Here's a very clear, concise case by Jonathan McLatchie for very early dating of the Gospels.
Paul quotes Luke in his epistles, so this places Luke prior to the writing of those epistles, which we can date with some certainly since we know when Paul died. It's generally agreed that Mark was written prior to Matthew and Luke. So this places the Gospels within 20 years of Jesus's earhtly ministry.
20 years is not considered problematic at all for accuracy in modern times. There's no reason to think otherwise for ancient times.
There are many questions to ask about where the archeology in this story ends and the interpretation begins, but at the very least, it shows that human beings are human beings. Those who lived thousands and thousands of years ago may not have had all the knowledge and technology we've accumulated, but as creations in the image of God, they shared all the intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity that we experience as human beings.
Everyone has a worldview—a framework of answers to the most fundamental questions we have as human beings, through which we view the world. Nancy Pearcey's book, Total Truth, explains how every worldview follows the same basic structure: 1) Creation (Why are we here? What is our purpose/ideal state?); 2) Fall (What has gone wrong? What happened to frustrate our ideal state?); and 3) Redemption (How do we fix what went wrong and return to the way things should be?)
What we see in the unfolding of this article is nothing less than a contemporary, secular worldview imposed on these artifacts.
First, Creation—a time when we were in harmony with nature:
Seen in this way, the Eden story, in Genesis, tells us of humanity's innocent and leisured hunter-gatherer past, when we could pluck fruit from the trees, scoop fish from the rivers and spend the rest of our days in pleasure.
Second, the Fall—when we started to use nature:
But then we 'fell' into the harsher life of farming, with its ceaseless toil and daily grind…. But there was a problem for these early farmers, and it wasn't just that they had adopted a tougher, if ultimately more productive, lifestyle. They also experienced an ecological crisis. These days the landscape surrounding the eerie stones of Gobekli is arid and barren, but it was not always thus. As the carvings on the stones show—and as archaeological remains reveal—this was once a richly pastoral region….
About 10,000 years ago, the Kurdish desert was a 'paradisiacal place', as Schmidt puts it. So what destroyed the environment? The answer is Man.
As we began farming, we changed the landscape and the climate. When the trees were chopped down, the soil leached away; all that ploughing and reaping left the land eroded and bare. What was once an agreeable oasis became a land of stress, toil and diminishing returns. And so, paradise was lost.
Okay, I think I see where this is going.
The author explains how the Fall had a "darkening effect on the human mind,"—that is, it gave rise to angry, destructive religion. And then finally, Redemption—heed the warning:
No one knows why Gobekli was ["deliberately and systematically"] buried. Maybe it was interred as a kind of penance: a sacrifice to the angry gods, who had cast the hunters out of paradise. Perhaps it was for shame at the violence and bloodshed that the stone-worship had helped provoke.
Whatever the answer, the parallels with our own era are stark. As we contemplate a new age of ecological turbulence, maybe the silent, sombre, 12,000-year-old stones of Gobekli Tepe are trying to speak to us, to warn us, as they stare across the first Eden we destroyed.
So here's a summary of the story: Man once lived in a natural paradise where "herds of game" and "rivers of fish" leapt into their pots. But then man settled down to build civilization, and as soon as he started the stress and toil of using natural resources to create things, he began to destroy the environment, leading to the long history of the root of all our troubles—climate change. But the way back is to heed the warning of the stones: we ought to bury our insatiable, destructive desire to conquer and use the natural world. Only then will we regain our natural paradise and be free from reactionary religion.
Not since the Jesus Tomb have I seen anything as amusing as the co-opting of this ancient temple into the religion of climate change.
I've been reading Richard Wurmbrand's Tortured for Christ, a book about the sufferings of Christians under the Communists, particularly Wurmbrand's own suffering in Romania. This book puts some flesh and bones on what we read about suffering in 1 Peter, enabling us to see with our own "eyes" the reality of the unique role suffering plays in our purpose as Christians.
In 1 Peter 2:9-10 we read:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
God calls and saves a people for Himself for the purpose of "proclaiming His excellencies"—the pinnacle of those excellencies being His mercy and grace that changed us, His enemies, into His people. And in 1 Peter, we find two ways that suffering accomplishes this purpose. The first is in 1:6-7:
[Y]ou have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The truth about Christ's death on the cross for our sins, about our adoption as God's children, and our future enjoyment of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit forever is something far more precious than gold. And every time a Christian endures suffering and holds on to this truth instead of giving up in unbelief, cynicism, or bitterness, he is revealing God's glory to the world by saying the height of God's value is even greater than the depth of pain in suffering. In the case of Wurmbrand and his fellow prisoners, this is saying something indeed.
But there's yet another way suffering accomplishes God's purpose for us. Peter twice couples our suffering with a description Christ's suffering. First in 2:21-24:
For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.
For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.
And again in 3:17-18:
For it is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong. For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.
When we suffer unjustly and respond as Christ did, we serve as a picture of Christ to our persecutors and to the world, proclaiming His glory and revealing Him to those who don’t yet know Him.
Wurmbrand and his fellow Christian prisoners would suffer through their beatings, refusing to deny Christ, and then turn and pray in love for those tormentors whose sin was responsible for the cruel destruction of their bodies. By this living illustration of the beauty of Christ's character, work, and value, some of the guards saw Jesus for the first time and became His followers.
The suffering of Christians, inevitable and expected, uniquely accomplishes both of these goods in the service of our ultimate purpose of glorifying God and His grace.
(Right now on Amazon, the Kindle version of Tortured for Christ is only $1. And you don't need a Kindle! Just download a free app to read the book on your PC or Mac.)
Yes, of course. But can you explain what morality is and where it comes from without God? That's the key problem for an atheist worldview. Craig Hazen explains in this Biola Magazinearticle. Here's the conclusion:
The primary technique the new atheists have adopted for dealing with the issue of the origin or grounding of the moral law is obfuscation. The new atheists are very fond of saying, “We don’t need God to be good.” Indeed, they often say that atheists, agnostics and skeptics often lead more wholesome lives than lifelong professing Christians. Now, theists should not be fooled by this. Our response should be, “Of course you don’t need God to be good — we’ve never claimed that you do.” You see, it is not knowledge (epistemology) of the moral law that is a problem — after all, the Bible teaches that this law is written on every human heart. Rather, the daunting problem for the new atheist is the nature and source (ontology) of the moral law. Here are some questions you can ask Richard Dawkins the next time you sit next to him on a bus:
• If everything ultimately must be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry, help me understand what a moral value is (does it have mass, occupy space, hold a charge, have wavelength)?
• How did matter, energy, time and chance result in a set of objective moral values? Did the big bang really spew forth “love your enemy?” If so, you have to help me understand that.
• What makes your moral standard more than a subjective opinion or personal preference? What makes it truly binding or obligatory? Why can’t I just ignore it? Won’t our end be the same (death and the grave) either way?
The old atheists did not want to have to face questions like these, so they simply denied the reality of objective moral values. The new atheists have thrown the door open. Let’s not make it easy for them. Let’s ask the hard questions in a winsome and engaging way.
