The Existence and Nature of God

 As I have purposely attempted to interact online via social media with people, I’ve come to realize the general lack of understanding of the simple and foundational truths of who God is. Part of this is fueled by people with a church affiliation that is more important than the Scriptures and what they teach within their pages. At other times it's because churches do such a poor job of teaching biblical doctrines to its people. In both cases, these believers have an opinion about everything, it’s just that there is very little biblical truth in those opinions. Everyone has a proverbial ‘axe to grind.’ And I’m sure that some will say that I do too. The exception here is – I attempt to study, understand and then relate what Scripture and history says, not what my personal church does or what my personal opinions are. That doesn’t mean we contradict one another, but it’s about priority and authority. What does Scripture say versus what does man say?

So, I’ve decided to address some foundational concepts outlined in Scripture. These are part of a book that another brother and I used for a class we taught on those foundations. The book is, “Truths that Transform: A Study of Christian Doctrine,” by Lay Action Ministry Program, David C. Cook Publishing Co., © 1990. This may not be the best book for the subject, but it does a very good job of communicating the basics in a study guide type of format, even if it's a bit too simplistic at times. And anything that I felt missing in the book, I supplemented from the theology books in my library. 

For my purposes here, the book will be used as an outline guide as I address the topics in the book. From the table of contents, the topics to be covered will be: 1) the existence and nature of God, 2) attributes of God and the Trinity, 3) the authority and inspiration of Scripture, 4) the creation and fall of mankind, 5) the person of Christ, 6) the ministry of Christ, 7) the nature and the work of the Holy Spirit, 8) the means and assurance of salvation, 9) the results of salvation, 10) spiritual beings, and 11) the last things. 

We begin with two vitally important topics: the Existence of God and Nature of God. A lot could be said for each of these, but to prevent having to write a book for each, I will attempt to keep the required information somewhat concise and hopefully very biblical. 

• The Existence of God – this is not about proving God exists; there are plenty of places on the internet that provide that information. This series and this topic starts with the presupposition that God does exist because Scripture says He does. I will, however, address some of the topical proofs, but if you are interested in a deeper dive, you will need to do that on your own.

• The Nature of God – this topic will address the qualities that Scripture says God has. There are a number of lists like this with additional qualities and some of them may be mentioned. Some theology books call them His nature and others call them His attributes. For this study, God’s nature are those areas where a number of His attributes naturally seem to be classified into. God’s attributes will be addressed in a next blog in this series. 

If you are the type of person that does not believe Scripture is God’s word to mankind, then you might not care to read this blog. 

Existence of God

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

As we start a discussion of the existence of God, there is one single truth that cannot be denied when we look at Scripture: neither the Old or New Testaments attempt to prove that God exists. His existence is assumed to be true. It is the foundational truth of Christian theology.

(19) because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. (20) For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Rom 1:19-20)

In these two verses in Romans, the Holy Spirit spoke through Paul that mankind can clearly see the handiwork of God by what He has made and can comprehend His existence as the maker through His eternal power and His divine nature and mankind is therefore without excuse should they choose to deny His existence. 

Scripture expresses a strong doctrine of natural revelation: the existence and attributes of God are evident from the creation itself, even though sinful human beings suppress and distort their natural knowledge of God. 

The Existence of God - The Gospel Coalition 

When people ask whether you can prove the existence of God, they usually mean, ‘do you have evidence that God exists?’

There are a lot of ways to tackle this question, but I’m going to assume that most people don’t need classical proofs. I’m not going to explain logic and argumentation techniques. That is for philosophy classes which really are not needed. And I also will assume that a sound and valid argument with sufficient proof should be considered if not outright accepted. And this is a knife that cuts in both directions: an argument to prove could actually disprove, or vis-versa. 

