A Skeptic's Search for God
by Ralph O. Muncaster--a book review
Is the Bible really the Word of God? Is Christianity the only path to God?
Don’t all religions lead to God? Did Jesus Christ really exist?
If we are honest, I believe we all would have to admit to doubts from
time-to-time. There is more or less skepticism in all of us. But is this a bad
or good thing? In the final analysis we are to take God’s revelations by faith,
that is, we are take Him at His Word, placing all confidence in the fulfillment
of it. But the Bible does tell us not to accept anything on “blind faith.” 1
Thessalonians 5:21 says “Prove [or test] all things; hold
fast that which is good.”
Wouldn’t it be beneficial and spiritually strengthening to know that the
Bible, Jesus Christ and Christian doctrine are supported by historical,
archeological, statistical and scientific fact? I submit to you that even though
it is possible to be engulfed by skepticism to the extent of agnosticism or
atheism, some skepticism is both healthy and scriptural. The Christian does not
need to take a back-seat to anyone in the areas of science, history or
archeology when it comes to apologetics (the defense of the faith). For these
reasons, and particularly for the strengthening of your faith, I submit for your
earnest consideration a most rewarding and enlightening book by Ralph O.
Muncaster, which is entitled A Skeptic’s Search for God (Harvest House
Publishers, 2002). It may be purchased for $10.19 plus shipping at
www.alibris.com, along with other fine books by this author.
Mr. Muncaster holds a BS in engineering and an MBA from the University of
Colorado. A former atheist and hardcore Bible skeptic, Ralph spent 15 years
conducting research to dispute the Bible. To Ralph, it seemed that the Bible
could not possibly be consistent with such sciences as anthropology, molecular
biology and physics. Armed with an engineering-education and a critical,
questioning mind, to his surprise, the more he searched, the more evidence he
found that supported the Bible's claims. Mr. Muncaster has taught classes in Christian Apologetics and World Religion in universities including Vanguard University of Southern California where he served as Adjunct Professor. He frequently speaks at churches and organizations on a broad variety of biblical topics.
The following is a book review of Mr. Muncaster’s excellent work and
it is worthy of your attention.
The Review
A Skeptic’s Search for God by Ralph O. Muncaster is divided into six
sections.
- The first section (chapters 1-5) explains how he became an atheist,
even though being brought up in a small town church, then an agnostic
and finally a full-fledge atheist. It ends in a personal accounting of
how he was challenged and decided to accept the challenge to research
the Bible in the same scientific and systematic manner in which he
criticized it.
- The second section (chapter 6) defines his decision pertaining to
definitions of proof with which he would investigate the veracity of
the Bible.
- The third section (chapters 7-12) details his accumulation of
analytical proof of God.
- The fourth section (chapters 13-29) details his accumulation of
statistical proof of God.
- The fifth section (chapters 21-26) details his accumulation of
legal proof of God.
- The sixth section (chapter 27) establishes his verdict regarding
the matter and the re-direction of his life due to his attempt to
disprove the Bible and its God.
- The remainder: Epilogue, Afterword, Appendices, Bibliography &
Notes.
Section One (How I Became an Atheist in Church)
- Chapter one (The Child Skeptic) explains how Mr. Muncaster was
a skeptic during his earliest years, how he was routinely bored with
church and continuously questioned the Bible in Sunday school, e.g.,
Adam and Eve, people living to be 900 years old, a worldwide flood,
the parting of the Red Sea and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He
explains how the absences of such “truths” in public school fueled his
skepticism. He reveals that by the time he was nine years old the
seeds of agnosticism had been sown, and he believed more in his
secular education as opposed to the “fantasyland” of church.
- Chapter two (Watering the Seeds of Agnosticism) describes how
an experience with his father led Mr. Muncaster to judge evangelical
Christians as “Jesus freaks” and cemented his prejudice against them.
He then recounts another experience with a fellow worker who
experienced a near-death incident while working at an ice cream factory
in his hometown of Woodstown, New Jersey, and how a conversation with
this person contributed to his drift toward agnosticism and atheism.
