Archive for category: General Apologetics

   I flicked on the TV in my room before heading over to the evening session last night here on ship and what came on my screen but…The DaVinci Code. I got to watch again the main “attack” section where the Council of Nicea is turned into a completely fictional fairy-tale, and I could not help but recall that twice in

   I hardly know what to say, honestly. Once again a high-profile advocate of simple heresy has demonstrated that when it comes to those who still believe as Jesus did in God’s revelation, they have little to no interest in preparing or interacting with our views. Bishop Spong, like Barry Lynn before him, and Peter Stravinskas as well, came into this

   This Friday evening I will be debating the retired Episcopalian bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong. Spong is one of the favorites of the ultra-left, so you have probably seen or heard him on PBS, seen his books being promoted heavily in the media, or heard him being interviewed for a “progressive Christian” viewpoint on this or that. I can

   For those of us who have benefitted so greatly from the ministry of Jerald and Sandra Tanner, we give thanks to the Lord for His servant Jerald, who has gone home to be with his Lord. Here is the ULM announcement. Join with us in praying for Sandra Tanner at this time.

   Steve Hays has invested much time and effort in putting out a full response to Price/Lowder 2005 publication, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (Prometheus) titled This Joyful Eastertide. He has put it out in e-book format, available here. It is a long and at times taxing process to work through the kind of obfuscation and circular reasoning inherent

   According to The Independent, a British news paper, Simon and Schuster is dumping a quarter million into a marketing promotion for a book by an American woman, 43, named Kathleen McGowan, who claims…are you sitting down?…to be “a direct descendant of the physical union between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ.” Of course, she has received a seven figure sum for

   One of our channel regulars, Phileas, posted a URL in channel this morning that caught my attention. The following statements all came from one individual. Don’t cheat and scroll down to find out who. Read them first, then follow the link.    God is first and foremost an all loving Father, and any theology which fails to recognize this, in an

Sam Shamoun, Islamic expert extraordinaire, happened to notice that once again a cheap hit piece has been posted in the guise of a “review” of one of my books on Amazon. I truly detest the review features which are so rarely used for reviews and so often used as a major-league sized “comments” section (another good example of why comments

   Back from seeing the matinee showing of The Da Vinci Code. First, the critics, as normal, don’t watch the same movies I do. I am not a critic, but as far as I could tell, on the cinematic level, it was a well done film. Ian McKellen, that God-hating homosexual actor who rips up Bibles in his hotel rooms and

   With the release of The Da Vinci Code right around the corner, a quick reminder of our resources is in order. For my 20+ part blog series, all in one file, on the book’s many Biblical errors, click here. For the mp3’s of my Auburn University lecture on Da Vinci (and my presentation on the resurrection for the faculty), click

   When I was speaking in London earlier this year I played a few sections from The God Who Wasn’t There, the film produced by Brian Flemming. I did so because the work is such an excellent example of leaps of irrationality, confident presentations of falsehoods as facts, and simply bad argumentation—and yet, it is so representative of the kind of

   Just a quick note before I hit the sack. Thank you to everyone who prayed. The Lord blessed greatly. I honestly can’t see how the debate could have gone any better…well, aside from my accidentally turning my tablet pc off for a moment during my rebuttal period anyway. But the response from the students, staff, just about everyone, has been

   I just checked and there is a nominal registration fee (barely a gallon of gas anymore in California!) for attendance. Here is the link. I hope to see at least some of my friends from Southern California at this debate against Shabir Ally, though I know that the fact that it is a Sunday evening will preclude most of those

   Shabir Ally, the Muslim apologist I will be debating at Biola on Sunday evening, May 7th, on the inspiration of the New Testament, has published a little pamphlet containing 101 alleged contradictions in the Bible. He may even give me a copy during the debate (he has done so in previous debates). In any case, he has listed the same

   When I was in the UK recently I was struck by the vast difference between the view taken of Tom Wright there, and that found in the States. In general everyone I spoke to there chuckled at the idea Wright is in any way “conservative.” And the more he speaks, the more it is clear his countrymen know him better

   One of the best ways to see how utterly without grounds the media frenzy over The Gospel of Judas really is involves reading the silly thing. Most folks with a modicum of common sense will go, “Oh, well, that sure is odd…and disjointed…and poorly written…and irrelevant” upon doing so. Here’s where you can read the whole thing.

