See excerpts from Richard M. Riss, A Survey of 20th-Century Revival Movements in North America (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), as follows:
Christian evidences refer to the various arguments, facts, and historical data that support the truth claims of Christianity. These evidences are used by Christians to demonstrate the validity of their faith and to defend it against skeptics and critics.
One of the most important pieces of evidence ...
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As Christians, we are enjoined in I Peter 3:15 to sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts, always being ready to make a defense to every one who asks us to give an account for the hope that is in us, yet with gentleness and reverence.
The word "apologetics" is taken from the Greek word , translated "d...
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Everybody knows that all historical events are interrelated. They have observable consequences in the real world. Whenever it is asserted that something has happened in the past, we can always test the assertion by determining whether or not subsequent events are best explained by it. For example, i...
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The trustworthiness of the Bible's historical statements has been corroborated again and again both through archaeological discoveries and through close correlation of the Bible's content with other independent ancient sources. A comprehensive study of this topic would be far beyond the scope of the...
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The subject of Biblical archaeology is a vast one, so it will be necessary to confine comments here to only a few of the multitude of cases in which archaeological discoveries have vindicated Biblical claims.
At many times in the past, scholars have assumed the Bible to be inaccurate until new archa...
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Heretics, Jews, pagans, and Christians all inadvertently confirm the trustworthiness of the Bible by their incidental references to many of the same things to which the Bible refers.
One of the most exhaustive studies of this topic was done by Thomas S. Millington, in his book, The Testimony of the ...
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In a previous chapter, "Why The Bible Cannot Be Legend," it was shown that because everything that happens has both consequences and a definite context, it is possible to determine whether or not a given historical account is trustworthy. This is especially clear in the historical accounts of the li...
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One of the evidences for the historicity of the long day recorded in Joshua 10:13 and reiterated in Habakkuk 3:11 lies in the large body of traditions from many parts of the world according to which there was a long day (or night, or evening, depending upon the location) at about the same time that ...
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Many people feel that the account given in the Bible of Jonah is legendary, since even if there were a fish big enough to swallow a man, certainly no man would be able to survive three days in its digestive tract and then escape to the outside world.
However, again and again, Jesus referred to this ...
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The fulfillment of the prophecies of the Bible is a vast subject. In fact, the Messianic prophecies alone have provided enough material for the publication of many books. Other books have been written solely about the Old Testament prophecies concerning certain cities or about certain world empires,...
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The story of the Pitcairn Bible is a testimony both to the providence of God and to the value of the Bible in saving society from chaos. Ginny Hastings has written of it, "with no law to guide them, the mutineers of the Bounty turned an island paradise into a living hell of sexual abuse, drunkenness...
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No book has ever been the subject of more continued attacks upon it than the Bible. Despite the assaults mounted upon it for millennia, it has emerged unscathed. F. Bettex of Stuttgart, Germany has written:
Unchanged and unchangeable, this Bible stands for centuries, unconcerned about the praise an...
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In the early twentieth century, most scholars dated the New Testament documents as follows:
Matthew, A.D. 851Mark, A.D. 60-652Luke, A.D. 80-853John, A.D. 90-954Pauline Epistles, A.D. 48-645For the four Gospels, these were the latest possible dates of authorship; there were excellent reasons for earl...
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There are many important old manuscripts of the Old Testament. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, one of the most ancient of these was the Cairo Codex, containing the former and latter prophets, copied in A.D. 895 by Moses Ben Asher, a leader of the Masoretes, in Tiberias, Palestine.
One o...
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The Hebrew Scriptures were recognized as authoritative at their inception, and were immediately accepted as such by the Jewish people. The acceptance of the Pentateuch, for example, is recorded in Deuteronomy 32:46-47, and in Joshua 1:7,8.
As a matter of course, the Church of the first century regar...
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The determination of the Canon of the New Testament was not the result of any pronouncement, either by an official of the Church or by an ecclesiastical body. Rather, the Canon was determined by the use of these books throughout all of the Churches during the first and second centuries. The establis...
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The accuracy of the present-day Hebrew version of the Old Testament is a result of the fastidious care with which the Sopherim and the Masoretes transmitted it. The Sopherim copied manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures from about 300 B.C. until A.D. 500. According to the Talmud, they came to be calle...
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In II Timothy 3:16, it is stated that "all Scripture is inspired by God." The Greek word , translated here "inspired by God," literally means "God-breathed." That is, the Scriptures are a product of the creative activity of the divine breath. As Alan Stibbs has observed, this "indicates that Scriptu...
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