Within the chapter he concludes that the foundation for agnosticism
that eventually led him to atheism was due to experiences he had at
church and Sunday school, combined with the teachings in public
schools and the media, along with the lack of Christian teachings at
home.
- Chapter three (The Beginning of the Death of God) recounts Mr.
Muncaster’s secular exposure to the teaching of evolution, how it was
accepted as “fact” by those in authority, academic and scientific, and
in the broadcast media. He tells how he became convinced that the
“proofs” for this teaching were correct and that such a theory, which
is a “chance origin of life,” is the “killer of God” for any
organization associated with the Bible. On the other hand he found
that Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism were compatible
with the “chance origin of life,” since their god is not defined as a
personal Creator, but only as a “personal force.” The chapter
concludes with the fact that at 18 years of age he was an agnostic and
“fearfully confident that God simply didn’t exist at all.”
- Chapter four (Atheism at the University) finds Mr. Muncaster
pursuing an engineering degree at the University of Colorado in
Boulder. Because Boulder, Colorado, was known for the presence of the
National Bureau of Standards and the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, the university had access to some of the top scientists in
the world. The chapter stresses that exposure to this intelligentsia
only strengthened his skepticism and drove him deeper into
agnosticism. He states that by this time he had become adept at
arguing with others against belief in God, as he had a
background in the Christian faith and he had taken time to investigate
several non-Bible-based philosophies and religions, e.g., Hare
Krishna, the New Age movement, Islam, naturalism and others. In
closing he states that he was “amazed at how many churches, pastors,
and others were ill-equipped to defend the Bible.”
- Chapter five (The Challenge) relates how Mr. Muncaster in 1984,
during a luncheon with a couple of other advertising executives,
entered into a conversation with one of them named Bob regarding the
topic of God. He tells how the end result of this tête-à-tête dialog
was a challenge to him to sincerely research the Bible in the same way
that he criticized it. Bob assured him that if he would do an honest
job of researching the Bible, he would find it 100-percent accurate.
In his arrogance he accepted the challenge, thinking that two weeks
and a library would put the “Bible accuracy claim to rest forever.”
Section Two (Standards of Proof)
-
Chapter six (Definitions of Proof) explains first how Mr.
Muncaster realized that it was more than just a simple matter of the
Bible being correct, but that he was dealing with the issue of whether
God was real. Defining “standards of proof” would be necessary. As an
engineer with a background in philosophical debate, he decided that
the standards had to be strict, which were the three commonly accepted
human standards of proof, i.e., analytical, statistical and
legal. Mr. Muncaster goes on in this chapter describing these
types of proof. In the analytical realm he discusses both
“hard” and “soft” evidence and their relevance to his quest and how
analytical proof should relate to the existence of God. He shows his
word definitions, in place of numerical definitions, in arriving at
provable equations. Then, in the area of statistics, he
explains how the same statistical standards used for proving accepted
laws of physics would also be used to prove the existence of God and
the reliability of the Bible, which is a degree of certainty exceeding
1 chance of non-occurrence in 10 to the 50th power. How to apply
this statistical test to the existence of God was a problem, but it
was soon resolved. He discovered that there was a statistical
test, “the probability of [God’s] existence by testing for something
that only God could do . . . His ability to foretell the future
with perfect precision and accuracy. Finally, in the sphere of
legal proof, he concluded that just as in a court of law, the
existence of God and the reliability of the Bible had to be proved
“beyond a reasonable doubt.” This type of proof can be both soft and
hard, depending on the number and quality of eyewitness testimony,
hostile-witness testimony, corroborative reports and circumstantial
evidence. The chapter ends as he tells how he initiates his research
“in secret” with an intensity, as if his life depended on it, to
disprove God and the Bible.
