A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE FOR JESUS'S RESURRECTION IN THE “THE CASE FOR CHRIST”, THE BEST-SELLING BOOK  BY LEE STROBEL

STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The book assumes that Jesus was telling the truth about being God because he rose again.
 
THE TRUTH:

Yet the Christians believe that there were many other miracles of healing carried out by doctrinal rivals. There is nothing special about a resurrection that would make it a proof for divine agency because if forces that are not from God can heal they can raise bodies from the dead or at least put them into miraculous suspended animation and snap them out of it. I mean which is more impressive: many miracles of healing and one resurrection? They amount to the same amount of miracle power. If Jesus claimed his resurrection was proof that he was the Son of God or God then he was lying. It is proof that he was definitely neither!
 
STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The Jesus Seminar is biased against miracle stories,
 
THE TRUTH:
 
Not true. John Dominic Crossan its leader believes in some of the healings at Lourdes.

STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The book says that the reason most of Jesus’ life was left out of the gospels was because people in those days did not realise that to write biographies you needed to write about the whole life plus what Jesus did before his baptism was not relevant spiritually.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
That is only possible when you are writing about somebody unpopular. Jesus was popular with his fans who would have been desperate to know all about him.
 
STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The book says that the Jews had a physical idea of the resurrection therefore Jesus had to rise physically and leave the tomb empty.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
For heaven’s sake the New Testament was not written by ordinary Jews! The Jewish Bible said that being crucified or hanged was proof that God cursed you. The New Testament was written by people who made what orthodox Jews consider the sign of a curse from God the means of salvation. They did not pander to Jewish taboos.
  
STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The women who saw the risen Jesus can be trusted for their testimony was considered worthless by society just because they were women.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
Only people who cannot be trusted ask for you to trust them when they know you believe that you shouldn’t. Besides people testifying to the women testifying doesn’t amount to the women testifying. Their testimony has been lost to us forever.

STROBEL’S LIE:
 
Jesus did not use hypnosis to heal people for hypnosis does not work on everybody for some just cannot be hypnotised and people who are doubters cannot be hypnotised. Yet he cured everybody and Thomas saw him after he rose despite doubting so the apparition was not down to hypnosis. And also he never spoke to the people at the wedding so we cannot say he hypnotised them to think that he turned water into wine.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
Jesus could not cure those of little faith (Mark 6:5,6) which would indicate that he was using hypnosis because anybody who does not believe in hypnosis and resists cannot be hypnotised. And Thomas could have been hypnotised to think he didn’t believe. And the gospel never says that Jesus never addressed the wedding party. Jesus said that if Satan puts demons out his kingdom will collapse indicating that Satan needed to possess people. He spoke of Satan as very powerful so a lot of people must be possessed. He said that when a demon leaves a man it can return with its friends and that will happen to that evil generation. Getting people to believe things like that will ensure that they won’t need hypnosis! If a man saw Jesus being stolen from the tomb, he could be persuaded that a demon tricked his sight. And there was the threat of a vengeful God and everlasting damnation too!
 
STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The miracle tales ring true because they are sober. They are not legends.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
Legends start off fairly sober so we might be getting the gospel legends in their embryonic stage. There are billions of supernatural “true” stories that ring true as well and which emerged even hours after the alleged event so are we to believe them all? The view given in The Case for Christ that the miracle stories appeared too soon after the event to be legend is simply obvious nonsense. Legend just needs a clever inventor to take off not time.
 
Ringing true is a very subjective standard. The gospels ring untrue to the smartest people in the world.
 
STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The view that Jesus was immoral for not fighting slavery is wrong because many slaves had good lives and nice jobs and had to be enslaved to get out of debt. Jesus works from the inside to destroy the attitudes that lead to slavery so he did the best thing to stop it.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
But they were still slaves. Any messianic figure could do nothing for nobody or do very little and not as much as he could and say that he will change hearts by some mystical force. That way he still pretends to be good.   Jesus did not put social concerns first. The Church says he could not be the allegedly prophesied Messiah and therefore a true prophet and consequentially a person doing wonders by the power of God unless he was sinless. If so, we know that his proving he was the best man ever by living long and hard to help others and feed the poor was the thing he needed to make his signs work as indications that he was the Messiah. We can be sure he was not the Messiah for he failed to be anything to beat Mother Teresa. All the miracle working in the universe could not help him. Besides a man who cures people miraculously is not as good as the man who helps people the hard way like the rest of us have to help the suffering.

Only evil hypocrites say that allowing or enabling slavery is fine as long as the slaves are fed and watered.  They are still degraded by being treated like animals.
 
STROBEL’S LIE:
 
The Case for Christ is a book recording the ways the intelligent academics prove that the gospel of Jesus is true.
 
THE TRUTH:
 
But it is still wrong and is full of fraud and twisted facts which ought to warn us about the gospels whose authors are enigmas to us. Many say they believe in The Case for Christ showing that the testimony of the Church to the gospels is not worth worrying about. It's not evidence that they are plausible. We refuse to be manipulated by Lee Strobel and the “experts” he has put on a pedestal either.  Why listen to them and not the real experts who outnumber them by thousands and who know they talk rubbish?