Chris DeWelt, “What is God doing in the world?” Good News Productions, International.

In this video you will get a glimpse of some of the things that God is doing in our world.  The Christian faith is experiencing significant growth in a number of places around the globe. Dr. Chris DeWelt highlights what is happening in the church in China, India, and the Muslim world. He also speaks about the opportunity that we, in the Unites States, have with international students. In addition, he speaks about the advance that is taking place with translating the Bible into the languages of people groups that do not yet have a Bible. Here are just a few things that you will lean in this video. In China about 12,000 people are baptized each day. In one two-year period in India 20,000 churches were planted. In 1979 it was estimated that there were 500 Christians in Iran, now it is believed that there are about one million. For more encouraging news, watch the video.

Reviewed by John Lathrop

http://gnpi.org/chris [Note: GNPI requires contact information to download the video]

For a succinct and highly informative introduction to Christian apologetics, look no further than Chris Sinkinson’s book, Christian Confidence: An Introduction to Defending the Faith.

Sinkinson, a former archaeologist and now lecturer in apologetics at Moorlands College in England, begins by addressing the limits of apologetics. The often raised criticism that someone is unlikely to be argued to faith is acknowledged and affirmed by the author but he also notes, “Can apologetics actually convert people? At one level this is no different from asking whether or not someone can be preached or talked into the kingdom of heaven. The fact that Christians do a lot of preaching and talking does not mean that we think our preaching or talking does the converting” (p24). These are wise admissions that acknowledge the limits of apologetics but also affirm its value as a tool in the Christian’s evangelistic arsenal.

The next couple of chapters examine various angles of Christian apologetics and the main proponents of these schools of thought. Names such as B.B Warfield, Cornelius Van Til are mentioned along with other giants of the apologetics world such as Alvin Plantinga, Josh McDowell, John Frame, Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig. Special treatment is given to Francis Schaeffer and particularly C.S. Lewis. Sinkinson continues with his historical tour de force by examining Apologetics Through the Ages (chapter 5). The author’s concise treatment of such a vast subject is truly remarkable as he takes the reader from Plato and Aristotle through Justin Martyr, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Descartes. The reader is left almost breathless but the author does not stop there! Also addressed are many important thinkers that emerged from the Enlightenment such as David Hume, Schleiermacher, Kant and Nietzsche. This naturally leads to brief mention of the development of liberal theology, biblical higher criticism and the gradual watering down of biblical authority. Where we arrive after travelling through this historical narrative is at the present day trend of post-modernism.