Section Three (Analytical Proof of God)
- Chapter seven (Dice or God?) outlines Mr. Muncaster’s efforts
to disprove God in two specific areas, which were (1) to demonstrate a
mechanism for developing “first life” that didn’t require God, thereby
establishing that God would not be necessary for the creation of life,
and (2) to seek evidence to the degree of a “high probability” of
other planets that could support life, thereby diminishing the idea of
a God-of-the-earth-only idea. This procedure had to start with
definitions of “God” and “no God.” Next would be the testing of such
definitions. He chose to define God as originator of first life,
an “intelligent designer;” and “no God” as the origin of first life
without a specific creator. So “first life” had to have only one
cause, either God or a natural, random process. He concluded that by
restricting these definitions to the essence of origin, they would not
violate the more “accepted general definition” of God such as was
contained in the Webster dictionary; and it could always be expanded
later. He came to the fundamental premise, which was expressed in the
following word equation: (1) If first life occurred by chance, then
evolution=cause; (2) If first life required design, then God=cause;
and (3) If God=cause, then God=real. The rest of the chapter reveals
how Mr. Muncaster immersed himself into the study of evolution vs.
creation. He first considered his roots in the acceptance of the
evolution. He came to the conclusion that present-day science did not
supply any realistic, provable answers to the origin of life. He also
came to the realization that due to the inbreeding of the theory in
academia, evolution was a closed system of thinking and promotion,
that “if evolutionists claimed the theory was fact, and changed the
theory each time a scientific breakthrough disproved portions of an
earlier version, the whole thing could become a self-perpetuating
fantasy.” He found that he could no longer assume that the evidence
for evolution was overwhelming and certain. Then, due to a chance
meeting and conversation with a person who was reading a Bible on an
airplane flight, he was told (1) that many leading scientists in the
world were now rejecting evolution and believing in creation as a form
of “intelligent design” and (2) that he had been taught misleading
data regarding evolution in school. He was further introduced to the
two types of evolution, microevolution and macroevolution.
Impressed with the depth of knowledge of his co-passenger, he inquired
as to how he could find more creditable material that supported
creationism over evolution. He was directed to several different
sources, and he made the commitment to follow through with these
sources in order to be “fair and balanced” in his investigation.
- Chapter eight (What It Takes to Randomly Assemble Life)
recounts Mr. Muncaster’s investigation into what it takes to randomly
assemble life. He determined that analytical proof of the existence of
a Creator God depended largely upon disproving naturalistic evolution.
He first broke down the complex events that would be necessary for the
chance origin of life into five basic steps. This led him to the
complexity of a single living cell. He came to understand through his
study of the vast complexity of a single cell that there were
technical and mathematical problems with naturalistic evolution. This
realization came from his in-depth study of DNA, RNA and the
components of a living cell, some of which are the nucleus, ribosomes,
mitochondria, the lysosomes process, the endoplasmic reticulum, the
golgi apparatus, enzymes and regulatory proteins and the cytoskeleton.
The result of his study of the sheer complexity in even a simplified
cell caused him to be amazed in how “these billions of parts could
randomly come together in just the right way, at just the right time”
to initiate just the “first step” of naturalistic evolution. His
further consideration that there are about 75 trillion cells in
the human body, with about 210 cell types, created his first
serious doubts about evolution. From this he formulated specific
questions that needed to be answered regarding the origin of life, and
he then vigorously revisited the theory of evolution by immersing
himself in the latest documents and books on the subject. He found
that new scientific techniques, e.g., electron microscope, wet
chemistry, mapping DNA, laser tweezers, etc., revealed how much more
complex life is than was ever conceived, and that more and more
biochemists were calling into question the theory of evolution as the
first-cause of life. As he continued his investigation, Mr. Muncaster
continued to run into dead-end streets for evolution as the answer to
the origin for life. Conversely, he found that many of the answers to
his former objections to Creationism could now be understood within
God Creator framework. But he was still fervently attempting to
disprove Creationism. The chapter ends with his hope to do just that
by showing that given enough time “mathematically . . . all these
things could come together and somehow electricity—or something—would
bring it to life.
- Chapter nine (The Molecular Anatomy of Life) recounts Mr.