Let’s all agree that there are ‘objective moral and cultural truths’ that are required for any society to survive, function and succeed. To say that none exist is to believe that anarchy and chaos are the true goals and that is completely rejected, and the ‘why’ should be self-evident. History is filled with societies that self-destructed because they rejected their own ‘objective moral and cultural truths’ and thus allowed themselves to be conquered by others with a different set of ‘objective moral and cultural truths,’ which they gladly imposed upon the conquered. 

For the Christian, ‘objective moral and cultural truths’ depend directly on God, or they should. And the same is true for other religions. No matter the religion, at some point, those that profess that religion need to be able to, in some way, prove that their god exists for their religion to be meaningful. That doesn’t mean that the proof has to be 100%, but there has to be some sort of proof in the mind of the believer. And this is a question that has plagued religious believers since Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden. 

The Bible does not seek to prove that God exists, it seeks to determine ‘who’ He is. This is the whole reason that presuppositional apologetics exist. A good working definition is, 

Presuppositional apologetics is an approach to apologetics which aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith and defend it against objections by exposing the logical flaws of other worldviews and hence demonstrating that biblical theism is the only worldview which can make consistent sense of reality. 

What is presuppositional apologetics? | GotQuestions.org 

Some would put all their proverbial eggs in the basket of ‘evidence’ they can collect to prove that God exists, but the simple fact is that there will never be enough evidence to conclusively prove that any god exists. And this is just as true for Christianity as it is for Hinduism, Islam or atheism. So, let me explain why I said that.

What Evidence is There?

Many have pointed out that the Scripture never once attempts to prove that God exists. It simply starts with what God did:

• In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

• The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. (Ps 19:1)

• For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. (Rom 1:20)

But we as people look for that evidence anyway.

The Evidence Against

For the Christian, evidence is inextricably linked directly to Scripture. But before we explore that, what can be said about the evidence in the physical world around us? There is no way to be complete in this section, but summarizing the arguments against, there are a number of areas used to oppose religion, especially Christianity, as myth. But each of these areas have issues of their own. 

• Evolution - To start with, evolution is only a ‘theory’ because it is unprovable. It is a naturalist theory to explain a worldview assumed to be devoid of God. It doesn’t say God does NOT exist, it simply attempts to explain, via naturalistic processes, how the universe came into existence without relying on miracles. It attempts to use empirical evidence gathered from nature, astronomy, geology and the fossil record to theorize how the earth and life on it came into existence. But it does not tolerate studies to disprove its theses and it sometimes ignores evidence to the contrary. That means it acts much more like a dogma than a theory, and when it does that, it all of a sudden has become a religion and ceases to be a scientific proposition. That doesn’t mean that everything it proposes is easily explained, but when you rely upon more guesswork than actual evidence (like transitional species) then you are relying upon speculation and your faith. 

• Cosmology - this attempts to study everything outside of the earth to determine the age and the behaviors of planets, stars and gases in space to determine whether it had a starting point and when that might have been. The obvious problem here is that if the universe had a beginning, then who or what caused that beginning? Was there a ‘prime mover’? Where did the elements that make up stars and planets come from? Why is the universe expanding and where is it expanding from and to? All of this does more to prove that there is likely a ‘prime mover,’ or God, if you will, than disprove His existence.

• Anthropology - this is the study of mankind and is tied very closely to evolution. How long have humans been on this earth? Where did we come from, or how did we get our beginning? Did we start out as something else and then become human? Great questions, but just like evolution, the conclusions drawn are only theories, and theories that are not allowed to be challenged and disproven by a Christian worldview. Far too many of the studies in this field are mired with fakes and guesswork which begin to make it all feel, once again, much more like dogma and religion than a study seeking the truth about man’s beginnings. 

