New Testament – Andy Wrasman

Why Do We Need To Teach High School Students Apologetics?

I don’t think many churches are teaching apologetics. I know some that are, but I think they are the exception, not the norm. I was never taught apologetics in high school. The best answer I was given to why I should believe the Bible to be the word of God was to read 1 Timothy 3:16 – not the best answer! In fact I wonder if that answer damaged the faith of the high school peer that asked it.

Here is a sampling of feedback I received from high school students after their first unit test on Christian Apologetics:

This section significantly helped me very much so. Not by strengthening my faith, I didn’t actually have any doubts or skepticisms about the Gospel that needed answering. I am already very strong in my faith. The way it helped me so much, is by making it easier for me to answer other people’s questions. Being a faithful Christian, many of my non-religious or skeptical friends, come to me looking for guidance or answers regarding Scripture. I would give them pretty good answers that would generally leave them feeling satisfied. Now I feel like I can answer all of their questions 110%, eliminating any doubt or fear in their minds.

This apologetics section definitely helped me to learn to better defend my faith. I have a lot of non-Christian friends who I regularly converse with about my religion, so this class gave me new tools & talking points that I can discuss with them, as well as raised new questions that I have further researched on my own. The most significant thing I learned was about the historical authenticity of Jesus’ life & the fact that there were pagan historians who affirmed Jesus’ life.

Yes, after studying this past month I have learned that I knew very little about how to defend my faith to those who don’t understand.

Studying the reliability of the Gospels and answering questions about who Jesus is helped me throughout my beliefs and doubts. As I was researching and reading the book, my doubts on the Christianity faded away, since it seems so true! There are so many evidences that Jesus was a real, existed figure and that he has been resurrected. These studies answered my question of if Jesus even existed because I sometimes thought that Jesus could be just a fictional character. The most significant thing I have learned from this section of the class is that only the New Testament had time gap less than 100 between the original and the copies.

Studying the Gospels and the questions about who Jesus is really helped, as it helps me to have more apologetic evidence to further back my faith, both in my own mind and to defend it to other people. The most significant thing I learned were the reasons for believing the resurrection. Since I don’t often see miracles, hearing of someone being legitimately dead, and the rising again, is worthy of attention. But it is also hard to believe. Reading the evidences for it helped strengthen the idea in my mind.

Studying the reliability of the Gospels and answering questions about who he is definitely helped me. I have gotten into situations before where I wish I had the knowledge that I need to answer various questions from friends. I feel more equipped to get into discussions from now on.

These questions have made me much more knowledgeable on the Gospels and Jesus. Before I just believed in these things because I knew that I should. Now I know that these things actually happened and are actually true. I feel a lot more confident in my faith now and feel like I can talk to people about Christ more now because I can support what I believe in.

If you still have any doubts about why you should apologetics in your church, send me a message or leave a comment. If you need some help or suggestions in getting started, send me a message or leave a comment. Thank you for your time and for reading.

July 26, 2013May 31, 2015

Andy Wrasman2 Comments

All the NT manuscripts were written in the first century!

The Gospel of Thomas is Scripture, or, it is not!

English: Gospel of Thomas or maybe gnostic Gos... — English: Gospel of Thomas or maybe gnostic Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Thomas and other “Gospels” came much later than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Much, later, after the first century. One of the standards for a book to be canonical is that it was written by a prophet, or apostle, or came from with the apostolic circle. For a New Testament book to have been written from someone within the apostolic circle, clearly it would have had to have been written within the first century. Mark wasn’t an apostle but he knew the apostles and relayed Peter’s message. Luke wasn’t an apostle, but he knew the apostles and traveled with Paul. James, well, he was the brother of Jesus, but he was in the inner circle of the apostles, made evident as he was present at the first “Church Council” in Acts 15, and seems to have had the final word at that meeting quoting Scripture to provide his verdict!

Check out this blog post. It’s the first of ten by Canon Fodder:

http://michaeljkruger.com/ten-basic-facts-about-the-nt-canon-that-every-christian-should-memorize-1-the-new-testament-books-are-the-earliest-christian-writings-we-possess/

The first fact shared that Canon Fodder shares in this series of ten facts is that every Christian should know that the New Testament is the earliest Christian writings we possess. Hence, the reason I ranted about the Gospel of Thomas and the early writing of the NT manuscripts. Read the blog and you’ll get more details.

The Bible is Just a Story! Like Harry Potter is Just a Story! (andywrasman.com)

March 5, 2013

Andy Wrasman4 Comments

The Bible is Just a Story! Like Harry Potter is Just a Story!

Yesterday, I set-up an evangelism table at Saddleback Community College. I had a Contradict poster taped to the table with print-outs of the Contradict page of explanation with me to hand out to people who seemed interested in the sign on the table.

A long conversation was sparked with a student who recognized that the religions contradicted each other and that they can’t all be true. When I began to share about why I believe Jesus is God and the Savior of mankind, he objected, saying that the Bible is just a story. He argued that the Bible was written by a person a long time ago, and it’s just a story, similar to how J.K. Rowling writes stories. People eventually believed the Bible to be a true story, and he had no problem if people wanted to believe it was true, becuase the stories that form religions help keep society in order, by giving people a purpose and direction life, something to live for.

