[the case for christmas] conclusion

As Lee Strobel closes the book, he points out that even with all of the evidence that indicates that it was the Messiah that was born in that manger, it is all meaningless unless you consider it in light of Easter. It’s not enough to believe that a great teacher, healer, or even a prophet was born. Easter was the reason that this child was born. And THAT is what makes this child different than all the rest…

A Savior for all mankind was born!

Strobel’s book The Case for Christmas is an amazing presentation of the evidence about Jesus being born. This evidence is the kind of work that helps the logical mind believe that the Bible might actually mean what it says about Jesus. And this is an important step in coming to faith.

But one thing that this project has shown me, is that each of the contributors has their own testimony about who Jesus is. Each has a story, and can share how Jesus has changed their life. And I do too…

I’ve lived most of my life far away from God. I’ve spent a lot of energy only trying to do what was in my own selfish interest. And eventually I started to realize that no matter what I did to fill my selfish pleasures, nothing truly satisfied me. I was always striving for more. It was like eating a meal that left you hungry again shortly after you finished eating. It wasn’t until I surrendered my life to this Savior that we are talking about that I found the fulfillment, purpose, and hope that my life lacked before. That doesn’t mean that my life has been easy, only that it has been fulfilling.

For me, THIS is what Christmas is all about! It is about my testimony and how He has changed my life. It is about the things that He has done for the others who contributed to this project. And it is about what he has done, or can do, for you!

If you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, then I ask that you join us in taking a moment to praise the God who came to save us from ourselves. I pray that you be richly blessed with His presence as you continue to walk out your faith.

But if you do not know Him as your personal Lord and Savior, then I encourage you to ask Him to reveal Himself to you. The Bible tells us to ask and it will be given.

All you have to do is ask.

It also tells us that the Truth will set us free. This is not entering into any sort of bondage, but into a relationship that frees you from the bondage of the junk that holds you down. So ask God to guide you into the Truth.

The Bible also teaches us that all it takes to accept this free gift of salvation is that we must turn from our sins, ask His forgiveness, and follow Him. Pray these things and you will be among those of us who have a hope that surpasses all understanding!

So may we all celebrate the TRUE meaning of Christmas, and give honor to the One who came to give us the greatest gift that we could ever hope or ask for! And may we never forget that the reason for Christmas was so that there could be an Easter.

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[the case for christmas] chapter four: the fingerprint evidence

by Sean Wrench

In Chapter 4 of The Case for Christmas, Lee Strobel interviews Louis Lapides. Lapides is a Pastor of a church in Southern California. But what’s makes this interview so interesting is that Lapides grew up in a Jewish family.

When Strobel asked Lapides about his families opinion of Jesus growing up, his response was, “His name was only brought up derogatorily.”

Now before I go on, I will admit something. This is the first Lee Strobel book I’ve ever read. Although his books always intrigued me I never felt the need to read a book that ‘proved’ the existence of God/Jesus. But in the spirit of the Holiday season, I decided to give this book a shot. And I’m glad I did.

Strobel does an incredible job throughout the entire book of telling the story of Christ through the eyes of someone who may be a skeptic. I would highly recommend this book or any of his books to someone who perhaps is ‘on the fence’ about their faith.

Lapides makes a statement in this chapter that I believe is one voiced by millions and millions throughout the world today. He saw God as being distant and detached. “Does God really care about my struggles?” he asked. “Does he really care about me as an individual?”

Everytime I begin to do one of these blogging projects, before I even attempt to read or start writing I spend some time in prayer. I can read my ‘assigned chapter’ and I can write about it, and God bless Dan because I’m always late getting my entry in, but what I write will not truly be impactful unless the Holy Spirit gives me a revelation about what I’m reading and that revelation comes across in what I write about.

As I read this chapter I keep getting the sense that the Holy Spirit was drawing me to John 6:44. John 6:44 says “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” Some will say this verse means that God has ‘called’ certain people to himself. I don’t believe this to be true. If anything I think that this verse goes to support what you find over and over again throughout the scriptures, and that is God’s relentless pursuit for us. Jesus said that he did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. He also said that he desired that no one would perish.

