Basic Proofs of Christianity

The following is something that a wrote a long time ago for an old blog. I have cleaned it up and turned it into something for this blog. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to comment on the post in response to the questions that I asked at the bottom.

The way I see it, the claims of Christianity can basically be viewed together as a three-legged stool attempting to support the basic claim that Christianity is true. If any one of the three legs falls, the support disappears, and the body of claims come toppling down.

In the case of Christianity, the three basic claim groups are: 1) Jesus fulfills me personally (personal testimony); 2) Jesus fulfilled the prophetic expectation of the Messiah (prophecy fulfillment); and, 3) The New Testament is an accurate record of the continued revelation of the God of Israel (NT authenticity).

If any one of these claims can be disproved, the weight of the Christian argument comes tumbling to the ground. Christianity depends on all of these things being true, though less so the claims of personal testimony, since these tend to accompany every form of religious expression based in a belief in a higher power.

My De-Conversion

It is hard to know the moment when I actually began believing in God, coming from a Catholic background and taught from early childhood of his existence.  An important shift in thought would have been the time I started taking God more seriously, which involved incorporating teachings from the bible into my life and this did not occur till young adulthood.

A triggering event that prompted a more thorough study of the bible were the visitations by Jehovah Witnesses, who were distributing their pamphlets while educating me of their views.  I was impressed by what seemed to be the amount of biblical knowledge they had and at the time of their visits,  both my husband and I were experiencing problems of our own so these meetings had become a welcome.

My “Testimony”

I prayed the sinner’s prayer when I was twelve years old, just after seeing the series of movies made by Mark IV Productions (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder et cetera). I was baptized at the age of fifteen, having spent my first three years reading the Bible (in King James) and learning to challenge adults in their thinking regarding the Bible. I started to learn Greek at the age of seventeen and went to Bible College at eighteen, with intentions of going into ministry. I was there for three years before I left Christianity (as the result of a long inner struggle) and began my trek into Judaism. After three years of study at the local synagogue, I converted in 2003 and came to Israel for the first time in 2004. I held onto my belief in God throughout those years and believed in the revelation of the Torah up until last year. I no longer believe that the Torah was inspired by a divinity or given on Mount Sinai. I no longer believe that there was an exodus in which over a million Israelites left Egypt. I’m rather sold on the position that the Torah was majorly composed in the time of Josiah, king of Judah – probably by his scribe Shafan in collaboration with the priest Hilkiah (Jeremiah’s father).