I noticed in his explanation that he referenced again, and again, that it was just “a person” who wrote the Bible. I corrected him on that point, that the New Testament was not written by “a person” but at least 8, likely 9, different authors.

I then told him that those 8-9 people suffered and were persecuted for their writings. Some argue that we only know by tradition that the apostles died, not good hard historical evidence, and this is likely true, that it’s only in tradition that they died as martyrs. But we do know for certain that they were persecuted, jailed, robbed, and many were executed for the Christian faith from the NT writings themselves, as well as from the writings of early Church fathers, and from historians of the 1st-3rd centuries outside of the Christian circle.

But he made no argument against my claim that the Bible had multiple authors, or against my claim that they were persecuted for their message. He still wanted to argue that it was a story, so I drew a parallel to his Harry Potter comparison.

Author J.K. Rowling reads from Harry Potter an... — Author J.K. Rowling reads from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at the Easter Egg Roll at White House. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I said, we know that J.K. Rowling wrote the Potter books. We also have her own words explaining how she created the characters and conducted research into the practices of magic and the occult to write her books. We records of interviews with her, and we have critics who have read and critiqued her work, both in praise and against it. I told him that we have similar works with the BIble. The Talmud mentions Jesus and claims that he performed his work through the Devil. Other authors outside of the Christian refer to Jesus as a historical person who was crucified by Pontius Pilate.

What we find is that the apostles did not recant their beliefs when confronted to say that their story was fiction. If J.K. Rowling claimed her Potter universe was real, and there was a gun put to her head, and she was told that she had to admit that her work was fiction or a bullet would be put into her head, would she maintain that Potter and his friends and his school actually exists? He said no, of course not, at which point I told him that the disciples didn’t reject their “story.”
He responded that they could have been crazy. I quickly refuted that argument, at which point he jumped to explain that Jesus probably had a twin brother! Really? I had heard that this was a natural argument to explain the resurrection, but I had never met someone who actually argued that it’s most likely that Jesus had a twin brother, than a bodily resurrection occurring.

I’ll share more about the Twin discussion in a post to come very soon.

March 1, 2013

Andy Wrasman3 Comments

Are the copies of the New Testament Documents Full of Errors?

Here’s a video I threw together today addressing a question I received about the reliability of the copying process of the New Testament documents:

I think you might also like to watch the following videos on this topic:

Josh McDowell – How Many Manuscripts Are There?

Great Animation on the Reliability of Scripture (Must Watch)

Key Points of Chapter 20 of Without a Doubt Part 1 (andywrasman.com)

February 14, 2013

Andy Wrasman2 Comments

Key Points of Chapter 20 of Without a Doubt Part 1

I apologize for any spacing, numbering, and alignment errors that occurred from copying from Word into WordPress for this blog post, but here is the first part of an outline of Kenneth Samples’ book, Without a Doubt:

Key Points from Chapter 7 Part 1: Historical Reliability of The Gospels

The Christian faith depends on the historical nature and accuracy of the unique claims, character, and credentials of Jesus Christ! – Page 91

Read 1 Corinthians 15:12-18. Christianity hinges on the resurrection of Christ.

Support for the Historical Reliability of the Gospels

1. The New Testament documents are the best attested documents of antiquity in terms of total number of manuscripts.

Check out this website: http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/bib-docu.html
5,000 individual Greek Manuscripts
8,000 copies of the Latin vulgate
Without these there are still thousands of manuscripts from commentaries and sermons that can be used to piece together the entire New Testament and these are from the early church fathers in the second to fifth centuries. – Page 92
Textual criticism exists because of the Bible.

2. The interval of time between the date of the original authorship and the date of the earliest New Testament manuscript copies is extremely short.
3. The historic statements made about Jesus by ancient non-Christian authors for the most part matches well with the Gospel record.

He was a provocative teacher, a wise and virtuous man from the region of Judea.
He reportedly performed miracles and made prophetic claims.
The Jewish leaders condemned him for acts of sorcery and apostasy.
He was crucified by Pontius Pilate at the time of the Jewish Passover, and during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.
Jesus’ followers reported that he had risen from the dead.
The Christian faith spread to Rome were the Christians were persecuted and tried for crimes.
First-century Christians worshiped Jesus Christ as God and celebrated the Eucharist in their services.
Even though these Romans ridiculed the Christians as being morally weak, they were often times known for their courage and virtue.

4. The authors of the four Gospels were eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life themselves, or were closely associated with the eyewitnesses.

John 19:1-4
1 John 1:1-2
Luke 1:1-4
Galatians 1:11-12
2 Peter 1:16

5. The Gospel writers intended to convey factual and historical information and the writings of their historical content have been confirmed to a significant degree.
6. The apostles’ testimony becomes more credible when it is considered that they had nothing to gain from it and everything to lose.