The one thing about the Bible that always amazed me was that the ’story’ of the Bible is one of God constantly and relentlessly pursuing us.

Lapides explains to Lee that after all the evil he saw in the world he went on a spiritual journey. He began to turn to eastern religions and philosophies. At one point he turned to drugs.

As Lapides continued on his spiritual journey he began to discover that throughout the Old Testament there was passage after passage that foretold the story of a coming Messiah. This stopped Lapides cold because he believed in the Old Testament. How could he have missed so many passages that clearly told of the coming Christ.

What amazes me about so many of these Old Testament passages is that God was clearly laying the ground work long before Jesus ever walked the earth, so that we could know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus was truly the son of God. Long before Jesus ever came to earth, God in all his knowledge and wisdom knew, he knew we would doubt, he knew their would be skeptics. So in his amazing love and relentless pursuit of us he made it clear that Jesus was the messiah.

Amazingly the Old Testament scriptures don’t just simply speak of a messiah but very clearly tell in precise detail what would come to pass when Jesus walked the earth. Isaiah 53 paints an incredibly clear picture of the life of Jesus and what he would face on the earth.

Lapides even went as far as to ask his stepmother to send him a Jewish Bible. He wanted to make sure Isaiah 53 read the same in that Bible as the one he was reading. Sure enough it did. There are over 4 dozen major predictions throughout the Old Testament that tell of the coming Messiah.

Now let’s backtrack for a minute. John 6:44. No man comes to me unless the father who sent me draws him. Lapides makes a statement that literally sent chills through my entire body. “The best I can put together out of that experience is that God objectively spoke to my heart. He convinced me experientially that he exists.” The Father, our God, drew Lapides to the heart of Jesus.

As I’m writing this, it is Christmas eve day. I love the holiday season, it’s a time of happiness and joy. For the most part everyone is really nice to each other, we are more caring, and compassionate than ever. I don’t believe that it’s any coincidence that during the season that the world honors the birth of Christ that we are filled with more love than ever. However, why can’t we create this atmosphere of love year round? Why does it have to just happen around Christmas time? I believe that the spirit of Christmas is the love that Jesus desires to bring to a hurting a broken world. But why does it exist more during the Christmas season than any other time of year. I believe it’s because during the Holiday season we are intentional about it. Love is not a feeling or an emotion much to contrary belief it is an action. God ’sent’ his son to earth to save us. Jesus ‘chose’ to to be beaten and nailed to a cross for our sins. God ‘draws’ us to his son Jesus. Love is an action. Jesus told us that the absolute most important thing we could ever do in life was to love God and love others.

James 5:16 says our prayers are POWERFUL and EFFECTIVE. This Christmas season, as we honor the birth of our Savior, our Jesus. Pray. Make it a resolution for the New Year. Pray. Pray like you’ve never prayed before. There are more than likely many people in your life that haven’t yet known what it’s like to be touched by the love of Jesus. Perhaps God has been wooing them to him but as both Strobel and Lapides experienced the way to our Salvation is not a path that is without obstacles. Pray for those that you know that don’t know Jesus as their Savior. Pray that our Father would draw them to Jesus. Pray that the eyes of their heart would be open to truth, the truth of Jesus.

And let us also pray for ourselves. We all need to draw closer to the heart of Jesus. But to truly draw closer to the heart of our Savior one must choose to truly ‘follow’ in his footsteps. Jesus lived a life of sacrifice and intentional love. If we all chose to love intentionally year round like we do during the Christmas season the world we live in would be a much different place.

Merry Christmas everyone.

