S8 E1 - Between the Testaments - Part I

This season we're going to be thinking about the gospel records, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Those four books take us to the heart of Christianity. And, for a long time, they've been a battleground.

Critics of Christianity have launched wave after wave of attacks on the historicity and the theological coherence of the Gospels. We're going to examine many of the arguments advanced by biblical critics against the trustworthiness of the Gospels. It's vital that believers have confidence in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because our faith is built entirely on the person and work of Jesus Christ. If the gospel authors have written a fiction, or if they're horribly biased, then our faith is a castle built on sand.

We'll think about the quest for the authentic Jesus. That's a term used by critical scholars who treat the four Gospels as literary rubble that must be sifted to find some evidence of the central figure of Christianity.

Then we'll tackle the controversy over Jesus's words. Do the Gospels record Jesus's exact words? Or did the Gospel writers just give us a gist of what he said? Another critical question that is often raised relates to the reliability of the Gospel documents: how can we have confidence that we're reading eyewitness accounts of Jesus's life?

And finally, we'll delve into some of the classic questions about contradictions in the Gospels.

In our first two episodes, however, we'll consider the historical context of the Gospels. We'll think about the blank page in our Bibles that separates the last book of the Old Testament from the first book of the New Testament. There's a 400-year gap between the end of Malachi and the Gospels. It's sometimes called the intertestamental period.

This historical context really matters. Many young Christians can believe that Bible history exists in a parallel universe from the rest of world history. It's as if the Bible begins in a land far far away. But Christianity is truth revealed in history. So one of our big aims in these first two episodes is to show how biblical history is woven seamlessly into world history. Christianity is not a cunning fable. It is about real historical events. 

We hope Season 8 is a blessing to you. To God be the Glory.