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    Finding the Real Jesus: A Guide for Curious Christians and Skeptical Seekers
    Finding the Real Jesus: A Guide for Curious Christians and Skeptical Seekers
    Finding the Real Jesus: A Guide for Curious Christians and Skeptical Seekers
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    Finding the Real Jesus: A Guide for Curious Christians and Skeptical Seekers

    By Lee Strobel

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    Who was Jesus--really?

    For centuries, the Christian church has taught that Jesus is the divine Son of God, crucified for sinners and raised from the dead. In recent years, however, that picture of Jesus has come under widely publicized attack from sources ranging from critical scholars to Internet pundits to popular historians and others.

    The new portraits of Jesus seem persuasive. You can't help but wonder . . . 

    • Did Christianity merely copy its beliefs from earlier mythology?
    • Did the church suppress alternate gospels?
    • Did Jesus never die on the cross or rise from the dead for sinners?
    • Is the New Testament hopelessly riddled with errors?

    New York Times bestselling author Lee Strobel helps you separate truth from media hype, sound scholarship from bias, and fact from speculation. Digging below the surface, this book provides credible, informed answers to today's most pressing questions about Jesus.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateDec 15, 2009
    ISBN9780310866138
    Author

    Lee Strobel

    Lee Strobel, former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Lee earned a journalism degree at the University of Missouri and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to study at Yale Law School, where he received a Master of Studies in Law degree. He was a journalist for fourteen years at the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, winning Illinois’ top honors for investigative reporting (which he shared with a team he led) and public service journalism from United Press International. Lee also taught First Amendment Law at Roosevelt University. A former atheist, he served as a teaching pastor at three of America’s largest churches. Lee and his wife, Leslie, have been married for more than fifty years and live in Texas. Their daughter, Alison, and son, Kyle, are also authors. Website: www.leestrobel.com

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    • 5/5
      Wow! I can't even begin to describe this book, except to say, another great Lee Strobel read.Strobel begins with all of the arguments against a real Jesus, and slowly begins to build his case until when you reach the end, he has completely won you over! I can't imagine this man not being one of the great soul-winners of our lifetime! His arguments are always factual. He leads you away from the many self-proclaimed "prophets and bishops" of our time who know so very little about the real Jesus. He shows you where those who argue away the real Jesus or his death and resurrection, have been led astray. And in this book, he even argues against many Christian colleges, universities and seminaries that are no longer teaching the scriptural Jesus and are sugar coating the scriptures to provide us with a 21st century Jesus who is forgiving without repentance.I have found in Strobel a champion of the real Jesus. If you know Strobel's past, you will know that he was once a self-proclaimed atheist, and a journalist. So using his journalistic tools, he attempted to disprove Jesus was real. But what he managed to do, was to prove to himself that He is very real, and is much alive today!This is an awesome book. Excellent for debate and group studies and private study. I highly recommend it.

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    Finding the Real Jesus - Lee Strobel

    0310287871_content_0001_002

    Resources by Lee Strobel

    The Case for Christ

    The Case for Christ audio

    The Case for Christ — Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

    The Case for Christ for Kids (with Rob Suggs)

    The Case for Christmas

    The Case for Christmas audio

    The Case for a Creator

    The Case for a Creator audio

    The Case for a Creator — Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

    The Case for a Creator for Kids (with Rob Suggs)

    The Case for Easter

    The Case for Faith

    The Case for Faith audio

    The Case for Faith — Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

    The Case for Faith for Kids (with Rob Suggs)

    The Case for the Real Jesus

    The Case for the Real Jesus audio

    Faith Under Fire, curriculum series

    God’s Outrageous Claims

    God’s Outrageous Claims audio

    Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary

    Off My Case for Kids (with Robert Elmer)

    Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage

    (with Leslie Strobel)

    Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage audio

    What Jesus Would Say

    0310287871_content_0003_002

    ZONDERVAN

    FINDING THE REAL JESUS

    Copyright © 2008 by Lee Strobel

    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

    ePub Edition August 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86613-8

    Requests for information should be addressed to:

    Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Strobel, Lee, 1952 –

            Finding the real Jesus : a guide for curious Christians and skeptical seekers / Lee Strobel.

                p. cm.