Muncaster’s continuing investigation into the molecular anatomy of
life. It reveals his further findings into DNA, RNA and protein
functions. This led him to even more scientists (astronomers,
mathematicians and microbiologists) who were now attacking the random
origin of life. This fueled his doubts and led him back to the
determination that the core issue had to be at the molecular level,
which led him to a “simple biological phenomenon that is seldom
discussed in much detail in biology textbooks and is almost never
addressed by evolutionists,” chirality. Chirality is the
term used to describe molecules that are “handled”—that is, they come
in “right-handed” and “left-handed” versions (technically,
dextroform and levoform). He found that the molecules used
in the building blocks of life had to be one of these two types
formulated in just the precise sequence and orientation within the DNA
chain. This revealed to him that the process of life was even more
complex than ever and led him to further discover that researchers,
after years of study, had not found one single means of
purifying such a mixture—or substantially increasing the proportion of
left-handed amino acids to right-handed ones. This led Mr. Muncaster
in estimating the probability of the origin of first life by chance to
be one in ten to the 33,113 power. This equated to winning more
than 4700 state lotteries in a row with the purchase of single ticket
for each. This essentially made him realize that the issue raised by
chirality alone placed the odds for the random beginning of first life
at essentially zero. He then factored in academia’s “accepted”
age of the earth into his statistical formula for the random assembly
of the first bacterium, but the resulting equation still came to
zero. This led him to the conclusion that “random chance could not
possibly assemble the first cell.” And as he further deliberated over
how scientists could defend evolution, he found that many could do so
by simply believing in an “infinite universe,” thereby assuming that
with enough time chance origin of life could eventually take
place. But he “knew from physics that discoveries by Hubble in 1929,
and later Penzias in 1964, when reconciled with Einstein’s general
relativity formula, showed that the universe had to have a beginning.”
This and his findings regarding “general relativity,” which had been
tested to a precision level of ten to the 14th power, meant that
infinity could no longer be used to explain the process of evolution.
He now “had hard evidence of the most basic form for why the chance
origin of life could not have occurred.”
- Chapter ten (Back at the University) is the account of Mr.
Muncaster’s endeavor to test his newly acquired analytical belief in a
“real world” environment. He did this at one of the top biochemistry
institutes in the United States, “a mecca for evolutionary
thinking—the University of California at Irvine (UCI).” He felt that
this was a final opportunity for some expert to bring him back to
evolution. He discussed his findings with the author of Darwin’s
Black Box, Michael Behe, who was lecturing at the university. An
associate professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, Behe dealt
primarily with “transitional evolution,” not the origin of life. Mr.
Muncaster learned from him (1) that so many intricate changes would
have to take place simultaneously to produce even a partial change in
a species and (2) that entire biochemical systems would need to change
all at once in the transitional process. To Mr. Muncaster this
seemed to contradict Darwin’s conclusion about the need for gradual
change over time. So from the approach of “basic reason,” and not from
a “belief in God,” Professor Behe only reinforced Mr. Muncaster’s new
analytical belief. His lectures naturally brought on strenuous
opposition from students bent on defending evolution. From the
discussions that followed, Mr. Muncaster soon realized that “evolution
apparently wasn’t the issue, the Bible was.” Further involvement with
the personnel at the university revealed that no one could name even
one person who had conducted a hard experiment or written a journal
article that clearly demonstrated a method of satisfying the
origin-of-life chirality problem. In one situation Mr. Muncaster
addressed a group of students with the following comments, “There
are enormous statistical issues involved in correct biogenetic
sequencing or simultaneous DNA mutation in germ cells. Add to that the
addition of life itself to inanimate cells, and the theory of
naturalistic evolution is statistically far less likely than a tornado
assembling a junkyard into a Boeing 747.” Mr. Muncaster came to
the conclusion that the academic world spreads false rumors just like
everyone else. In fact, contrary to one of them, he learned that
random development of RNA in the environment of early earth had been
shown to be impossible. He now knew that the only possible hope for
“chance origins” would be infinite time. But he knew that time is not
infinite. So again, he came to the conclusion that the only
alternative is some form of intelligent design—supernatural
creation—or what is commonly defined as “God.”
- Chapter eleven (I Start to Investigate God) illustrates Mr.
