I spoke to 245 students in the Student Union building this lunchtime, addressing the title: “Ancient & Unreliable: Isn’t the Bible just a book of myths?” I was really happy with this as a start.
I spoke for between 20 and 25 minutes trying to counter the objection in as reasonable a way as possible. And then it was thrown open to questions both by anonymous text message and also by people putting their hands up and shouting out.
The questions I got and tried to answer included: “What about all the books that got left out of the Bible?” “Surely the gospels aren’t really biographies. They are not so concerned with recording real events?” “What about the other religions? They have holy books. Why would you prefer the bible over other holy books?” “Surely some bits of the Bible are myths? For example the creation accounts?” “Wouldn’t the disciples be likely to have exaggerated?” “What if the gospel writers deliberately invented a Jesus who went around fulfilling Old Testament prophecy?” “Why couldn’t God have sent his Messiah to earth now in the age of the internet? Why did he choose the first century instead?” ““If the case for the reliability of the Bible is so persuasive, why don’t more people follow Jesus?” What is the cost of becoming a Christian? What are the lifestyle implications?”
We have a team of 35 people called “CU Guests” who have given up a week of their time to partner in the mission and live in the Colleges with the students for a week. These are mostly drawn from Kings Church, Durham, Christ Church, Durham and St Helen’s Bishopsgate in London. We were joined by around 60 students at 8.00am this morning for a prayer meeting in Leech Hall, St John’s College. There aren’t many prayer meetings I go to with 100 people praying that early in the morning.
I’ve met lots of people who were impacted by my books, including one CUG from London who read it in his youth group in Melbourne, Australia.
Tomorrow I’m speaking on “Impossible and Unproven: How can you prove Jesus rose from the dead?”