Defending and Commending the Faith With Dr. Joe L. Mott, inviting the atheist, agnostic and skeptic to examine for themselves Joe Mott

References:

(1) Dorothy Sayers has said that God underwent 3 great HUMILIATIONS in His effort to rescue the human race. The first was the Incarnation, when He took on the confines of a physical body. The second was the Cross when He suffered the ignominy of public execution. The third humiliation, Sayers suggested, is the church. In an awesome act of SELF-DENIAL, God entrusted His REPUTATION to ordinary people like you and me.

(2) “Vine’s Topical Commentary on Christ” by W. E. Vine with C. F. Hogg.

(3) A popular definition of atonement is the phrase “at-one-ment”; in other words, it is a WAY that humans are made one with God when we formerly were alienated from Him by our sins. Atonement, at one time, simply meant “reconciliation” and could be used of the restoration of a relation between two parties. Over time, it took on a more theological meaning.

(4) His name “Jesus” signifies “Jehovah is salvation.”

(5) The means of accomplishing atonement required the DEATH of the Son of God AND the shedding of His BLOOD.

(6) Jesus’ sacrifice was designed by God.

(7) His death was therefore the FULFILLMENT of God’s PLAN of SALVATION which was the SOLUTION for humanity’s PREDICAMENT.

(8) Christ’s sacrifice was VICARIOUS.

(9) Christ chose death, and in that choice, the consequence was a great boon for His followers.

(10) The New Atheists accuse God of being a MORAL MONSTER or a CHILD ABUSER.

(11) False ideas of the atonement are largely due to WEAK VIEWS both of sin and of the holiness of God.

This is episode 174.

This is episode 173.

References:

(1) “25 Basic Bible Studies” by Francis Schaeffer.

(2) The ABC’s of salvation is that you must ADMIT you are a sinner; BELIEVE that Christ’s death on the cross is sufficient to save you, and that God raised Jesus from the dead, and CONFESS Jesus as your Lord meaning He is enough to guide you throughout your life.

(3) “Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli.

This is episode 172.

References:

(1) In the book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek lists10 non-biblical writers all who record facts of Jesus’ life.

(2) Bart Ehrman.

(3) “The Verdict of History” by Gary Habermas.

(4) Norman Geisler, of whom I have immense respect, says that this book “The Verdict of History” “takes the skeptics claims and buries them forever under the sands of IGNORANCE and IRRATIONALITY.”

(5) “Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli.

(6) Some New Age teachers cite the alternative that Jesus is a lama to support their claim that Jesus taught religious ideas something like Buddhism RATHER THAN Christianity. The actress Shirley MacLaine claims that Jesus traveled “around India and Tibet and Persia and the Near East” and was trained as a “yogi” before returning to Galilee. The fact is there is NO BASIS regarding the claim that Jesus studied in the East.

This is episode 171.

References:

(1)”Evidence and Truth” by Robert J. Morgan.

(2) There are 2 books entitled “The Incomparable Christ”: one by J. Oswald Sanders, the general director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship in the 1950s, and one by John Stott, the pastor of All Souls Church in London, England.

(3) Rather than attempt to summarize these books, I chose to report salient comments from an article by John Stott published by the C.S. Lewis Institute.

(4) Stott refers to Liberation Theology prominent in Roman Catholicism, originally centered in Latin America.

(5)When you hear the word OPPRESSED, recognize that word is a CATCHALL PHRASE from MARXISM, and the change they suggest is a change brought about by REVOLUTION, a COMPLETE UPHEAVAL of the society.

(6) The 1937 book “The Peril of Modernizing Jesus” by H.J. Cadbury.

(7) Stott writes, “So this is our DILEMMA. How can we be LOYAL to the AUTHENTIC Jesus and SIMULTANEOUSLY present him RELEVANTLY to our contemporaries? It is good to present Jesus in the BEST POSSIBLE LIGHT, so as to commend Him to the world. BUT it is NOT GOOD, in order to do so, to ELIMINATE from the PORTRAIT everything which might OFFEND, including the OFFENSE of the cross. There is always a PRICE TO PAY for this kind of FEEBLE-MINDED ACCOMMODATION. Jesus is WRENCHED OUT of His original context. He becomes MANIPULATED and DOMESTICATED and what is then presented to the world is an ANACHRONISM, even a CARICATURE.”

(8) It is not that people have rejected Christ, but that they have rejected a PSEUDO-CHRIST.

(9) Dr. Peter Kuzmic, President of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Osijek, Yugoslavia, comments: “In going out to evangelize in Yugoslavia, I frequently tell our seminary students that our main task may be simply to ‘wash the FACE of Jesus’, for it has been DIRTIED and DISTORTED by both the compromises of institutional Christianity through the centuries and the antagonistic propaganda of ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM in recent decades.”

This is episode 170.

References:

(1) A. T. Pierson observed that Jesus taught the Scriptures as if He were its AUTHOR rather than its COMMENTATOR.

(2) In 1 John 5:11-13 the apostle writes: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may KNOW that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” This is not an “iffy” thing. It is an ASSURED thing. You can’t KNOW SOMETHING if you add in your mind the words “unless circumstances change.”

(3) Robert J. Morgan, author of Evidence and Truth, quotes what John Chrysotom said in the 4th century, “I do not think of Christ as GOD alone, or MAN alone, but BOTH TOGETHER. For I know He was hungry, and I know that with 5 loaves He fed 5,000. I know He was thirsty, and I know He turned water into wine. I know He was carried in a ship, and I know that He walked on the sea. I know that He died, and I know that He raised the dead. I know He was set before Pilate, and I know that He sits with the Father on His throne. I know He was worshipped by angels, and I know He was stoned by the Jews. And truly some of these I ascribe to the HUMAN, and others to the DIVINE nature. For by reason of this He is said to be both God and man.”

(4) Jesus staked His entire REPUTATION and MINISTRY on the proposition that He would rise again from the grave.

(5) All of the theories used to explain AWAY the evidence for the resurrection (such as the theft hypothesis, the swoon theory, hallucination theory, etc.) have failed to explain all of the known data. The resurrection of Jesus is an ESTABLISHED FACT of history, and this is the STRONGEST EVIDENCE for the divinity of Jesus.

This is episode 169.