Apologetics – HillFaith

The Gospel Writers Aren’t The Only Ancient Sources For Jesus

It is a claim heard in recent decades with some regularity among critics seeking to discredit the claims of Jesus Christ in the New Testament to be God. It typically goes something like this:

“Jesus Christ did not even exist as a real person, but was instead a fictional creation of a small sect of dissident Jews whose vision of their expected Messiah was taken over by Gentiles and turned into religious/political movement.”

In fact, modern scholarship has established that the Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — were written within the living memory of witnesses to the life and teachings of Jesus, and are verified by far more ancient transcripts than such long-accepted authors as Homer, Aristotle and Julius Caesar. Continue reading “The Gospel Writers Aren’t The Only Ancient Sources For Jesus”

Tonight Is The Night! HillFaith’s 1st Webinar Debuts With ‘God’s Crime Scene’

Beginning tonight at 7 pm EST a dozen men and women from points across America gather together via Zoom for the first session of an eight-week video-based study called “God’s Crime Scene.”

The course is taught by J. Warner Wallace, the former Los Angeles Police Detective who became nationally famous a few years ago with his many appearances on NBC’s “Dateline” news program.

Wallace is the founder of Cold-Case Christianity and one of America’s most effective and challenging apologists for literal resurrection of Jesus Christ and the accuracy and reliability of the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Continue reading “Tonight Is The Night! HillFaith’s 1st Webinar Debuts With ‘God’s Crime Scene’”

HillFaith’s First Zoom Class Starts Tuesday, Jan. 19, 7:00 PM

Beginning at 7 pm Tuesday, January 19, a dozen men and women from points across America will convene together via Zoom for the first session of an eight-week study called “God’s Crime Scene.”

The course is taught by J. Warner Wallace, the former Los Angeles Police Detective who became nationally famous a few years ago with his many appearances on NBC’s “Dateline” news program.

Wallace was a gifted detective with extraordinary investigative skills that enabled him to solve murder cases that had eluded being solved for decades.

Go here for a special message from Wallace about the course.

Along the way, he also applied those skills to the evidence for and against Christianity, with the result that he came to be a follower of Jesus Christ. Now he teaches others how to learn and apply the same skills.

Each of the eight sessions will be an hour long, with a 10-15 minute video presentation by Wallace, followed by questions and discussion led by HillFaith founder and editor Mark Tapscott.

This Zoom class is full, but it will be repeated in the near future for congressional employees, and other classes will also be offered, in 2021, including Dr. Frank Turek’s “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist.”

If you would like to receive scheduling and content information on future HillFaith class offerings, send your name and email address to: mt.hillfaith@gmail.com

Astronomer And Astrophysicist Talk About Why The Bible, Science And Faith Go Together

Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe is the astronomer referenced in the headline of the post, while Jeff Zweerink is the astrophysicist. Both of these men are followers of Jesus Christ.

Ross and Zweerink discuss in the following video why they find the biblical account of the creation of the universe consistent with the best science in their respective fields.

“What was really unusual, because I looked at the other holy books first, and reading Genesis 1 the scientific method leapt off the page and that really impressed me,” Ross explains at one point. The video is 7:19 in length and will introduce you to some fresh perspectives on the Bible, creation, science and faith.

Trying To Work Your Way Up To Heaven? Here’s The Greatest News You Will Ever Hear

It’s the natural urge that all of us have, trying to be good enough to earn our way into Heaven to be with God forever. Tragically, it invariably leads either to moral hypocrisy or utter frustration, despair or hopelessness.

But that’s not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The simple truth is this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”(Ephesians 2:8).

The gift of God’s grace comes only through belief in the resurrected Christ: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9).

Want to know more? Check out the following video from American Gospel TV. It’s the best news you will ever receive. Yes, it’s lengthy, but well-worth the time:

Want to talk face-to-face? Got more questions? Skeptical but curious? Let’s talk. No judgement. No sermons. Just honest answers to important questions. Email me at mt.hillfaith@gmail.com. Mark Tapscott

THINK ABOUT THIS: What If The Appearance Of Fine-Tuning In The Universe Is Simply A Matter Of Physical Necessity??

There are dozens of measures of the Earth and throughout the universe that are so precisely calibrated that even the tiniest deviation would render life as we know it impossible.

But what if what appears to us as precisely calibrated is in actual fact no more than the way the Earth and indeed the universe came into existence from the beginning?

Here’s how J. Warner Wallace of Cold-Case Christianity puts it: “At both the foundational level, at the regional level and at the local level of our planet, things appear to have been tampered with, set up perfectly, not so that a death would occur, but so that life would occur.”

But what if it “just happened that way?” Is that a reasonable conclusion based on the available evidence. Wallace answers that question in the following video:

Think Again If You Think There’s No Evidence For Christianity

Even if you’ve been a follower of Jesus Christ who has attended church regularly since childhood, the odds are very good you have little or no idea of just how massive the evidence from multiple fields is for Christianity. There has been a veritable explosion in Christian apologetics research in recent decades.

