"who needs apologetics? you cant argue anyone into the kingdom"

I am amazed to hear this objection from Christians all the time.  I have been told apologetics has no value because you cant argue anyone into the kingdom of God.  First I am amazed that people don't seem to thing God can or does use evidence and argument to reach people.  God uses many things to reach people.  Also I know quite a few people who throw themselves into theology without any reasons to believe in God except faith and a feeling.  I can understand that, I think that is the way 90% of people become Christians.  I myself believe the truth of the gospel because of the witness of the Holy Spirit.  That is how I know my faith to be true.  But how do I show it? How am I encouraged when feeling low? Evidence and argument.  No matter what my feelings are, facts are facts.  In Vancouver today it is harder and harder to share the gospel with people without being told that Christianity is a fairy tale, or that believing in God is silliness.  The very reason for this blog is that I run into objections very often!

    I was motivated to write this today because I was sitting in a coffee shop with a friend of mine who has no interest in apologetics but loves God and loves scripture.  We were having a great chat, then someone overheard our talk and joined in.  He said "you two are just Christians because your parents are Christians." Well neither of our parents are Christians.  He then said you are just Christian because you need faith in an afterlife because you are afraid of death"  (Ill address this objection in a future blog) we both said that was not the case.  He then said "there are no actual reasons for believing in God, all you have is faith in your holy book"

My friend must have thought I paid this fellow to bring up these objections :)  He talked a bit about faith and how God has shown up in his life.  I think this is very powerful evidence!  Most Christians don't understand that their testimony is evidence and apologetics.  But he then had a few more objections so I talked with him about the origin of the universe, the fine tuning of the universe, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the information and intelligence in DNA,and the existence of absolute morals.  It was a lot to talk about but he was very interested and a confrontational conversation ended with us exchanging numbers so we could meet again for coffee after he had examined these issues.


I believe all of us Christians in the western world are so blessed that we have the resources to research evidence for God.  We have the time, the money, and the availability of resources.  I would like to encourage all Christians to always have an answer for the hope they have and to be able to give this answer with gentleness and respect.(1Peter 3:15)  If you are looking for a place to start I would suggest starting with how to prove the Bible is reliable and unique.  I promise in as little as two hours you can be incredibly equipped and it will motivate you to take your education further.

Personally I have to say again, one benefit of apologetics is that it clears the roadblocks that people put up before hearing the gospel.  But another benefit is when Christians are in dark or dry places.  No matter what is happening in my life, Jesus still rose from the dead.  No matter how I am feeling, the Bible is proven to be reliable and unique.  Even if I am feeling lost and alone and don't understand God's plan, God has moved in history and we can know it!

"What does it matter that the disciples died for their faith? Lots of different people die for their faiths"

I was proposed this at summer camp this past summer.  Especially in the last 10 years it has become well known that people are willing to die for what they believe in.  On average 171,000 Christians are martyred every year, but we also see people from the Muslim world willing to die for their faith.  So how can we Christians claim the validity of Christianity based on the martyrdom of Christians?

We have to look to the disciples themselves who all except John were executed for their faith.  The disciples did not willingly go to their deaths because of what they had come to believe in.  They went to their executions without recanting because of their confidence in what they saw with their own eyes and touched with their own hands.  This is the difference, people today die for what they believe in, the disciples died for what they knew to be true through evidence.

It is possible that a group of people would be willing to die for a lie, a lie that they thought was true.  We can see this through history, cult groups for example.  But how improbable would it be for a group of people to die for a lie that they KNEW was a lie?  They were all given the opportunity to recant, none of them received power or riches from this.  Also they were proclaiming what they saw in the very city that Jesus was killed and resurrected.   As they got ready to drive 6 inch long spikes through Peter's wrists and feet to hang him on an upside down cross I would think that would be the time to say "hey guys, actually its all a lie" or when they picked up stones to stone James, he could of said "OK everyone you win, we made it all up"  but they didn't, they had confidence in the next life because they saw Jesus in his resurrection body therefore they knew they also would be raised from the dead in glory.

Also it amazes me to hear people propose that the disciples somehow cooked up the story.  First, I would suggest to actually read the New Testament.  If men from the 1st century were writing a story, this would not be it at all! Second what sense would it make to cook up a story that would result in them all being thrown into prison, tortured and eventually killed?  No profits, no power, no sex, nothing along the lines of what people make up stories for.  We have nothing in the history or nature of man to compare this to.

I suggest that the best explanation of these events is that they actually did see what they said they did and what they were martyred for