• Biology - Again, this is an area that is closely tied to evolution and filled with questions and problems that plague evolution and anthropology. Life is said to have spontaneously happened billions of years ago but attempts to reproduce the ‘spark’ that supposedly created us have failed thus far. And worse, the elements thought to have become ‘life’ could never have ‘sparked’ into life without that ‘prime mover’ creating that spark. (A great example of someone pointing out the problems in these areas is : James Tour Spotlight | sixdaysblog)

Christians have begun their own studies in each of these areas and have them under the heading of ‘creationism,’ and they have their own theories as well. But theories are not proof even if some of their best work has been in demonstrating that some of the assumptions in these evolutionary fields have been deeply flawed. 

So, where does that leave us? Frankly, right in the middle. The fields above seem to be more interested in disproving the existence of God than they are in proving the truthfulness of their own theories. There is more than enough evidence that the secular ‘evidence’ is highly speculative and filled with partial truths. And at the same time, nothing creationists have done has conclusively proven God’s existence, even if much of their work has bolstered the faith of Christians. 

You see, ‘faith’ is what is required to bridge the gap that evidence alone can never fill. And it does not matter whether you are an evolutionist or a creationist - faith is required to believe either since proof alone is impossible to achieve. And that becomes the bottom line for this section. There are evidential proofs that push each to a conclusion for one and against the other, but in the end it is faith that bridges that gap. 

External Evidence

So, what can help someone bridge that gap that only faith can fill? Is there any external evidence that Jesus was a real historical person who walked the earth 2000 years ago? Why, yes there is! So, let’s examine the external evidence because there is an abundance of it showing that Jesus was a real figure in history. [1]

• Tacitus (55-117 AD) - He is considered one of the greatest Roman historians and he acknowledged that Jesus was the founder of the Christian sect and had been executed during the  reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate.

• Josephus (37-100 AD) - He wrote the following, “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats… He was (the) Christ… he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.”

• Pliny the Younger (62-113 AD) - He was a Roman governor and describes Christians as worshiping Christ and living by moral commitments, showing the movement’s early and organized presence. 

• The Babylonian Talmud confirmed that Jesus was crucified on the eve of Passover.

• Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and an unbeliever, a critic of Christianity, states that Jesus really existed. 

• There is also the large collection of Gnostic writings that, even if we consider them fanciful and heretical, acknowledged that Jesus was a real person.

Now, to be fair, the above external evidence does not prove that Jesus was anything other than a man who thought He was the Jewish messiah and was executed in Jerusalem by Pontius Pilate. But there is other external evidence to consider is:

• His disciples, those that walked and talked with Jesus, became messengers of His teachings and died some of the most horrible deaths imaginable. If Jesus was lying about who He was, do you really think that they would have died for a message that was a lie? There are a few people in history that have done so, but the first three centuries are filled with people that died refusing to deny Christ as the Messiah and God. 

• The book of Acts records the deaths of Stephen and Philip, and Paul implied his own death would occur in Rome, which did in fact happen. 

• For the first three centuries of the Christian church’s existence, thousands of Christians were tortured and killed at the hands of the Jews and later the Romans in waves of persecutions. Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Clement of Rome, Origen of Alexandria, Justin Martyr are only a few of those who were martyred for the Christian faith. Thousands of unnamed people died for their faith in a Jewish Messiah who called Himself God. 

Even though this is only a very small portion of such evidence, none of it actually proves Jesus is who He says He is. But it does push the needle towards the ‘proof’ side a little. 

Internal Evidence

So, if Jesus was a real human being that lived 2000 years ago, someone who said He was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy and was literally God in human flesh, then there are only three possibilities: Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic or He is who He says He is, Lord and Savior of mankind. 