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About the contributor:

My name is Sean Wrench. I run a ministry in NY called LifePlace. Recently we have started a national youth homeless project called the Forsaken Generation Project. God deeply burdened our hearts to do this when we discovered over 1.6 million children sleep on the streets in our country on any given night. You can read more about what we do at www.lifeplace.us or you can follow us on twitter: @forsakengen

[the case for christmas] chapter three: the profile evidence

by Kyle Bryner

What a great book! Lee Strobel always does a great job of paying close attention to the details of the evidence, all the while creating an easy to read and understandable book. The Case for Christmas is no exception. As Strobel investigates and seeks to answer the question of “who was in the manger that first Christmas morning?” he brings out hard questions in hopes to get hard proof. As the book progresses, it seems to focus more directly on narrowing down the evidence to the only possible answer to that question…Jesus of Nazareth. Just as a physical address has information that sets you apart from the rest of the 6.8 billion people, taking us from the broad continents and narrowing it down to a single name in a household, Strobel takes us from the broad question of “can we trust the accounts given to us in the Bible?” to questions directed at only one person, Christ.

While chapters one and two look to sources outside of scripture to validate the claims that Jesus is the Messiah, and answers the question “can the biographies of Jesus be trusted?” by using eyewitness evidence and scientific and archaeological evidence, chapter three uses scriptural evidence to answer the questions. Being a “sola scriptura” guy, I love this! Strobel has provided good proofs that we can trust the Gospels, now he wants to know what the Gospels are really saying. The question asked in chapter three is, “Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God?” Great question! This is like giving Jesus the ultimate “duck test”. We have all heard that humorous illustration of inductive reasoning, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” To do this with God, we would first need to know the attributes of God, what it is that separates God from everything else. For that information we have to look at the only source in which God reveals Himself that can be suitable for the study of theology…God’s Word, the Bible.

So, what are the attributes of God? Can we even really know God? If so, what is it that we can know about God? Because God is infinite, and we are finite or limited, we can never fully understand all of God. Psalm 145 says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable.”

Even though we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know true things about God that He has chosen to reveal about Himself in the Scriptures. So, in order for us to compare Jesus to God, we must compare Jesus to the true things we know about God from the Scriptures. When Lee Strobel set out to do this comparison, he met with D.A. Carson, who is a research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and award-winning author. Strobel gives us a wonderful view into the two hour conversation he had with Dr. Carson. In this conversation we have so many important questions answered that show us the evidence associated with Jesus and the profile of God.

Before the meeting with Dr. Carson, Strobel has some serious doubts about this claim that Jesus is, in fact, God. The author points out that “God is described as omnipresent, or existing everywhere in the universe; as omniscient, or knowing everything that can be known throughout eternity; as omnipotent, or all-powerful; as eternal, or being both beyond time and the source of all time; and as immutable, or unchanging in His attributes.” He also has some major reservations about believing that the Jesus recorded in the New Testament resembles these attributes. Jesus seems very limited to be God, according to God’s attributes.

Throughout the interview with Dr. Carson, Strobel asks many big questions. “What did [Jesus] say or do that convinces you that He is divine?” “Dr. Carson, how in the world could Jesus be omnipresent if he couldn’t be in two places at once? How could he be omniscient when he says, ‘not even the Son of Man knows the hour of his return’? How could he be omnipotent when the gospels plainly tell us that he was unable to do many miracles in his hometown?” Dr. Carson patiently answers all the questions above leaving no doubt in the authors mind that Jesus did indeed match “the sketch of God.”

Strobel concludes the chapter by stating that while the incarnation –how the spirit takes on flesh- still boggled his mind, “every attribute of God, says New Testament, is ultimately found in the Christmas child who grew up to live a life unlike any other.” The last paragraph provides us with a quote from that Christmas child that sums up the whole chapter, “Jesus said it all in John 14:7: ‘If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well.’ Loose translation: ‘When you look at the sketch of God from the Old Testament, you will see a likeness of me.’”

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About the contributor:

Kyle Bryner is the husband of Erin, father of Elijah and Daniel, Student Pastor of the J-Walkers Üth Group at Grace Bible Church in Mtn.City, Ga. and part of the family of God and Body of Christ! You can connect with him on Facebook or on Twitter at @KyleBryner.

[the case for christmas] chapter two: the scientific evidence

by Mike Kress

I was excited when Dan asked me to be part of his latest group blogging project.  His projects are always interesting, insightful and in many cases motivating.  When he told me about the book that we would be reviewing, I wondered how a clinical case study would impact me.  I like to think of myself as a thinker and potentially a do-er.  Like kindling, I only need a spark.  So what spark would The Case for Christmas provide me? 

