Former journalist and legal editor Lee Strobel (Chicago Tribune) has done perhaps more than any single modern writer to popularize the case for the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures. His book, The Case for Christ, is an award-winning, best-seller and his story is fairly widely known by this point in time.
Lee was an atheist whose wife became a Christian and then she began to witness to him, sometimes ineffectively. (It is noteworthy that in the real story a group of people were praying for Lee during his search!)
Lee decided to use his skills as an investigative reporter to search out the claims of Christ. He studied the historical accuracy of the Gospels, the personal claims of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. After nearly a two year struggle to come to grips with the evidence he then became a Christian. The rest of his life has been devoted to helping others answer these same questions, thus he became a popular apologist for the Christian faith.
The Case for Christ: The Film is a new DVD that features Lee Strobel and his wife telling their own story with the help of about a dozen scholars. Scholars featured here include Ben Witherington, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, Mark Strauss, Craig Evans, Craig Blomberg, Mark Licona, Michael Rydelnik (a converted Jew) and the famous N. T. Wright. The point of this film is to show how a journalist investigated the most important story in human history to establish the truth or falsity of the New Testament record about Jesus. This video is superb in every way.
Strobel’s story is told very well and his wife’s part in it is crucial, in ways that some viewers might miss if they are not inclined to pay careful attention to the narrative itself.
There is a special feature included on this DVD in which eight of the scholars tell their own story about Jesus and faith. This is worth the DVD on its own. N.T. Wright concludes that the biggest thing that has happened to him in the last ten years is his intense desire to understand how we relate faith to culture. I have followed almost the same course, but not with the same conclusions as the good Bishop Wright.
To me this underscores the need for deeper real conversation in a context of respect. If the Church is polarized into the simple categories of left and right, politically or socially, then we will fail to properly engage the culture with the Lordship of Christ adequately.
Another great feature included on The Case for Christ: The Film is a feature presentation of all the prophecies of the Old Testament regarding the sufferings and death of Jesus and how they are plainly fulfilled in the Gospels. If you’ve never lined these biblical texts up and then seen the correlation this section will also prove extremely useful.
All in all, this is a superb resource and could be used privately as well as in groups. A class could easily profit from using this material over the course of several weeks of dialog/discussion.
Keen apologists will go on arguing that unbelievers cannot become convinced of Christ by the amount of evidence alone. But there can be no real doubt that evidence can play a significant role in clearing the way for the gospel to do its good work.
An obvious benefit here is that Christians will find numerous answers to their own questions and thus be better able to live in the modern world. I highly recommend this video for these and other reasons.
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