Same applies if you are an agnostic or an atheist because you almost certainly approach whatever arguments you’ve ever encountered on behalf of, for example, the Resurrection or the reliability of the Bible, with certain presuppositions that makes it all but impossible for you to see the whole picture.

Now along comes Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace, a man who for much of his adult life was an atheist, to demonstrate just how complex and detailed is the case for the most influential faith in all human history. Pay especially close attention when the chalkboard comes on the screen:

THINK ABOUT THIS: Why Is It Good To Be Good, Anyway?

Cross-examined.org’s Frank Turek speaks on college campuses around the country every year, so he is regularly exposed to the latest arguments from critics of Christianity, as reflected in students who ask questions during his appearances.

In the following video from a recent Turek appearance, a very sharp and inquisitive student seeks to refute the Moral Argument for the existence of God. In the process, Turek demonstrates to his questioner that unconscious presuppositions can be logical landmines:

GOOD QUESTION: Is Christmas Based On A Crazy Claim?

And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14)

On the scale of crazy, this claim is tops. There’s no doubt that the Gospels trade in the extraordinary throughout Jesus’s earthly ministry. Walking on water, multiplying fishes and loaves, and even raising folks from the dead are all incredible, amazing and miraculous.

*Philosophy Professor Travis Dickinson.*

We’d all be mystified and compelled to worship if we witnessed any of these events. However, the original Christmas events, when we stop to reflect on them, are on a whole different level.

Consider this: the transcendent, all-powerful and self-existent one, the creator of all reality, the one who literally holds all things into being was born human in a common manger!!

The idea of the incarnation is so big and seems almost paradoxical that it makes us pause and consider whether or not it is even a coherent thought. Is it even logically possible that God becomes man? Though the notion is difficult and merits some serious reflection, the short answer is yes, or so it seems to me…

Go here for the rest of Philosophy Professor Travis Dickinson’s thought-provoking analysis of the incredible claim underlying the birth of a baby boy to a peasant girl in a backwater of the Roman Empire two millennia ago.

THINK ABOUT THIS: Christmas Friday’s Poached Egg

Then Jesus said:

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.” — John 15:16-17 (ESV)

And C.S. Lewis said:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

“You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

THINK ABOUT THIS: Christianity Is The World’s Only Evidence-Based Faith

Is becoming a follower of Jesus Christ a blind step of faith or can it be an entirely reasonable decision that follows directly from logic and evidence? The answer depends mainly on whether He was literally resurrected from the dead.

As Paul the Apostle said in the New Testament at I Corinthians 15:19-20: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace, the retired Los Angeles Police Detective who became world-famous for solving unsolvable murder cases from years ago, addresses “evidential Christianity” and the Resurrection in this excerpt from a recent interview on “100 Huntley Street:”

THINK ABOUT THIS: Friday’s Poached Egg

Then Jesus said:

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6

And C.S. Lewis said:

“You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.

WHAT DO YOU THINK: Are There Contradictions In The Gospels?

Reading the accounts in the four Gospels of the Easter Sunday discovery that the tomb of Jesus was empty prompts questions about the reliability of the New Testament, thanks to what appear to be variations or even outright contradictions in the details.

Law enforcement investigator Jimmy Wallace (Screenshot from YouTube).

Matthew says, for example, that “after the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.” But Mark reports that “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”

Some read these accounts, note the apparent differences and then conclude that Matthew and Mark aren’t credible because of their different details in describing the same event.

But what would somebody say about that approach who is experienced at sorting out differing details reported by witnesses to serious crimes? Jimmy Wallace, like his father, Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace before him, makes his living in law enforcement doing just that. Check out the following video for his fascinating assessment:

MYTH BUSTERS: Did An Imposter Fake The Resurrection?

It’s one of a half-dozen or so theories critics of the resurrection of Jesus Christ have propounded over the years in their effort to explain away the central claim of Christianity, that Jesus was crucified dead, buried and on the third day rose again and appeared to hundreds of people before returning to Heaven.

How important is the Resurrection to the credibility of Christianity? Without the Resurrection of Jesus, Christianity is based on a lie, a myth or deception.

As Paul told the Corinthians, “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 Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Cold-Case Christianity’s J. Warner Wallace, the former Los Angeles Police Detective who became famous for solving unsolvable murder cases, addresses the claim that the person seen after the alleged Resurrection was an imposter:

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY: Is The Christmas Season Just A Pagan Holiday?

You may have heard that Christmas is little more than the early Christians’ co-opting a bunch of pagan holiday traditions and practices in order to not be left out of all the fun. It’s often presented as a snarky way of more generally discrediting Christianity.

Shane Morris of the Colson Center takes the snark apart with three common sense and well-researched reasons why it makes little sense to dismiss Christmas on that basis: