could know it.”[16]
But most atheists don’t want to live this way. That’s why they must borrow from the Christian worldview to provide a basis for morality and human dignity. If they do not, then the government takes the place of God. This is why communist governments must suppress religion and dissent because the government must be seen as the ultimate authority instead of God. They do not want a fair debate or free exchange of ideas so they use force to control the masses.
Doesn’t Evolution Disprove the Bible?
The Darwinian theory of evolution is the dominant scientific model for explaining the origin of life and mankind. But there is, in fact, nothing scientifically true about molecules-to-man evolution. There is not one shred of evidence for the hypothesis that life came from nonlife by random chance natural processes. It is simply an unproveable theory of the atheist scientific community that is believed because it has been repeated for so long by so many people. Its huge influence has less to do with science and more to do with scientific peer pressure. Evolution must be true in order for atheism to be true. Without evolution, there could be no way to explain the origin of life apart from God. And since people don’t want to believe in God, another theory must be created regardless of how ridiculous it sounds. If aliens or the multiverse created life or the universe, then that just moves the problem one step back because these things are not eternal by definition and life and the universe had a beginning.[17]
Even though the arguments for evolution have been shown to be false, they just keep getting repeated.[18] The Miller-Urey experiment actually proved that life could never come about by spontaneous generation because of the problem of chirality.[19] The embryonic diagrams that are often used to argue for common ancestry are based on the falsified drawings of Ernst Haeckel. Evolutionists interpret the fossil evidence through the lens of their worldview to find missing links by either downgrading human skeletal remains or upgrading the remains of apes.[20]
The history of the theory of evolution is filled with hoaxes and misinterpretations of the evidence because scientists, like all other people, suffer from confirmation bias. The primary argument for the truth of Darwinian evolution from 1912 to 1953 was Piltdown Man. While Piltdown Man was eventually exposed as a hoax, it helped create the environment in which Darwinian evolution became the dominant scientific theory on the origin of man similar to how the forgery of the Donation of Constantine helped give rise to the political power of the papacy.
All the scientific evidence actually points to an intelligent designer as the creator of life.[21] There is no known mechanism by which new genetic information can be added to an organism.[22] The process of natural selection only removes information from the gene pool, it can never create it. Genetic mutations are almost always harmful. Evolution cannot explain the origin or complexity of DNA and proteins.[23]
Did Jesus Even Exist?
There are some radical atheists who deny that Jesus even existed. But these arguments are not taken seriously by even liberal scholars. I’m not sure they are even being serious when they make these claims because the evidence for the life of Christ is so overwhelming. References to Jesus outside the New Testament in non-Christian sources can be found in the writings of Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosata, Suetonius,Mara Bar-Serapion, the Jewish Talmuds, Josephus, Celsus, and Galen.[24]
The writings of the apostolic church fathers such as Clement of Rome, Papias, Ignatius, Polycarp, Mathetes, the Didache, and Second Clement give additional Christian testimony to the life of Christ. The archeological evidence of the Alexamenos graffito and the inscription at Megiddo Prison give further proof for the existence of Christ. And all of this excludes the New Testament itself which is the best attested written document in the ancient world. This evidence is what led the agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman to say:
“Despite the enormous range of opinion, there are several points on which virtually all scholars of antiquity agree. Jesus was a Jewish man, known to be a preacher and teacher, who was crucified (a Roman form of execution) in Jerusalem during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea.”[25]
This is also why the liberal scholar John Dominic Crossan concludes: “That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be.”[26]
Are the Gospels Textually Reliable?
But how do we know that the Gospels we have today have not been corrupted by the church? The reason is because there was no possible way for the church to corrupt all of the New Testament manuscripts when they were spread over such a broad geographical area so quickly. As Nabeel Qureshi elaborates:
“Nobody had ruling power over all of Christendom until the fourth century, three hundred years after Jesus. By that time, there were thousands of copies of the biblical texts, and even someone with authority over them would not have the practical ability to collect them all. Even if someone had the capacity to recall all the texts and edit them, there would certainly have been some record of such a massive recall. It is virtually impossible to imagine every Christian calmly handing over sacred texts to be altered without some trace of resistance or complaint.”[27]
Furthermore, the papyri manuscripts of the second century are in general agreement with the fourth century manuscripts Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus.[28] No other ancient written document comes close to the New Testament in terms of reliability.[29] There are over 5,700 manuscripts or manuscript fragments of the New Testament in existence.[30] Through the practice of textual criticism, we can reconstruct the text of the New Testament with up to 99.5% reliability.[31] No doctrine of the Christian faith is dependent on a verse which contains a textual variant. The New Testament church never had an incentive to corrupt the text of the New Testament and carefully preserved the text in the midst of persecution by the Roman authorities.
Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?
But even if Jesus existed and the Gospels are textually reliable, how do we know the Gospels are historically reliable? How do we know that the authors of the Gospels were not putting words in Jesus’ mouth that he never said? The authors of the Gospels present their writings as coming from eyewitnesses to Jesus.[32] The author of Luke begins his Gospel by saying:
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:1-4).
Peter likewise affirms that he was an eyewitness to Jesus: “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet 1:16)
The apostolic church father Papias wrote that Peter was the origin for the information in the Gospel of Mark:
“And the Elder used to say this: ‘Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything which he heard or to make any false statement in them.'”[33]
This is consistent with the second century church father Justin Martyr’s testimony that the four Gospels are “the memoirs of the apostles.”[34]
The Gospels are considered to be historically reliable because they give multiple attestation to the life of Christ. They exist as four distinct witnesses to Christ in addition to Acts and the letters of Paul.[35] They paint a consistent picture of who Jesus is and what he taught. All four Gospels teach that Jesus is God.[36] The embarrassing details in the Gospels about the apostles give further evidence for their historical accuracy.[37]
It is interesting that the Gospels and Acts never make reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD which gives evidence that they were written before then. John 5:2 uses the present tense verb “is” to describe the pool of Bethesda which would have been destroyed by the Romans. The authors of the Gospels, together with the Book of Acts, display a remarkable knowledge of the people, places, and customs of Israel in the first century.[38] The popularity of names in the Gospels corresponds with the popularity of Jewish names from first century ossuary boxes.[39] There is a great deal of overlap in the historical events recorded in the Bible and the Jewish historian Josephus.[40]
The real reason why people do not believe that the Bible is historically reliable is because they do not want to believe what it says. They are interpreting the evidence through the lens of their worldview. Therefore, by definition, if a person does not believe miracles can exist, then they must believe that the passages in the Gospels which describe miracles are not historical.
Fulfilled Prophecy
Up until now, I have been giving arguments for things that both Christians and non-Christians could agree on. A person doesn’t have to be a Christian to believe that God exists, that evolution is false, that Jesus existed, and that the Gospels are textually reliable and generally historical. An Orthodox Jew believes that God exists, that evolution is false, that Jesus existed, and historically many have believed that Jesus did perform miracles but that they were done by sorcery and magic instead of the power of God.[41] But now I will turn to arguments that only Christians could make which prove that Jesus is the Messiah and that the Bible is the Word of God.
The most remarkable messianic prophecy in the Bible is Daniel 9:24-27 which foretells the exact day on which the Messiah would die:
“Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. And he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.”
We can calculate the date of the Messiah’s death by subtracting the date of “the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem” (March 444 BC according to Nehemiah 2:1 since it was during the 20th year of the reign of King Artaxerxes I of Persia during the month of Nisan and he reigned from 465 to 424 but 464 was the first full year of his reign using the ascension year system of dating) by the amount of time that Daniel gives. To get this number, we add 7 weeks to 62 weeks to get 69 weeks. Sixty-nine weeks is 483 days. Each day represents one prophetic year (other examples include Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:5-6 where a day represents a year). But these are years in the 360-day Persian calendar since Daniel lived in Persia when this prophecy was given and not the modern 365.25 days in a year one. Therefore, we must convert it from 483 years to the more accurate 476 years. This is done by multiplying 483 years by 360 days to get 173,880 days and then dividing that number by 365.25 to get 476 years.
