Gospel.com Blog

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries has a new website! It’s definitely worth visiting, especially if you are not familiar with Ravi’s apologetics ministry. Ravi has put up a short welcome video that introduces the site and describes his ministry, followed by a list of links to popular content like the A Slice of Infinity daily devotional and the Just Thinking audio broadcast.

While you’re there, be sure to take a look at a sample chapter and discussion guide from Ravi’s latest book, The End of Reason, a response to prominent atheist Sam Harris’ recent critiques of Christianity.

Are Christian apologetics necessary… or even useful? Apologetics refers to the defense of the Christian faith, but it sometimes seems less than relevant to everyday Christianity. You can’t “argue someone into the Kingdom,” so is there any point to apologetic debates and sermons? Even the very term apologetics seems to suggest that Christians have done something wrong and need to apologize for it, which hardly seems like a useful way to defend our faith. So what is the point of apologetics?

That’s the question that Ravi Zacharias tackles in An Apologetic for Apologetics, an essay excerpted from his book Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend. In it, he argues that apologetics does have an important role to play in our Christian lives—but that we might need to change our idea of what apologetics really is before we can start defending our faith effectively. Among other things, Ravi suggests that well-intentioned efforts by the Western church have inadvertently devalued apologetics, and that Christians today need to reclaim the type of apologetics that Jesus and the apostle Paul practiced.

It’s a timely message (and quite appropriate, considering our recent post about Thomas Aquinas, one of the most famous theologians and defenders of the faith). And after you’ve read Ravi’s essay on apologetics, take a look at The Trinity as a Paradigm for Spiritual Transformation, another new article recently added to the website.

Do you find the Bible confusing to read? Why is the world’s most-read book so difficult to read and understand? Soulation has just posted some new audio resources to help you out. Listen to Jonalyn Fincher talk about how to read the Bible (part 1, 2, and 3). She starts by highlighting some of the common mistakes that people (Christians and non-Christians alike) make when reading the Bible, and goes on to give some solid advice for reading the Bible wisely.

And while we’re talking about the Soulation ministry, take a look at a recent Wall Street Journal article—about the “does God exist?” debate and the state of apologetics today—in which Jonalyn is mentioned:

Defenders of the faith are drawing crowds of thousands in person as well. Next month, the Southern Evangelical Seminary will host a National Conference on Christian Apologetics, which will include a special segment for teens. Younger people are some of the most avid consumers of apologetics texts, according to Christian author Jonalyn Fincher, who speaks to college and high-school groups regularly. She says that in the 20th century, Christians often reacted to science’s attacks on religion by “running away from culture.” But in recent years more Christians have begun to take the attitude, “If our God is the God of truth, what are we afraid of?”

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, another apologetics ministry in the Gospel.com community, gets a mention as well.

Yesterday we highlighted a few articles from the ministry of Scibel. Today, I thought it would be interesting to read responses to some of those same issues from another ministry in our community, Answers in Genesis.

AiG is primarily an apologetic ministry that seeks to enable “Christians to defend their faith and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively.” To that end their web site is brimming with resources for anyone who has questions about how their faith might interact with science.

Here’s a little bit more on their ministry from their about us page:

We focus particularly on providing answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis, as it is the most-attacked book of the Bible. We also desire to train others to develop a biblical worldview, and seek to expose the bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas, and its bedfellow, a “millions of years old” earth (and even older universe).

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