            ISBN 978-0-310-28787-2

            1. Jesus Christ — Historicity. 2. Jesus Christ — Biography —History and criticism. I. Title.

        BT303.2.S77   2008

        232 — dc22

    2008025042

    All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

    Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource to you. These are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

    Editorial assistance by Cassandra Gunn

    08 09 10 11 12 • 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    CONTENTS

    Cover Page

    Title Page

    Copyright Page

    Introduction

    Portrait #1: The Gnostic Jesus

    Is He a Purveyor of Secret Wisdom or Redeemer of the World?

    Portrait #2: The Misquoted Jesus

    Is His Story in the Bible Hopelessly Riddled with Errors?

    Portrait #3: The Failed Jesus

    Was He Unsuccessful in Fulfilling the Ancient Prophecies?

    Portrait #4: The Uncrucified Jesus

    Did He Ever Really Die on the Cross?

    Portrait #5: The Deceased Jesus

    Are Stories of His Resurrection Fabricated?

    Conclusion

    Recommended Resources

    Notes

    About the Publisher

    Share Your Thoughts

    INTRODUCTION

    I first encountered Frank Walus when I was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Federal prosecutors had revealed to me the startling news that this unassuming Southwest Side resident was actually a Nazi terrorist who had participated in the murder of innocent Jews in Poland during World War II.

    They painted a gruesome picture. They said that while he was accompanied by Nazi SS troops, Walus separated children from their parents and then helped shoot the children to death. Later, working with the Gestapo, he allegedly ordered a woman to disrobe in the presence of her two daughters — and when she refused, he shot her to death. The two girls were also killed. In addition, Walus was accused of beating a Jewish prisoner to death with a metal bar at a local Gestapo headquarters.¹

    Prosecutors filed a lawsuit to strip Walus of his U.S. citizenship on grounds that he had concealed his Nazi past when he applied for entry into the country. At his trial, aging witnesses dramatically pointed out Walus as the perpetrator of atrocities in the Polish cities of Kielce and Czestochowa. A federal judge declared the government’s charges substantiated, and Walus was ordered to relinquish his citizenship.²

    It would be tempting, in light of the horrendous image of Walus that emerged at his trial, to join a gang of vigilantes and storm the courthouse demanding swift and severe punishment for this monster. After all, eyewitnesses identified him as a heartless killer and a judge ruled that the case against him had been proven by a preponderance of the evidence. But not so fast.

    Walus’ attorneys offered a far different portrait of him. He wasn’t a collaborator with the Nazis, they said. Rather, Walus was a victim himself — trucked to Germany and required to work as a forced laborer on farms in three villages.

    They also pointed out that there was no corroborating evidence to back up the eyewitnesses who identified Walus as a Nazi thug. And they cast doubt on whether these witnesses could accurately identify Walus, then in his 50s, based on their memories of what he looked like when they claimed they briefly encountered him as a teenager during the war.

    However, it wasn’t until after the trial that the true picture of Walus came into sharp focus. His attorney, Charles W. Nixon, found a Red Cross list of forced laborers in Germany during the war, including thirty who were Poles like Walus. Eight of them offered sworn testimony that Walus had been among them.

    Then a German priest and two former French prisoners of war confirmed Walus’ account. Finally, a German archivist unearthed a copy of Walus’ intake working permit issued by the Nazis in 1940 — further confirmation of his defense.

    In light of these developments, investigators dropped the entire case against Walus. The new evidence, said a federal judge, exonerates the defendant of all charges made against him.³

    I’m glad the case is over, Walus told the press. But I lost everything: my reputation, my health. What was done to me was terrible.⁴

    In the troubling case of Frank Walus, two diametrically opposed portraits of the same individual were presented. There was testimony to support each one —but the most dramatic picture, though touted by a credible source, evaporated upon closer examination of the surrounding facts.

    For Walus, the effects were personally devastating. That’s bad enough, but there’s even more at stake when we consider the conflicting portraits of Jesus Christ that are being enthusiastically promoted to the public these days.

    Increasingly, the traditional picture of Jesus is under an intellectual onslaught from critical scholars, popular historians, TV documentaries, bestselling authors, Internet bloggers, Muslim debaters,

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