ThoughtLetters filed under Jesus Christ

Volume 26 • No. 2 • March-April 2016 Download PDF

Volume 25 • No. 2 • March-April 2015 Download PDF

Volume 22 • No. 4 • July-August 2012 Download PDF

AREOPAGUS Proclamation Volume 18, No. 6 • Nov-Dec, 2008 by Daryl E. Witmer   Every year, often just as Christmas or Easter are approaching, the secular media invests a great deal of effort to trot out the big bad dogs of skepticism as regards the veracity of the Bible and/or the historicity of the Biblical Jesus. These […]

by Daryl E. Witmer If Jesus never claimed to be divine at all, one could probably justifiably dismiss Christianity as the phony (albeit phenomenal) result of legends about Him which grew and spread subsequent to His death. But such postulates have often been roundly refuted, Biblically and extra-Biblically. The case for the reliability of Scripture […]

by Daryl E. Witmer Volume 17, No. 3 December, 2006 Download PDF

by Daryl E. Witmer SKEPTIC: Isn’t it possible that the whole idea of Jesus being anything more than an extraordinary human and spiritual leader was an evolved product of some earlier exaggerated reports about him? Why couldn’t the belief that Jesus is God be the result of a legend that was sourced in his own […]

by Daryl E. Witmer Christians celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus Christ – born into the home of Joseph & Mary, yet God incarnate, Son of God in human form. HOLD IT THERE. HOW DO WE KNOW THAT JESUS WAS REALLY ANYTHING OTHER THAN THE HUMAN SON OF HUMAN PARENTS? Well, if He wasn’t […]

by Daryl E. Witmer Every year on December 25th hundreds of millions of Christian believers from all over the world enthusiastically celebrate the birth of Jesus. But was Jesus really ever born? Did a first-century Jesus of Nazareth ever actually, historically, exist? Incredible as it may seem, there are those who say “No.” How about […]

by Daryl E. Witmer The doctrine of the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is critical to the Christian faith. But is the evidence conclusive? Numerous alternative scenarios have been postulated over the years. Here are four-with a correspondent response: POSTULATE #1 JESUS’ BODY WAS MOVED TO AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION Roman or Jewish authorities moved the […]

by Daryl E. Witmer The following article is based, in part, on an actual exchange that I had with a skeptic during the Fall of 2001. DEW: Well, who was -or is- Jesus of Nazareth to you anyway? Are you suggesting that He was deliberately lying as regards His claims to be God (i.e. John […]

by Daryl E. Witmer Larry King, the CNN talk show host, was once asked who he would most want to interview if he could choose anyone from all of history. He said, “Jesus Christ.” The questioner said, “And what would you like to ask Him?” King replied, “I would like to ask Him if He […]

by Daryl E. Witmer, AIIA Executive Director On Saturday evening November 7, 1998, AIIA hosted a Dialogue Dinner with the Muslims at a popular restaurant in Bangor, Maine. While there was no ecumenical objective in the planning of the event, the spirit that evening was cordial, the exchange was open, and a number of areas […]

Quote Forum on the Importance of Engaging the Mind In a takeoff on the sometimes overworked and wearied Advent aphorism, JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON, this month we present another in a series of AIIA Quote Forums, focusing here on a theme that should serve to remind us that every season-including Advent-is certainly […]

Holy Week 1997 has come and gone, but what will surely continue throughout the year, and what has always persisted down through the years, is the speculation about whether the Biblical accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth are fully credible. The questions and the objections take many forms, but the bottom line is […]

About once or twice a year newspapers and magazines all across America explode with headlines that seem to place a huge question mark over the historicity of Jesus Christ – Who was He really? What did He really say? Such speculation has enjoyed particular popularity and credibility since 1985 because of the work of the […]

Down through the years a wide variety of challenges have been raised regarding the Biblical claim that Jesus of Nazareth was ever truly resurrected from the grave on the third day after His crucifixion and burial. Each of these challenges attempts to demonstrate, in one way or another, that the resurrection was, in fact, a […]

An excerpt from Letters From a Skeptic – a brand new book by Dr. Gregory A. Boyd Between March, 1989, and November, 1991, Dr. Greg Boyd – an associate professor of theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota-conducted an intense and lively correspondence with his 70+ year-old father in Lake Placid, Florida. His father, […]

My dear friend, Thanks for your letter received just this week. I, too, find the whole subject of probability a most fascinating one. As a matter of fact, I recently purchased a book entitled What the Odds Are, by Les Krantz, ©1992 HarperPerennial. It’s an A-Z collection of the odds on “everything you ever hoped […]

“It is the moment before sundown in Jerusalem. On the hill of Golgotha three bodies are suspended on crosses. Two, the thieves, are dead. The third appears so. This is the drugged body of Jesus of Nazareth, the man who planned his own crucifixion, who contrived to be given a soporific potion to put him […]

Volume 3 • No. 5 • February, 1993 Download PDF

Early last month a man visiting in my home told me that he had once been declared dead. “They had even wheeled me into the morgue”, he said. “But when my mother came in to look at me, she saw me move. So they took me back out and finally brought me around. My mother […]

It is a matter of record that Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be God. At the approximate age of thirty years, this son of a carpenter began making some absolutely shocking statements about Himself. Eventually, He was routinely going about “making Himself equal with God”. He was accepting without challenge such titles as “Messiah”, “Master”, […]