And 444 BC minus 476 years is 32 AD but we need to add one year because there is no year zero which results in 33 AD when “an anointed one shall be cut off.” The ministry of Christ was three and a half years before his death and the second half of the 70th week is the church age which is symbolically referred to as three and a half years (Rev 11:2-3, 9, 11; 12:6; 13:5). If Christ was crucified on April 3, 33 AD, then 173,880 days before that is March 13, 444 BC which is in the month of Nisan as Nehemiah 2:1 says.[42]
The entire Book of Daniel is filled with incredible prophecies. Daniel 11 chronicles the entire history of the Seleucid and Ptolemy dynasties before they took place in the second century BC. The only way to get around these arguments is to say that they were written down after the events took place. But the historian Josephus records that the Book of Daniel was in existence during the time of Alexander the Great:
“For Alexander, when he saw the multitude at a distance, in white garments, while the priests stood clothed with fine linen, and the high priest in purple and scarlet clothing, with his mitre on his head, having the golden plate whereon the name of God was engraved, he approached by himself, and adored that name, and first saluted the high priest. . . . And when he went up into the temple, he offered sacrifice to God, according to the high priest’s direction, and magnificently treated both the high priest and the priests. And when the Book of Daniel was showed him wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended” (Antiquities 11.8.5).
This means Daniel was in existence during the fourth century BC before Alexander came to Jerusalem. And Daniel makes reference to Alexander’s rise to power and the division of his empire into four parts in Daniel 8.
Another incredible prophecy concerning the Messiah is Isaiah 53. It tells us that the Messiah would not open his mouth when he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, that he was intended to be buried like a criminal, but was buried in a rich man’s tomb, and that he would suffer on behalf of others. And we know that Isaiah 53 has not been tampered with to fit the life of Jesus because of the Great Isaiah Scroll written in the second century BC found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.[43] While Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53 are the most important messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, there are many others.[44]
The prophecy of Ezekiel 26:3-6 was fulfilled quite literally through Alexander the Great:
“Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets, for I have spoken, declares the Lord GOD. And she shall become plunder for the nations, and her daughters on the mainland shall be killed by the sword. Then they will know that I am the LORD.”
Alexander used the debris of the old city of Tyre destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar to build a causeway to the new island city of Tyre off the coast.[45] The land was literally scraped clean and the city was thrown into the sea by Alexander’s army.
The Resurrection of Christ
The resurrection of Christ is the heart of the gospel. Paul cites an early Christian creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 which demonstrates that belief in Christ’s resurrection goes back to the original disciples of Jesus:
“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”
Paul claims that this tradition was delivered to him by others and not his own invention. Even liberal scholars date this creed to near the time of Christ’s crucifixion.[46]
Only an encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus could have changed Paul. How can we explain the origin of the letters of Paul and his conversion apart from the truth of the Christian faith? What would have led a Pharisee who persecuted the church to become a follower of Christ and the greatest spokesman for him? What would convince James the brother of Jesus, who formerly doubted, to believe in him if Jesus was not raised from the dead? What caused the twelve disciples to go from hiding from the authorities in fear to boldly proclaiming that Christ had been raised from the dead if they did not believe that Christ had been raised from the dead?
Historical testimony records that the majority of the apostles of Jesus suffered martyrdom for their faith including Peter, James, and Paul.[47] They knew that either the resurrection was true or that it was a lie. As Gary Habermas and Michael Licona note, “liars make poor martyrs.”[48] And who would die for what they knew was a lie? The original twelve knew whether Jesus was really raised from the dead or not. Yet none of them abandoned the faith in the face of death.
The empty tomb of Jesus was never disputed by the enemies of Christianity. But how could the body have been stolen with a detachment of soldiers guarding it? The disciples had been scattered after believing that Jesus had been defeated through crucifixion. They had no incentive to invent the story of the resurrection since it would have meant only suffering and persecution from the Jewish and Roman authorities. No other explanation but the resurrection of Jesus can account for all the facts including the empty tomb, the conversion of the skeptic James, the conversion of the persecutor Paul, the transformation of the disciples after claiming to see the risen Christ, the spread of Christianity in the face of persecution, the existence and preservation of the Bible, and the millions of testimonies of those who have been changed by the work of the Holy Spirit.[49]
The Only Consistent Worldview
Christianity is the only worldview that accounts for the world we live in. As C. S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[50] Every religion and cult except biblical Christianity has insurmountable problems.