We should consider the number of prophecies recorded in the Old Testament that were fulfilled by Jesus. Some have compiled a list of over 300 prophecies that were fulfilled, but for the sake of brevity, here is a list of 16 fulfilled prophecies:

• A direct descendant of David (1 Ch 17:11-14)

• Born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2)

• Born of a virgin (Isa 7:14)

• Preceded by a messenger (Mal 3:1)

• Enter Jerusalem on a donkey (Zech 9:9)

• Betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (Zech 11:12)

• The 30 pieces of silver would be used to by a field from a potter (Zech 11:13)

• Beaten and He would not attempt to defend Himself (Isa 53:7)

• Crucified, having His hands and feet pierced (Ps 22:6-8; 22:16)

• Perform miracles (Isa 35:5-6)

• Suffer and die for the sins of the world (Isa 53:8, 12)

• A source of salvation for the gentiles (Isa 49:6)

• Buried in a rich man’s tomb (Isa 53:9)

• Raised from the dead (Ps 16:10)

• Both God and man (Isa 9:6)

• The Son of God (Ps 2:1-12)

Now, let’s pair this down even further to just 8 prophecies. If just 8 of these prophecies were fulfilled by a single person, the odds of that happening is 1 in 10 to the 17th power (or 10^17), which is 1 with seventeen zeros after it (1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000). This is an astronomical number for only eight fulfilled prophecies! It’s a number so big that it can only be considered 100% proof. Now, let’s increase the number, conservatively, to 48 fulfilled prophecies and those odds now jump to 1 in 10^157 power, or 1 with 157 zeros after it. This is a staggeringly large number. Now expand that to 300 fulfilled prophecies. Can anyone honestly say Jesus was not the Messiah, not the incarnate Son of God? [2] 

No one could purposely decide to fulfill these prophecies. How could a mere human force their betrayal for 30 pieces of silver, or that those same 30 pieces of silver would be used to buy a potter’s field? How could they force themselves to be born in Bethlehem, or force themselves to be a direct descendant of David? How could they force themselves to be buried in a rich man’s tomb? Maybe you could force one or two, but not all of them. And that makes the prophecies truly remarkable and undeniable.

So, if Jesus was a real person, and He was, then what you are left with is a decision - either you reject the overwhelming evidence of who Jesus says He is, or you accept it and accept Jesus as God in human flesh. 

The Nature of God

Theologians describe and categorize the nature and attributes of God differently, so don’t be surprised if you see these described differently in theology books. They are just general categories to help us humans better understand who the God of the Bible is. 

So, when we speak of the ‘nature of God,’ we are asking what God is like because our desire is to understand who He is and know Him, from a human perspective. And this is truly unique among the religions of the world, a God who is knowable. Allah, according to Islam, is unknowable. Hinduism has 3 million gods, which makes them all unknowable. Buddhism has no god at all. Christianity is the only belief that has a God that seeks to know the people He created. 

Our problem really is that we just do not understand who He is even though God, through His word, answered that question. He is tangible, knowable, personable and real, not some distant cosmic being with a hammer ready to smash us anytime we mess up. Even though religions like Hinduism and Islam have writings supposedly from their prophet(s) or god(s), these beings are ultimately unknowable. Their adherents serve a god/gods they fear while they continually attempt to ‘do’ things they ‘think’ will please the deity they think they serve in hopes of gaining approval and acceptance. But even if they do everything they are expected to do, their deity or deities are still unknowable. Unfortunately, there are people who call themselves ‘christians’ who attempt to do the very same thing!

So, let’s look at the nature of God as presented in Scripture.

God is Perfect

God never makes mistakes and we see this everywhere in Scripture.

• The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He. (Deut 32:4)

• The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. (Ps 19:7)

• This God—his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him. (Ps 18:30 ESV)

• “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mat 5:48)

So, let’s start with a definition. ‘Perfect’ in the Hebrew means ‘complete, whole, entire, sound, what is complete or entirely in accord with truth and fact.’ (H8549 - tāmîm - Strong's Hebrew Lexicon (NASB95)) Wayne Grudem defines the word this way, “God’s perfection means that God completely possesses all excellent qualities and lacks no part of any quality that would be desirable for [Him].” [3] 

So, God is flawless in everything He says and does. That also means that it would be impossible for Him to do anything imperfectly and impossible for Him to make mistakes. “Being perfect, God is the standard by which everything else will be measured.” (Is God perfect? | GotQuestions.org) If He was imperfect in any way, that would mean that there is another standard by which perfection would have to be measured. 

