Online home to J. Warner Wallace, author of Cold Case Christianity and Christian apologist.

http://coldcasechristianity.com/2014/did-jesus-claim-to-be- . . .

I do not claim to be an expert in any areas of theology/Christianity. I have a Master’s of Divinity Degree and so I am considered to be professionally qualified as a Pastor and as much as possible an authority on Lutheran Doctrine and pastoral practice. Point is, there are people out there who have become very expert in different aspects of Christianity and one of those is J Warner Wallace. Pastor Wallace was a cold-case police detective in the Los Angeles Police Department who looks at the history and authenticity of Christianity and puts it under scrutiny as a detective, particularly a cold-case detective. A cold-case detective almost never has any physical evidence and therefore has to build a case on a lot of different aspects of the case, which is presented in court to prosecute the suspect.

As a detective Pastor Wallace is also very familiar with the “chain of custody”. As a Federal Police Officer in the Coast Guard I was also very well trained in the “chain of custody”. Any evidence recovered from a suspected crime scene has to be handled with utmost security in order to assure that lawyers, judges, etc, have complete confidence that this evidence hasn’t been tampered with in any way. If there is any serious question as to the chain of custody important evidence can be excluded from a trial, obviously the effect of that could destroy a case. Wallace applies those same parameters to test the “chain of custody” of the Bible and he shows that there is very little doubt that the chain of custody has been faithfully maintained dating back, in the case under discussion, to the Apostle John. The first link is to that video, you can paste that link into your browser to see the video on the “Cold Case Christianity” website.

The other link is to Pastor Wallace’s podcast which raises the issue whether Jesus actually claimed to be God. This is an issue that Bible opponents love to raise, did Jesus come straight out and say “Hi, I’m God.”? Well he did, too often we try to put everything in our own context, 21st century Americans, and when we don’t see that in other times and places we dismiss the claim. Jesus made it very clear to His 1st century Jewish listeners that He was very much God and they understood Him very clearly. Listen as Pastor Wallace explains how Jesus made it very clear who He was.

I do want to make it clear, that as Christian disciples we are not made Christian disciples by the evidence. We are brought to faith in Jesus by the Holy Spirit, we don’t want to make our Christian faith a test of physical evidence. By the same token when we leave questions unanswered to people who are obviously antagonistic to the faith, we raise questions in others as to the authenticity of the Christian faith. Often I’ve found myself acting more as an “apologist” a defender of the faith, not for the benefit of the person who is challenging what I’m teaching, but the benefit of the weaker brother or sister whose faith might be undermined because of an antagonist. Our faith is in Christ, He is the One who leads and guides us, the Lord of our lives. We do not need the physical evidence, but often we are challenged by a hostile world and we want to: “but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you;” (1 Pet 3:15 ESV) I would really encourage you to check out Pastor Wallace’s website, he has a lot of great blogs, podcasts and videos on many fascinating aspects of “…the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3 ESV)