Chapter Two is the author’s attempt at deconstructing the New Testament’s historical documentation and aligning it with what is deemed archaeological acceptable.  I guess that is the long way around the block in saying, does the scientific information match up with what the Bible says? 

Strobel begins the chapter by relating a story of a meeting with Dr. Jeffrey McDonald.  Yes, “The Jeffery McDonald” who was convicted of horrifically killing his entire family.  McDonald had crafted a detailed alibi about being attacked by hippies and given himself some minor flesh wounds to help corroborate his story.  When Strobel asked McDonald how he could be so calm, McDonald responded by saying “They’ll never convict me.  I’m innocent, you know.”  In reality McDonald was guilty.  His alibi tumbled like a house of cards when put to the test of forensics and a crime lab.  His story, while maintaining a veil of possibility could not withstand the scrutiny of science.  McDonald’s credibility was lost.  Strobel uses this anecdote as the leaping off point for his search for the truth of Christ’s birth.  What details support the details of the story?  Have the witnesses and documenters of these historical incidents built a reputation as being accurate and credible in other instances? Are the witnesses reliable?  What evidence should support our reason to believe in these historians?

As the FBI uses their crime lab to find evidence supporting crime theories, Strobel consults with a series of experts in determining the accuracy of biblical information.  Interestingly, what Strobel asks of these experts is not what can be confirmed by the evidence, but what cannot be confirmed.  By assessing the limitations, we can take our first step in determining what information is historical and what is subjective and anecdotal.  With each story and account of the life of Jesus, there are geographic details that can be vetted.  By determining the credibility of these details, we can begin to determine the veracity of the person stating the information.  If all the historical information checks out, the person chronicling the  details should be more believable than someone who doesn’t have their facts straight.  What credence can we put in those telling the story?  I appreciate that Strobel is looking for experts with “scientific restraint” when working to verify location details.  Where Christianity is built on faith, scientific research is based on the ability to verify an outcome.  It’s about confirming data. 

Strobel spends time with experts in confirming some of the things that any good detective would.  OK, we are familiar with a census where people go door to door to gather statistical data, but a census where everyone was forced to travel back to their hometown to be counted?  And this is what brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem?  Not likely, right?  Well, according to archaelogists, that was previously a documented occurence. Luke, one of Jesus disciples was a noted historian of his day was also noted for the painstaking accuracy of his the geographic details that he noted in written accounts of the day. Details of his accounts are confirmed by scientists. As Strobel runs down a list of several events of the Jesus day, experts are able to confirm that there was a high likelihood that they either took place or that the details surrounding the events are provided by highly credible sources. Can we say with a high degree of likelihood that a child was born in a manger in Bethlehem? The Bible states it and science confirms that there are multiple events that can either be confirmed or would be considered consistent with the type of events occurring at that time.

As I read the chapter, I kept wondering how this related to me. At the end of the day how credible will my testimony be? Do people take heed when I speak? I think of some of the instances that are occurring in the media now. Tiger Woods tells the world nothing is happened. Science can tell us he crashed a car and will let us know how fast he was going and if he was drunk. His lies and indiscretions tell the rest of the story, impacting his family and likely costing him his marriage. Can we ever believe him again? Does he have any sort of credibility left? While this chapter may not have focused on credibility, it resounded with me. How will people regard my words? While science can lend a hand in determining the likelihood of events, personal credibility completes the equation. Maybe we all could use a gentle reminder that our words and actions create a legacy that remains long after we are gone. As we witness for Christ, will others view our life and it’s legacy consistent with what Jesus would have us do? What information would a scientist or detective researching our past come up with? Strobel has definitely given me pause for thought with this interesting book.

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About the contributor:

Mike Kress is an exceedingly blessed dude. By day, I’m a Training and Development professional for a Comcast. By night, I am the father of a couple of beautiful, talented and amazing boys, Isaias 10 and Jake 2, who inspire me daily. My wife is gorgeous and loves me for the goofball that I am.

I can be reached at tursiopsguy@gmail.com

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