Quotes from Lee Strobel

Biblical hope is the confident expectation that God is willing and able to fulfill the promises he has made to those who trust in him.

Christian faith is not an irrational leap.Examined objectively, the claims of the Bible are rational propositions well supported by reason and evidence.

The implication is that the people of God were lost and that God had to do something—as he had always done—to intervene and set them back on the right track. But there was a difference this time. This was the last time. This was the last chance.

Science should be the search for truth, not merely the search for materialistic explanations.

Over the next 1,364 days, the Khmer Rouge, seeking to obliterate the social classes and create an agrarian society of peasants, was responsible for killing, starving, or working to death about two million Cambodians, out of a population of eight million. Accounting for the percentage of people destroyed, Pol Pot's Communist regime was the most murderous in the modern age.

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to; or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, and does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how comes evil in the world? Epicurus, philosopher

It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in numbers, has been rather carefully thought out. . . . The seemingly miraculous concurrence of these numerical values must remain the most compelling evidence for cosmic design. Physicist Paul Davies

The idea that Jesus never really died on the cross can be found in the Koran, which was written in the seventh century--in fact, Ahmadiyya Muslims contend that Jesus actually fled to India. To this day there's a shrine that supposedly marks his real burial place in Srinagar, Kashmir.

The source of evil is not God's power but mankind's freedom.

We can never sink so far that God's grace will not reach us. At the same time, grace does not leave us there. It raises us to new heights.

20Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel,v who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21I have given her timew to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling.x 22So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adulteryy with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.

Real love—our love of God and our love of each other—must involve a choice. But with the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate.

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more . . . and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less. Philip Yancey1

At the time of the crucifixion, the disciples couldn't see how anything good could result; similarly, as we face struggles and trials and suffering, we sometimes can't imagine good emerging. But we've seen how it did in the case of Jesus, and we can trust it will in our case too. For instance, the greatest Christians in history seem to say that their sufferings ended up bringing them the closest to God—so this is the best thing that could happen, not the worst.

it's at least possible that God is wise enough to foresee that we need some pain for reasons which we may not understand but which he foresees as being necessary to some eventual good. Therefore, he's not being evil by allowing that pain to exist.

But I wanted someone who was more than just intelligent and educated. I was searching for an expert who wouldn't gloss over nuances or blithely dismiss challenges to the records of Christianity

moral character gets formed through hardship, through overcoming obstacles, through enduring despite difficulties. Courage, for example, would be impossible in a world without pain. The apostle Paul testified to this refining quality of suffering when he wrote that 'suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.'13

The point of our lives in this world isn't comfort, but training and preparation for eternity. Scripture tells us that even Jesus 'learned obedience through suffering14—and if that was true for him, why wouldn't it be even more true for us?

wanted someone with integrity, someone who has grappled with the most potent critiques of the faith and who speaks authoritatively but without the kind of sweeping statements that conceal rather than deal with critical issues.

So exploring the scientific and historical evidence for God is not only a cognitive exercise, but it's an act of worship for me. It's a way of giving the Creator the credit and honor and glory that are due to him.

Hazen thought for a moment, then concluded: "You know, even if all religions were figments of our imagination, I would choose Christianity, because it says you can be assured that you're right with God. There's no need for performance anxiety or laboring through lifetime after lifetime. As the Bible says in 1 John 5:13: 'I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

The prophet Jeremiah said that 'from the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain,'18 and the prophet Isaiah said, 'all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.'19 Our good deeds are stained with self-interest and our demands for justice are mixed with lust for vengeance. Ironically, it's the best people who most readily recognize and admit their own shortcomings and sin.

If every birth is a rebirth, and if every life pays for the previous life, then what were you paying for in your first birth? You

Researchers have gathered a wealth of data lately suggesting that chronic anger is so damaging to the body that it ranks with — or even exceeds — cigarette smoking, obesity, and a high-fat diet as a powerful risk factor for early death.