5-Minute Apologetics for Today. 365 Quick Answers to Key Questions

411 Pages·2011·1.81 MB·English

by  Ron Rhodes

5·Minute
APOLOGETICS
for TODAY
Ron Rhodes
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard
Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
Verses marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All
rights reserved.
Verses marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971,
1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)
Verses marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson,
Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Verses marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
All emphasis in Scripture quotations is added by the author.
Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota
5-MINUTE APOLOGETICS FOR TODAY
Copyright © 2010 by Ron Rhodes
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rhodes, Ron.
5-minute apologetics for today / Ron Rhodes.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-2457-3 (pbk.)
1. Apologetics—Miscellanea. I. Title.
BT1103.R56 2010
239’.7—dc22
2009017210
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any
other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 / DP-SK / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Day 1: Absolute Truth
Day 2: Be Reasonable
Day 3: Philosophy Can Be Helpful
Day 4: Reasonable Faith
Day 5: Christians Can Be Deceived
Day 6: False Doctrine
Day 7: All Religions Are Not the Same
Day 8: Faulty Doctrine Can Hurt
Day 9: Marginalizing God’s Word
Day 10: Contend for the Faith
Day 11: Non-Rock-a-Boatus
Day 12: Flex Some Apologetic Muscle
Day 13: Salt and Light
Day 14: Living Ethically
Day 15: A Desire for More
Day 16: Charity
Day 17: Permissible but Not Necessarily Beneficial
Day 18: Lying
Day 19: Oaths
Day 20: Civil Disobedience
Day 21: Capital Punishment
Day 22: Suicide
Day 23: Divorce
Day 24: Slavery
Day 25: An Activist View of War
Day 26: A Pacifist View of War
Day 27: A Selectivist View of War
Day 28: Just War
Day 29: Self-Defense
Day 30: Laziness
Day 31: Human Life Begins at Conception
Day 32: Abortion
Day 33: Fornication and Adultery
Day 34: Polygamy
Day 35: Homosexuality
Day 36: Liberation from Homosexuality
Day 37: Skepticism
Day 38: Agnosticism
Day 39: Denying God’s Existence Is Not Logical
Day 40: Miracles
Day 41: Empirical Observation
Day 42: A Cause and a Beginning
Day 43: Christian Atrocities
Day 44: Extermination
Day 45: Hypocrisy
Day 46: Jesus Is the Messiah
Day 47: Jesus and Pagan Myths
Day 48: Jesus and Simple Legends
Day 49: Is Fulfilled Prophecy a Hoax?
Day 50: Theological Bias
Day 51: The Problem of Evil
Day 52: God Does Not Create Moral Evil
Day 53: Evil and Free Will
Day 54: Evil and Intelligent Design
Day 55: Evil and an All-Powerful God
Day 56: Good out of Evil
Day 57: The Boundaries of Evil
Day 58: Evolution
Day 59: Microevolution and Macroevolution
Day 60: Mutations
Day 61: Natural Selection
Day 62: The Meaning of Miracles
Day 63: Miracles Can Happen
Day 64: Miracles and Deity
Day 65: Miracles in Jesus’ Hometown
Day 66: More Miracles than Jesus
Day 67: Cultists in Our Houses
Day 68: Beware of Cults
Day 69: Characteristics of Cults
Day 70: Sociology and the Cults
Day 71: Cults’ Moral Characteristics
Day 72: Talking with Cult Members
Day 73: Reincarnation
Day 74: Astrology
Day 75: Participation in the Occult
Day 76: Mysticism
Day 77: A Christian Belongs to Christ
Day 78: Knowing God and Knowing About God
Day 79: Knowing God Intimately
Day 80: General Revelation
Day 81: Special Revelation
Day 82: God and the Old Testament Prophets
Day 83: The Apostles
Day 84: Progressive Revelation
Day 85: False Prophets and Teachers
Day 86: New Testament Prophets
Day 87: Holy Books
Day 88: A Library of Inspired Books
Day 89: The Holy Spirit: The Agent of Inspiration
Day 90: Scripture Is “God-breathed”
Day 91: God and Human Writers
Day 92: All of Scripture Is Inspired
Day 93: What the New Testament Writers Knew
Day 94: Fulfilled prophecy and Inspiration of Scripture
Day 95: No Inaccurate Prophecies
Day 96: Our Supreme and Final Authority
Day 97: The Canon in New Testament Times
Day 98: Five Tests for Canonicity
Day 99: In or Out?
Day 100: The Apocrypha
Day 101: Papyri and New Testament Studies
Day 102: The Dead Sea Scrolls
Day 103: The Dead Sea Scrolls and Biblical Manuscript Transmission
Day 104: New Testament Variants
Day 105: Has the Bible Been Corrupted?
Day 106: The Preservation of Biblical Manuscripts
Day 107: Extrabiblical Christian Sources and the Bible Books
Day 108: Secular Extrabiblical Sources and the Bible
Day 109: The Gospels’ Apparent Contradictions
Day 110: The Gospels Are Selective
Day 111: Nature and the Bible
Day 112: Archaeology and the Bible
Day 113: Archaeology and the Old Testament
Day 114: Archaeology and the New Testament
Day 115: Formal Equivalence
Day 116: Dynamic Equivalence
Day 117: Gender-Inclusive Language
Day 118: Principles of Bible Interpretation
Day 119: A Literal Interpretation of the Bible
Day 120: Esoteric Interpretation
Day 121: The Wisdom Sayings and Bible Promises
Day 122: Conditional and Unconditional Promises
Day 123: Promises to the Israelites—and to Us?
Day 124: Promises in the Old Testament and Today
Day 125: Christian Meditation
Day 126: Majestic and All-Powerful but Also Personal
Day 127: God the Father
Day 128: God’s Names
Day 129: Elohim
Day 130: God’s Attributes
Day 131: God Is Spirit
Day 132: Is God Distant?
Day 133: Pantheism and the Bible
Day 134: God’s Sovereignty
Day 135: God, the Almighty Judge
Day 136: Our Incomparable God
Day 137: The God of Christianity and the God of Islam
Day 138: God Is a Trinity
Day 139: Is the Trinity a Logical Contradiction?
Day 140: The Trinity and Ancient Paganism
Day 141: Jesus and the Trinity
Day 142: Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom
Day 143: Three Views of Predetermination
Day 144: Resting in God’s Sovereignty
Day 145: Saved in Trouble, Not from Trouble
Day 146: Our Intelligently Created Universe