DWD's Reviews

A Lightweight Version of The Case for Christ Published in 2009 by Zondervan I picked The Case for Christmas  up for free on Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book. For a freebie, this is a solid introduction to Lee Strobel and his style. But, if you purchase this book as a stand-alone book at the regular price of $1.99 it has issues. Issue #1. This book is a essentially an edited, truncated version of Lee Strobel's signature book, The Case for Christ . Now, I like The Case for Christ  because it is very thorough and includes a lot of detailed arguments as to why Jesus is not who the Church claims he is and then proceeds to counter them. The Case for Christmas is almost exactly 1/3 of the length of The Case for Christ  and the editing hurts. Issue #2. Regularly priced at $1.99, this kindle e-book is 2/3 the price of the original source text it comes from. Right now, you can buy The Case for Christ  for $2.99. Spend the extra dollar and get the much more complete, much...

Originally published in 1976 Published by Christianaudio.com Read by Kate Reading Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes Presbyterian minister and philosopher Francis A. Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live? is a history of the West and a fairly sophisticated bit of Christian apologetics wrapped up in a fairly small package. At times this book rolls along at an enjoyable pace and is quite the listen, other times it is much more difficult.  Here is a listing of the chapters: Chapter 1: Ancient Rome - Schaeffer compares Roman pagan beliefs with Christian beliefs and blames the pagan beliefs for the collapse of the Empire - they were not inclusive enough and the Greco-Roman gods were little more than bigger people with the same issues that all people have. Chapter 2: The Middle Ages - Despite its reputation, the Middle Ages had positive points. Threads of Classical thought were re-discovered and fused to Christian beliefs. Chapter 3: The Renaissance - Schaeffer offers up the Renaissan...

Disappointed in the abridged audiobook I've seen Josh McDowell speak many times and I know that he can be a strong speaker and I do wish that he had read this book. This book has strong attributes, but when combined with the reader (Greg Wheatley) it can be tedious. The audiobook seems poorly put together at times but I suppose that is due to a poor abridgement. The reader is very poor, which is surprising since the cover notes note that he has a wealth of radio experience. He fails to do basic things like pause. For example, most readers would read like this: Chapter One (pause) It was a dark and stormy night... This book is more like this (in a monotone): ChapterOneItwasadarkandstormynight. Other negatives: McDowell includes a fictional story of friends at college that are struggling with their faith. Those stories are stilted and read like they were written for ...well, like they were written for a Sunday school book. The people don't talk like ...

An Enjoyable Counter-Argument Published in 2007 by IVP Books. Timothy Paul Jones' Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus is a reasoned, polite yet firm response to Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why , a best-selling book that disputes the authenticity of the New Testament by noting that there have been numerous errors in translation and copying over the years, especially in the first 200-300 years of the Christian movement. Jones starts by addressing Ehrman's criticisms directly. He acknowledges that there have indeed been a great number of errors, most in spelling, some in grammar and some were simple re-copying of lines of text or skipping a line of text. He notes that while there are a lot of them, most make no difference, such as my use of commas and other punctuation in this sentence - if I had left them out, the meaning of the text would not have changed. To use an examp...

Published in 2007 by Zondervan Read by the author, Lee Strobel Duration: 10 hours, 45 minutes Unabridged Lee Strobel has written several "The Case for..." books. The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ explicitly counters the arguments from many different sources that question Jesus, the teachings about him and the integrity of the New Testament. Critics argue that Strobel is not an expert on the things he writes about. I believe he would agree with that - at most he is a well-informed layman. But, Strobel did the best thing that one can do to create a rebuttal these arguments - he went out to the experts and questioned them (because, really, who is a qualified expert in all of these fields?). Strobel asks them the questions that the "anti-" crowd would ask (really a wide range, from Muslim teachers to Hollywood directors to college professors to former Christian clergy to internet bloggers). Lee S...