Muncaster’s turn to an investigation of God. He had discovered a
number of other serious flaws in the evolutionary chain such as (1)
irreducible complexity, (2) contradiction of the first law of
thermodynamics and general relativity, (3) lack of any proven
mechanism for transition from lower to higher life forms, and (4) the
fossil record, which he found didn’t support evolution. He became
troubled over the fact that intelligent scientists were not facing
reality. What opened his eyes to the cause was a statement by George
Wald in the May 1954 “Scientific American,” in which he concluded that
even though “spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years
ago” the only other possibility, “that of supernatural creation,” was
entirely unacceptable and therefore by choice the “impossible,” that
life arose spontaneously by chance, would be believed. In other words,
Mr. Wald was admitting that he’d rather adopt the impossible than
believe in a supernatural Creator. Mr. Muncaster concluded that many
educators and scientists would never forsake the theory of evolution,
because to do so would leave them no other choice but to accept the
concept of God. The remainder of the chapter reveals how Mr. Muncaster
proves with the analytical process the concept of supernatural
creation, which concludes in his analytical proof conclusion that
“some form of a Creator God exists.”
- Chapter twelve (Who Are You, God?) covers some of the
difficulties Mr. Muncaster faced in arriving at the methods for
proving the particulars of God, that is, who in fact was this Creator
God. He relays a conversation with two other affluent business
associates which ended in his determination to prove whether or not
everything in the Bible was true. In this way, he could at least
determine whether or not the God of the Bible was the real God.
Section Four (Statistical Proof of God)
- Chapter thirteen (Could I Develop Statistical Standards for
Determining God’s Existence?) opens with Mr. Muncaster being convinced
that a God existed and that even statistically the evidence for a God
passed both the “macro-test” and the “micro-test,” both explained in
the chapter. He now knew that it was statistically impossible for
there not to be a God, but the challenge was to find some way that he
could statistically prove God was the God of the Bible. He decided to
go to the Bible to find evidence that he could test statistically. The
remainder of the chapter reveals how Mr. Muncaster came to the
conclusion that since the Bible contained numerous prophecies, which
the fulfillments of each could be tested in several ways, they would
therefore be the ideal testing ground for his statistical analysis of
the Bible. He concluded that something that claimed to be prophecy
should (1) be of sufficient specificity, and unlikelihood, that a
cursory examination would lead a reasonable person to conclude a
probability of 1 in 10 or smaller, (2) be authenticated by one source
and confirmed by a separate source that would receive no net benefit
from the confirmation of the prophecy and (3) be based on reliable
source.
- Chapter fourteen (Thinking About the God of the Jews) reveals
how Mr. Muncaster settled on the Old Testament for his initial
statistical analysis, how he was stunned to find so many prophecies
within its pages and how he decided to ignore the short-term biblical
prophecies because they did not meet his statistical standards of
objective verifiability.
- Chapter fifteen (Testable Prophecies I Found in the Old
Testament) explains how Mr. Muncaster selected prophecies from (1) the
first Jewish exile, (2) the second Jewish exile and the survival and
return of the Jews and (3) about cities, nations and peoples. He was
particularly amazed at the chronological accuracy within the 8th
chapter of the book of Daniel of the 400 years of history that
involved Israel. At the conclusion of the chapter, Mr. Muncaster
states that he was stunned at the number of prophecies he had tested
that were 100-percent accurate, most with additional historical
support outside the Bible. In addition to all these, he had found 80
more prophecies that met his standards, which are listed in appendix B
of the book. In closing the chapter he expresses that he wanted to at
least place some probability parameters of odds around these
prophecies so that he could feel justified in doing further study.
- Chapter sixteen (Does Perfect Prophecy Prove That the Jewish
God Is Real?) opens with Mr. Muncaster’s statement that the Old
Testament appeared to pass the test of perfect prophecy, and then he
asked, “would it stack up to the human standard set by scientists—that
the random occurrence of anything with a probability of less than 1
chance in 10 to the 50th power is essentially impossible?” He then
sets up a highly conservative model of multiple probability in which
he would test the prophecies under statistical conventions. As he runs
the prophecies through his model they exceed the scientific stand,
which leads him to the following conclusions: (1) God definitely
exists—proven statistically by the 100-percent fulfilled prophecy in
the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh) and (2) the Jewish Bible was inspired by
God.