Islam denies the crucifixion of Christ while claiming to believe that the Gospels come from Allah (Surah 4:157; 5:46-48, 65-66).[51] Therefore, they must say that the Gospels have been corrupted even though the Quran affirms that Christians still had the Gospels then (Surah 10:94; 16:43; 21:7).[52] The Jesus of Islam is a different Jesus than the one depicted in the New Testament.
Judaism claims to believe in the Book of Daniel even though Daniel 9:26 says that the Messiah would die before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Therefore, the Messiah must have arrived before then. Both Islam and Judaism suffer from the problem of allowing God to forgive sinners without there being a payment for their sin. Without a sacrifice that pays the penalty for their sins, God would be unjust to forgive sinners (Prov 17:15).
Hinduism believes that this world is Māyā or an illusion. Therefore, if this world is an illusion, then that would make the practice of science impossible since we can’t know the world as it really is. The caste system is racist and unjust to those who are poor. Hinduism has historically practiced sati or the burning of widows alive and it was only because of the influence of Christianity that this practice is outlawed today. Because of its pantheism or belief that God is the universe, it is forced to believe that the universe is eternal contrary to what we know from science.
Mormonism contradicts the Bible’s teaching that there is only one God by asserting that there are billions of gods in existence and that we can become a god one day ourselves (Isa 43:10; 44:6-8).[53] The gospel of Mormonism is a man-centered works-based religion that denies salvation by grace alone.[54] Joseph Smith has been proven to be a false prophet who distorted God’s Word.[55]
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have a long history of making false predictions about the end of the world.[56] They deny just about every central tenet of the Christian faith such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the deity of Christ, and the Trinity. Since affirming that Jesus is God and the resurrection of Christ are central to Christianity, Jehovah’s Witnesses teach a false gospel (Rom 10:9).
[1]For an excellent introduction to defending the Christian faith, see Kenneth R. Samples, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004).
[2]See the video “The Kalam Cosmological Argument” by Reasonable Faith. All of the videos I make reference to in this chapter are available on the internet.
[3]See the article “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life” by Luke A. Barnes at https://arxiv.org.
[4]See the videos “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe” by Reasonable Faith and “Is There Evidence That God Designed the Universe?” by Ratio Christi at Kennesaw State University. See also the article “The Fine-Tuned Universe Argument” by Eitan Bar at https://www.oneforisrael.org.
[5]See the article “Fine-Tuning for Life in the Universe” by Hugh Ross at http://www.reasons.org.
[6]Fred Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections” Engineering and Science (Pasadena, CA: California Institute of Technology, November 1981): 12. Available at http://calteches.library.caltech.edu.
[7]See Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery (Washington, DC.: Regnery Publishing, 2004).
[8]See Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York, NY: The Free Press, 2003). For a more detailed examination of irreducible complexity as it relates to DNA, see Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2009).
[9]See the video “Debate: The Triune God of Scripture Lives! James White vs Dan Barker” by Alpha & Omega Ministries.
[10]Charles Darwin, “Letter to William Graham” in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 3 vols., ed. Francis Darwin (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1887), 1:316.
[11]See the video “The Moral Argument” by Reasonable Faith.
[12]See the audio of the debate between Gordon Stein and Greg Bahnsen on the existence of God.
[13]See the video “The Atheist Delusion” by Living Waters.
[14]See the video “The Irrefutable Proof of God” by Jeff Durbin.
[15]See Arthur Allen Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law” Duke Law Journal (December 1979): 1229-49. Available at http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu.
[16]Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, 30th Anniversary Edition (Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice, 1998), 95.
[17]See the article “Can Multiverse Theories Explain the Appearance of Fine Tuning in the Universe?” by J. Warner Wallace at coldcasechristianity.com.
[18]See Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach about Evolution Is Wrong (Washington, DC.: Regnery Publishing, 2000).
[19]See the article “Why the Miller–Urey Research Argues against Abiogenesis” by Jerry Bergman at http://creation.com.
[20]See the article “Did Humans Really Evolve from Apelike Creatures?” by David Menton at https://answersingenesis.org and the video “Ape-Men: The Grand Illusion” by Terry Mortenson.
[21]The best book on scientific evidence for creation is Walt Brown’s In the Beginning, 8th ed. (Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, 2008). But I believe Brown is wrong that remnants of Noah’s Ark may still exist today. We live in the age of Google Earth and if pieces of it still remained, it would have been found by now. The Ark was most likely dismantled after it landed to provide wood for human settlements. An online version of the book is available at https://www.creationscience.com.