   It is all over the news today, as predicted (and, obviously, planned, given the date). “The Gospel of Judas Contradicts Christian Belief!” “Judas was Doing Jesus’ Will!” “Christianity Shaken!” Blah, blah, blah. When you get your historical and theological information from Katie Couric on the Today Show, well, you’ll buy anything.    When I was responding to Bart Ehrman’s media blitz

This month’s Tabletalk magazine from Ligonier Ministries focuses on preparing believers to handle the release of The Da Vinci Code film this month. In order as they appear, the first feature article is by R.C. Sproul, “The Da Vinci Conspiracy.” Then my article appears, titled, “The Fool’s Folly Uncovered.” Then R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s article “Historical Propaganda,” followed by Peter

You may be one of those who received an e-mail from the Biblical Archaeology Society today. In case you had ever thought of supporting this group, I hope the following will give you an idea what they are really all about. BTW, this cruise costs more than three times what ours did. I wonder where that extra money is going?

Apostasy abounds in Western culture today. Much of the confusion as to what the Christian faith teaches is due to apostates who refuse to leave the church but instead corrupt it from within. But there are many apostates who have completely abandoned the faith; some simply disappear and go back to their worldly ways. Look at the huge baptism numbers

I was looking over Evan May’s blog this morning when I ran across a link to some comments posted by John Loftus on the “Debunking Christianity” blog. I noted with some humor the presence of Dan Barker as one of the contributors to that blog. I will never forget the radio programs I did with Barker, both by phone and

I noted that my brief commentary on the Comma Johanneum came up on a web board recently. One of the participants commented, So I guess that John Calvin, Theodore Beza, the Westminster Assembly, Francis Turretin, Matthew Poole, the 1689 Baptist Assembly, Matthew Henry, John Gill, John Brown of Haddington, Robert L. Dabney, and Edward F. Hills are all to be

While visiting here in London I got a chance to watch the second of the two Richard Dawkins anti-religion pieces. Richard Dawkins is the classic fundamentalist Darwinist: he can’t see how he is a caricature of the very things he pillories. You can even hear the awe and worship in his voice when he speaks of Darwin and genetics. Just

Jeff Downs is the Internet’s Apologetics Info Guy. If he doesn’t know it, it can’t be known. He has put together the Countercult Apologetics Journal. I would dearly like to have contributed to it, but this little thing about traveling around and doing debates throughout the year really cuts into your article writing time. I have so many articles running

With a little help from MarieP, I’ve put all my Da Vinci blog articles into a single file, accessible here (note it is linked in the ad column as well). Please feel free to print out, format, distribute, memorize, yammer about, etc., freely. I will hopefully find a way to put up my PowerPoint presentation on the same topic in

I intended to have a blog article up on the bankruptcy of Islamic apologetics with reference to John 20:28. However, as I have been chasing down references and URLs I have found some simply fascinating stuff, and with a major article for the CRI Journal due Monday, I may have to provide only the start of the series this weekend

   Just saw Jason Engwer link this: a debate between William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman on the resurrection. Now this fascinates me. Aside from the textual questions I would expect Ehrman to raise

This past Lord’s Day I once again had the opportunity of speaking to a congregation about The Da Vinci Code. At the end I made a point I want to make here at the end of this series of blog articles. We have two ways in which we can view the advent of Brown’s novel, its deeply anti-Christian rhetoric and

In our last segment we read Brown’s assertions about secret documents that somehow he knows a lot about (but, since they are secret, doesn’t have to prove). His last claim was an inaccurate comment on the Q source. We continue,    “Writings by Christ Himself?”    “Of course,” Teabing said. “Why wouldn’t Jesus have kept a chronicle of His ministry? Most people

We have been examining the biblically relevant claims of Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. We are currently examining his claims regarding the alleged documents contained in four trunks, hidden together with the sarcophagus of Mary Magdalene, and what they allegedly contain. We are dealing with pure fiction here, of course—despite Brown’s claim that the references to historical documents

We are nearing the end of our examination of the biblically relevant claims of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, soon to be a major motion picture (here’s the trailer), The Da Vinci Code. We have thus far seen that Brown’s “fiction based upon fact” presentation is purely fiction, even when it pretends to present facts. The number of simple, gross errors