- Chapter seventeen (Was There Other Ancient Prophecy That
Was Valid?) shows Mr. Muncaster’s investigation into various religions
to see if they too contained prophecies that could be statistically
verified. He discovered that many major religions outside Christianity
are essentially philosophy-based and were without any provable
prophetic-historical components. Therefore there was absolutely
nothing he could find that could provide him with any confidence in
their various beliefs.
- Chapter eighteen (Testable Prophecy in the New Testament) finds
Mr. Muncaster convinced that the God of the Old Testament was
certainly real, proven from history with hard, statistical analysis.
His concern now was whether or not the New Testament represented the
God of the Old Testament. The fact that Jesus Christ claimed to be
indeed this God posed a challenge for further investigation and
statistical analysis. So he decided to test Jesus’ claim to be the
Messiah. His research in the Bible stunned him when he found that the
entire Old Testament was filled with prophecies that seemed to match
Jesus—specifics about His life, death and resurrection. The chapter
goes into detail of how he found the prophetic elements of the Messiah
within the Old Testament matched with 100-percent accuracy the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
- Chapter nineteen (A Description of the Messiah from Old
Testament Prophecy) further details Mr. Muncaster’s analytical
comparison of the Messiah of the Old Testament with Jesus Christ of
the New Testament. In his investigation he considered prophecies about
the “who, what, when, and where” of the Messiah to see if all matched
Jesus Christ. The chapter is replete with numerous prophecies and
their match with New Testament scriptural details of Jesus Christ. He
determined that this was only a partial listing of the many messianic
prophecies. He found that some scholars had counted 322 prophecies
that were apparently fulfilled by Jesus.
- Chapter twenty (The Critical Question) opens with Mr.
Muncaster’s decision to prove statistically that Jesus was the
Messiah. In doing this he took 30 prophecies (from the Old Testament
that Jesus had fulfilled) that had passed his acceptability standards
and estimated the odds, which showed that the probability of all of
them randomly coming true in one person would be 1 chance in 10 to the
110th power. He therefore came to the determination that “Jesus was
the Messiah, as planned by a supernatural God and predicted in the
Bible.” Next he turned to the issue of Jesus’ claim to be God. The
remainder of the chapter depicts how Mr. Muncaster examined the
sayings and prophecies made by Jesus Himself and the beliefs by many
of both Jews and Gentiles regarding Him during His earthly sojourn.
Section Five (Legal Proof of God)
- Chapter twenty-one (A Response from an Atheist) recounts how a
conversation with a confirmed atheist led him to conclude that Jesus
was the prophesied Son of God if legal evidence could be found to
prove the Bible’s account as trustworthy.
- Chapter twenty-two (Blood Evidence) outlines how Mr. Muncaster
proves that there is an unbroken historical timeline of people who
truly believed in the factualness of the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus, with no gaps. He approached this pursuit of evidence with
the same degree of accuracy needed to present a case in a court of
law. He first researched the earliest Christians. Secondly, he
addressed the manuscript evidence for both the Old and New Testaments
to see if flawed documentation was responsible for false beliefs. And
thirdly, he sought out circumstantial evidence. The remainder of the
chapter details his investigation into the earliest Christians and
their martyrs’ deaths that they experienced, all because of a single
historical event. Their deaths were not due to some
philosophical belief—a belief that they would get to some eternal
paradise or a belief in a metaphysical cause. No, their deaths had
depended upon a historical event—the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. If this was not true, the prophecies were also not true, and
Jesus was not God; and therefore there would be no reason for their
martyrdom. Jesus was unlike all religious leaders. He taught His
disciples to spread history—not to commit suicide. Mr.
Muncaster became convinced that the followers of Jesus were absolutely
convinced (to the death) that Jesus Christ was God.
- Chapter twenty-three (Could I Trust the Bible Texts?) outlines
how Mr. Muncaster came to trust the Bible as it has come down through
the generations to today. He again goes into the fact that the Bible,
consisting of 66 books written by at least 40 authors over a span of
approximately 2000 years, was amazingly consistent in its message.