Consequences

There are some logical consequences for this:

• Everything God does is perfect, which means what He does is always just and truthful in all ways. 

• His law is perfect, which means neither He or His law is ever wrong. 

• All of His ways, meaning everything He thinks, plans and accomplishes, are always perfect. God never makes mistakes.

• Nothing ever needs to be added to or taken away from anything He says or does; His word is always perfect, i.e., Scripture. 

• He desires that we be perfect since we are called to be ‘like Him.’

God is One

God is one in His essential being. 

• “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! (Deut 6:4)

• Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;” (Mark 12:29)

• “Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: ‘I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me. (Isa 44:6)

• since God is one—who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. (Rom 3:30 ESV)

• You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. (Jas 2:19)

• one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:6)

This conveys that God is a singular being who has no rivals and no equals. He was and still is distinct from the polytheistic religions and beliefs so prevalent in the surrounding cultures during the Old Testament times, as well as during the first four centuries of the early Church and that extends to today. God’s oneness allowed for a personal relationship with His creation and gave purpose and meaning to that creation. 

Consequences

• God affirms His unique existence, His supreme authority in all things, and calls for mankind’s full and exclusive devotion to Him and only Him. 

• Believers are instructed to only worship the God of the Bible. Any worship of idols or other deities is strictly forbidden.

• Believers are assured of God’s ultimate authority and His reliability, which encourages them to obey and trust God.

• Recognizing ‘God is one’ cultivates a deep and personal relationship since He alone fulfills all of our spiritual needs. Polytheistic religions simply cannot foster this type of relationship. 

• Knowing that ‘God is one’ also focuses believers away from conflicting beliefs that could confuse them on how to relate to God. 

God is Spirit

God is not composed of matter and does not have a physical nature. He is incorporeal and invisible.

• “So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, (Deut 4:15)

• “God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24)

• Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2 Cor 3:17)

• Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Tim 1:17)

• No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, He has made him known. (John 1:18 ESV)

• which He will bring about at the proper time—He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. (1 Tim 6:15-16)

Unlike the deities around Israel in the Old Testament, God has no physical form and is not restricted to a specific location because God cannot be contained or controlled. Mankind is always looking to make images of those they worship as we see in the idols and nature worship references throughout the Old Testament. But there are references to God having physical forms like hands and feet. These are used to express a truth about God via a human analogy and not intended to insinuate that God can be physically seen or touched. There are even appearances of God in the Old Testament in a physical form but these are temporary manifestations only and are for specific reasons or purposes. 

Consequences

• God does not have bodily limitations. 

• He is not limited or confined to one location. He is everywhere all the time.

• He is not destructible (as in physical matter), He cannot be killed. 

• He cannot be represented by any physical likeness.

Self Existence of God

Nothing caused God to exist, He simply does.

• God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Ex 3:14)

• For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, (Isa 46:9)

• “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; (John 5:26)

• Before the mountains were born, Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. (Ps 90:2)

• “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Rev 1:8)

God exists in and of Himself and He needs no one for that existence. He is independent of any external cause or necessity for that existence. God is the uncreated creator. He is also the source of all things, the one that originated everything and He is the sustainer of everything that exists. 

Consequences

• His self-existence distinguishes Himself from all created things. 

• Nothing can create itself, that is a logical impossibility. 

• His self-existence assures God’s sovereignty, immutability, and independence.

• It provides a foundation for trusting in all that He says and does. 

• It provides certainty in His purposes and that they will always come to pass. 

