I’ve always had an interest in Christian apologetics, and in my humble opinion I think everyone who is a Christian — and everyone generally — needs to at least be exposed to the evidences that Christians have to believe in God, Jesus as the Son of God, and the Bible. Christianity is NOT a blind faith, despite all the accusations of science-denier, history-denier, etc. In my experience, scoffers and skeptics are usually under-informed, having stopped listening and learning.

Wanting to be a lifetime learner I’ve been reading a couple books that I think you readers might also find interesting reading.

The first couple of books are ones that I’ve had in my library a while on archaeology. I’ve read them already, but a thoroughgoing review of them has refreshed in my mind the evidences that the Bible is fact and not a “pious fiction” — Pharaohs and Kings, by David Rohl and Solving the Exodus Mystery by Ted T. Stewart. The biblical issue at stake is the historicity of the Bible — the reliability of the history given to us in the Bible. Much archaeology over the last 150 years has been laboring under the mistaken identification of the biblical Pharaoh Shishak (2 Chron. 12:2ff) with a certain Pharaoh Shoshenq. They are similar-sounding names, but they are not the same Egyptian pharaoh. This archaeological mistake has thrown off the dates of ancient history by roughly three centuries; and it has created a substantial historical ripple effect, since almost all of ancient history from Greece to Babylon (including Israel) is based on Egyptian chronology that is dated 300 years too early.

Both the authors marshal substantial arguments based on odd and frequently changing Egyptian calendars, recent archaeological discoveries among the archives of neighboring kings and nations, often overlooked biblical and archaeological detail, and much more. And both authors agree that a new Egyptian and Greece to Babylonian chronology should be dated 300 later than the current ancient history books allow.

If the timeline were corrected, it would not be Rameses the Great who was the pharaoh of the Exodus (as The Ten Commandments portrays), but more likely Amenemhet IV, who 1) inexplicably died, 2) had no heir to sit on his throne, 3) left Egypt impoverished and virtually undefended, and 4) has no tomb or pyramid that has yet been discovered. Indeed, when the 300 year mistake is corrected, there are many more bibical/historical synchronisms that occur. Bottom line: The Bible has been historically correct all along, man’s accusations against the Bible as being unhistorical has really been man’s mistakes. Some sections of the books are a “slog” but for good reasons — it takes a little time and persistence to untangle the historical mistakes that have been made.

On a different apologetics subject, I’ve also been reading Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyers. His area of expertise is biology and he is a serious scientist. The book in a nutshell is about how Darwinism (animals evolving slowly through micro changes to new a whole new species) has long had a real problem in the fossil record, namely the “Cambrian explosion”. The fossil record just below the Cambrian level has only a very few and rather simple life forms in its fossil record — but then the Cambrian level has tons of life life forms with different body types and complexity. How did such variety and complexity arise so quickly? Classical Darwinism has no answer; so evolutionary true believers have been groping around for almost 100 years to find some way to explain it. Meyers, with great, even-handedness explains the various theories for some kind of rapid evolution and then very rationally points to the fatal flaw in them all. The end result ultimately being that purposeful, deliberate, intelligent design (God) is the only possible explanation for the life on this earth and all its variety. Again, there are details of molecular-level biology (DNA, epigenetic information, HOX genes, and a whole lot of other stuff that you haven’t heard since high school — if then) that make the reading challenging, but the evidences found here for God as Creator are without equal — a tour de force.

Don’t be buffaloed or bullied by skeptics and scoffers. 2 Cor. 10:4, 5 — “for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”