From a statistical analysis point-of-view it would be an impossibility
for not only the multiple-thousands of manuscripts to survive
throughout the centuries maintaining their consistency and uniformity,
but it would be also an impossibility to get any 40 authors together
in one room to discuss such controversial and relevant issues and have
them agree. This led Mr. Muncaster to consider the authorship and
content of the Bible as even more miraculous.
- Chapter twenty-four (I Find More Support for the Bible) tells
how Mr. Muncaster finds more support for the Bible in various
non-Christian historical works.
- Chapter twenty-five (The Final Barriers) details the
discoveries made by Mr. Muncaster of the numerous archaeological
findings that have confirmed Biblical accounts. He found that they
were very convincing as to the supernatural accuracy of the Bible. He
outlines many of them in this chapter, such as (1) flood accounts and
fossil graveyards, (2) Sarah’s grave, (3) Hebrew slaves building
cities in Egypt, (4) The existence of David, (5) Solomon’s Empire, (6)
Nebuchadnezzar, (7) the birthplace of Jesus, (8) the house of Joseph,
(9) Peter’s house in Capernaum, (10) the synagogue in Capernaum, (11)
Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, (12) the tomb of Lazarus and (13)
the sites of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Then Mr. Muncaster
outlines the proof showing that the right books are in the Bible.
Finally, he details the 15 points that he could present in a court of
law to show that Jesus was indeed God. His final conclusion was that
“legal evidence proved that Jesus is the prophesied Son of God.”
- Chapter twenty-six (Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?)
reveals how by studying, in light of the proof he now possessed, three
present-day religions that profess to be Christian, he came to the
conclusion that the Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints), the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science definitely did
not represent the Jesus Christ of the Bible or the true doctrine of
the Bible.
Section Six (Proving God Three Ways)
- Chapter twenty-seven (The Verdict) reveals the verdict, the
final conclusion of Mr. Muncaster’s exhaustive investigation of the
Bible, of God and of Jesus Christ. He reviews his facts:
· He had analytical evidence that (1) life
could not possibly have come about by random chance
(naturalism), and since the only choices for the origin of
life are random chance and creation, therefore God must
exist—and by definitions, God=Creator; and (2) a planet so
precisely suited to man could not have come into existence
by random chance, therefore, God must exist, and by
extension, He must be all-powerful.
· He had statistical evidence that if any
holy book has many significant prophecies that are
100-percent correct—with a statistical probability of their
coming true randomly of less than the scientific standard of
1 chance in 10 to the 50th power—that book must be
supernatural, which essentially proves the existence of God.
Valid prophecy in the Old Testament (the Jewish Bible) far
exceeded that standard. This indicated that God is real.
Furthermore, the many valid prophecies of the Messiah that
Jesus fulfilled were verified in the New Testament. This
also had a statistical probability that far exceeded the
standard—which indicated Jesus’ Deity.
· He had legal evidence that the prophecies
he had evaluated statistically were precisely copied and
accurately transmitted. The New Testament was reliable,
based on the manuscript evidence. And as important, the
people who definitely knew the facts willingly died based on
the historicity of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The
chapter then turns to what Mr. Muncaster did with this
information. It shows that after studying the Greek word
translated “believe” in John 3:16 and learning that it had a
deeper meaning than to simply intellectually acknowledge a
fact, but that it carried the sense of “to put one’s trust
in,” he came to the conclusion that he needed to do more
than simply know the truth; he needed a close relationship
with Jesus—he needed to place his trust completely in Him.
He thought back over all the questions he once had regarding
the Bible and its contents, of the fear of being called a
“Jesus freak,” and of the path he had taken to discover the
truth. He realized that the study he had engaged in had
changed his mind completely, that now he knew that the Bible
and Christianity were based on facts—lots of facts and
evidence that could be verified. It was not based on blind
faith. Finally the chapter reveals how Mr. Muncaster,
thinking over all of this, accepted by faith Jesus Christ as
his personal Savior while taking a shower, and some of the
results of this decision in his life.
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