My Awesome Letter to Matt Dillahunty to Help Lead Him to Christ
Re: Matt Dillahunty
https://www.youtube.com/user/SansDeity
I want to lead you to Christ. That which does not exist (non-existence) can't cause anything because it doesn't exist. And infinite regress of nature is impossible, because if there was this alleged eternity of the past of cause and effects, by that definition you would have had an eternity to come into being before now, so you should have already happened. And you should never have come into being, because a past eternity would continue to go on forever never reaching this point. You can see an eternity of the past of cause and effects is not only wrong in different ways of looking at it but self-contradictory as well. Therefore, nature needs a cause outside of itself, outside of time and space, being uncreated. This uncreated Creator is what we commonly refer to as God.
We know how God personally reveals Himself to us as Jesus because nobody has been able to find a naturalistic explanation to account for the eyewitness testimony of the Apostles seeing Jesus alive from the dead in various group settings. Group hallucinations are impossible and people don't willingly die for what they know is a lie. All the Apostles were martyred and never changed their eyewitness claims not even one. Legends theory breaks down because Paul's writing goes all the way back to the cross from the Apostles he recorded spending time with, and the first churches were built based on that eyewitness testimony. Scholars the past 2000 years have struggled mightily to find a naturalistic explanation, but all attempts to find an answer to hold their hat on have fallen by the wayside, none being very dependable or plausible. How much more time do they need?
We have (up to date by Daniel B. Wallace - textual criticism scholar) 18 papyri for the New Testament in the 2nd century and one manuscript in the late first century (recently found). These are the earliest copies we have found far earlier than for any classical writers by hundreds of years. Also, you can quote all the verses in the NT except for 11 verses from the early church fathers including from the late 1st century and 2nd century. Additionally, those 18 papyri and earliest manuscript produce no major doctrinal changes from the 130 papyri and manuscripts we have from the first three centuries.
Almost all scholars who do peer review journal or accredited work on the resurrection glean from the NT that Paul really wrote 1 Cor. 15, Gal. 1 & 2. They agree from these three chapters, he truly believed he saw Jesus alive from the dead and spent 15 days with Peter, and spent time with James (brother of Jesus) and John as well. His conversion was two years after the cross, and he spent time with two of these three Apostles 5 years after the cross; some years later he met up with John, and again, with James and Peter. They had the same resurrection eyewitness testimony in various group settings, Paul records, listing some of those appearances. He even challenges people to speak out if what he said was not true of these first Apostles as most of them were still alive at the time of his writing. Scholars agree because of this evidence that the Apostles truly believed they saw Jesus alive from the dead in various group settings. But they struggle to find a naturalistic explanation to explain it away quite understandably.
Matthew and Luke took in part from Mark, but they used an earlier copy of Mark, so it can be said Matthew and Luke are early copies of Mark. Luke who wrote Acts never mentioned Paul's death after detailing many of his travels and works. Paul died in the Neronian persecutions around 65 AD along with most of the Apostles. So Acts had to have been written before then as late as 55 AD. But since Luke said Acts was part two of his former work of Luke, that places Luke's gospel as late as 45 AD. But since Luke took in part from Mark that places Mark as late as 35 AD just two years after the cross. Jesus died on the cross on a Lunar Eclipse, Nisan 14, Passover, Friday, April 1, 33 AD (Gregorian) which I am pretty sure Satan managed to call April Fool's Day to mock Jesus and Christians for the foolishness of the cross (see Thomas Ice's essays that prove this date when Jesus died at the age of 37 1/2 and was born Tishri 15, 6 BC). Peter and Mark were good friends so that places 1 & 2 Peter early in which he said he saw Jesus resurrected. John says the same in his epistles (1,2,3 John). Luke worked with Paul. Paul with Barnabas and Mark. Everyone is very well interconnected and multiply corroborated. Suffice it to say all the books of the NT were written before the earliest still surviving papyri and manuscripts, before the church fathers quoted the passages of the NT, and before the Neronian persecutions, except for Revelation which John wrote 95 AD.
If you were to ask yourself what better proof there could be, I don't think you could come up with one because I can't. Thus, one can conclude God provided the very best proof we could ask for in the 27 books of the NT.