[22]See the video “Check This Out: Evolution Refuted” by Answers in Genesis.
[23]See my article “Chicken and Egg Problems for Evolutionists” at https://jamesattebury.wordpress.com.
[24]See Gary R. Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996).
[25]Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2013), 12.
[26]John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1995), 145. See also the article “Is Jesus a Myth?” at https://www.gotquestions.org.
[27]Nabeel Qureshi, No God but One: Allah or Jesus? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 118.
[28]For a listing of New Testament manuscripts, see the articles “List of New Testament Papyri” and “List of New Testament Uncials” at https://www.wikipedia.org and “Table of NT Greek Manuscripts” at http://bibletranslation.ws.
[29]See the article “Manuscript Evidence for Superior New Testament Reliability” by Matt Slick at https://www.carm.org.
[30]See J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: What The Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don’t Tell You (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2006).
[31]See the article “Is the New Testament Text Reliable?” by Greg Koukl at http://www.str.org. See also the video “Is the New Testament a Reliable Record of Jesus’ Teachings? White vs Ismail” by Alpha & Omega Ministries.
[32]For a detailed examination of this question, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: the Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing: 2006).
[33]Michael W. Holmes, ed. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 569.
[34]See Justin Martyr, First Apology 66-67.
[35]For a detailed overview of the books of the Bible, see http://www.biblequery.org.
[36]See Matthew 3:3; 4:7; 11:27; 14:33; 26:64; 28:9; Mark 1:2-3; 2:5-10; 2:28; 14:62-64; Luke 1:76; 3:4-6; 4:12; 24:51-52; John 1:1; 5:23; 8:58; 20:28.
[37]See Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 275-97.
[38]See the article “Archaeology and the Historical Reliability of the New Testament” by Peter S. Williams at http://www.bethinking.org.
[39]See the video “Lecture – Dr Peter Williams – New Evidences the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts.”
[40]For a list, see http://josephus.org.
[41]See the article “Jesus in the Talmud” at https://www.wikipedia.org.
[42]You can do the math yourself at http://www.easysurf.cc/ndate1.htm. Subtract 173,880 days from April 3, 33 AD to get March 13, 444 BC. We get 173,880 days by multiplying 483 years by 360 days in the Persian calendar. See the article “April 3, 33 AD” by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Justin Taylor at https://www.firstthings.com.
[43]For more information on the Great Isaiah Scroll, see http://dss.collections.imj.org.il.
[44]See William Webster, Behold Your King: Prophetic Proofs That Jesus Is the Messiah (Battle Ground, WA: Christian Resources, 2003). For a list of messianic prophecies, see “351 Old Testament Prophecies Fulfilled in Jesus Christ” at http://www.newtestamentchristians.com.
[45]See Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of the Life and Reign of Alexander the Great, 2 vols., (London: Samuel Bagster, 1809), 1:359-61.
[46]See the articles on the resurrection of Jesus at coldcasechristianity.com. See also the video “How to Destroy Christianity with One Easy Step” by Impact Video Ministries.
[47]See Sean Joslin McDowell, “A Historical Evaluation of the Evidence for the Death of the Apostles as Martyrs for Their Faith” (PhD dissertation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2014). It is available at http://digital.library.sbts.edu.
[48]Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), 59.
[49]See the testimonies of faith at http://illbehonest.com and https://www.oneforisrael.org. See also Tom Doyle and Greg Webster, Dream and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2012).
[50]C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” available at http://augustinecollective.org.
[51]See the videos “The Quran, the Bible, and the Islamic Dilemma,” “Muhammad vs. Jesus: Judging Religions by Their Central Figures (David Wood),” and “David Wood Destroys Zakir Naik on the Crucifixion of Jesus!” on YouTube.
[52]See James R. White, What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur’an (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2013).
[53]See James R. White, Is the Mormon My Brother?: Discerning the Differences between Mormonism and Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1997).
[54]See the video “The Gospel for Mormons” by Jeff Durbin.
[55]See the video “The Lost Book of Abraham” by the Institute for Religious Research.
[56]See Duane Magnani and Arthur Barrett, The Watchtower Files: Dialogue with a Jehovah’s Witness (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1983).
James Attebury 
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