God is a Personality

God has three aspects of personality: intellect, emotion and will. “He is an individual being with self-conscientiousness and will, capable of feeling, choosing and having a reciprocal relationship with other personal and social beings.” [4] 

Consequences

• He has a name (Ex 3:14)

• He engages in activity (Gen 1:1; 3:8-9; Mat 3:17)

• He has intelligence: knowledge (1 Sam 2:3), understanding (Job 28:20-23), wisdom (Prov 3:19-20; Isa 11:2)

• He has emotion: love (Jer 31:30), hate (Ps 5:5), anger (Rom 1:18), sorrow (Isa 53:3), compassion (Lam 3:22)

• He has will, He actively engages in the world to fulfill His purposes. (Eph 1:11; Jer 29:11; 1 Th 4:3; 1 Th 5:18)

The Names of God Describe His Personality

The Old Testament contains a lot of names for God which express an aspect of who He is. Some of these names are:

• El - denotes a singular form and has ‘strength’ as its unlying thought and appears 250 times in the Old Testament. 

• El Elyon - means God Most High or the Most High God.

• El Shaddai - means God Almighty.

• El Olam - means Everlasting God.

• Elohim - is a plural form and occurs over 2000 times. It means the ‘one supreme deity.’ 

• Yahweh (and used to be translated as Jehovah) - it comes from the Hebrew word, “I AM.”

Conclusion

In any presentation of the foundations of the Christian faith, one has to start somewhere. It seems to make sense to start with how we arrive at a belief that the God of the Bible exists and that He is unlike any other god invented by mankind. As we look at the two topics of this blog, the existence of God and the nature of God, I tried to provide a summary of the issues at hand for His existence. But one of the problems is that there is really no way to actually prove God exists, just like there is no way to prove evolution because both require faith. The proof for either can never be 100% since no humans were present for either. 

I did take some time to examine some of the issues and questions plaguing those that deny Christianity’s view on whether God exists, but the focus was on one simple question: ‘did the Jesus of the Bible actually exist in history?’ There is abundant historical evidence that Jesus was a real person documented to have existed 2000 years ago. And for Christians, we view God’s existence through the lens of Scripture because Scripture is what God provided to tell us about Himself. 

I then brought up the number of fulfilled prophecies in Scripture that make denying Jesus is who He says He is, statistically impossible. And even with that, one still cannot conclusively prove that Jesus is God incarnate. No matter what anyone says, we end up falling back on what Scripture says, it takes faith to believe. 

I then presented biblical information about His natures: 1) that He is perfect, 2) that He is one, 3) that He is spirit, 4) that He is self-existent, and 5) that He is a personality. Each of these were described with Scriptural proof of who God says He is. 

So, with this as our beginning, we see that God exists because history and Scripture say He does. And we see that Jesus was a real historical figure and the biblical prophecies about Him that were written hundreds and thousands of years before He was born demonstrate the impossibility that someone could purposely fulfill them. And why did I choose Jesus as the example? Because Scripture is about Him from the first pages of Genesis to the last pages of the Revelation. He was with God in the beginning and He is God (John 1:1). 

Looking at the nature of God shows His uniqueness. No god invented by man compares to Him. Every religion is about man making himself acceptable to God, but Christianity is about God making mankind acceptable to Himself. And as we progress through this series, this will become a constant theme. 

Footnotes

1. See the following sources: Did Jesus Exist? A Response to Mythicism, Did Jesus really exist historically?, Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible - Biblical Archaeology Society, Is there historical evidence for Jesus Christ's existence?, Did Jesus really exist? Is there any historical evidence of Jesus Christ? | GotQuestions.org, Was Jesus real? Examining the evidence - History Skills 

2. This drew upon a few sites for some of the statistics, such as: Allacin's Free Illustrated Summaries of Christian Classics, The Christ of Prophecy, and The Mathematical Probability that Jesus is the Christ. Thank you for your diligent research and write-ups. This was originally included in: The Authority of Scripture – shadmans Musings 

3. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, An Introduction to Biblical Theology (Zondervan Publishing House: Grand Rapids, MI, © 1994), p. 218.

4. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Baker House Books: Grand Rapids, MI, (2) 1983, 1984, 1985), p. 269.