The Case for Christ Graduate Edition: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

By Lee Strobel and Jane Vogel

Every graduate faces important decisions about their future, but the most important question they must ask themselves is: What do I believe in? Bestselling author Lee Strobel explores this very question in The Case for Christ Graduate Edition, using his award-winning journalistic skills to investigate Jesus and prove once and for all whether the claims about him are true. With its elegant design and ribbon marker, this beautiful keepsake makes a perfect graduation gift.

There's historical proof that Jesus existed, but was he really the savior he claimed to be? Lee Strobel decided to dig into the evidence to see if the Bible's claims about Jesus were true. The Case for Christ Graduate Edition adapts the New York Times bestselling The Case for Christ and presents Strobel’s well-researched and eye-opening investigation specially for young adults. Strobel’s findings, as well as his journey from skeptic to believer, will resonate with graduates from all walks of life.

The Case for Christ Graduate Edition features:

• A beautifully designed cover and ribbon marker, making it ideal for gift giving
• Hard-hitting questions about Christianity that young adults often ask and encounter in their own lives
• A thorough investigation into the historical reliability, eyewitness testimonies, and scientific evidence of Jesus’s birth, miracles, ministry, and resurrection
• Infographics and charts to make the facts clear
• Research and findings from The Case for Christ, which has sold over 5 million copies

Also check out these other books from Lee Strobel for young adults: The Case for a Creator Student Edition, The Case for Faith Student Edition, The Case for the Real Jesus Student Edition, and The Case for Miracles Student Edition

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9780310761815

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

Book preview

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 Christ for Kids 90-Day Devotional (with Jesse Florea)

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 Grace

The Case for Grace Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

The Case for Grace for Kids (with Jesse Florea)

The Case for the Real Jesus

The Case for the Real Jesus Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

Discussing the Da Vinci Code curriculum (with Gary Poole)

Discussing the Da Vinci Code discussion guide (with Gary Poole)

Experiencing the Passion of Jesus (with Garry Poole)

Exploring the Da Vinci Code (with Gary Poole)

Faith Under Fire (curriculum series)

God’s Outrageous Claims

Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary

Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage (with Leslie Strobel)

Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage (audio)

What Jesus Would Say

ZONDERVAN

The Case for Christ Graduate Edition

Copyright © 2001, 2017 by Lee Strobel

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

EPub Edition February 2017 ISBN 9780310761815

This edition: ISBN 978–0–310–76180–8

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strobel, Lee, 1952-

Case for Christ: a journalist’s personal investigation of the evidence for Jesus / Lee Strobel with Jane Vogel.—[New] student ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-310-23484-5 (softcover)

1. Jesus Christ—Person and offices. 2. Apologetics. I. Vogel, Jane. II. Title.

BT203.S77 2001

232.9’08—dc21 2001017677

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked NIrV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Reader’s Version®, NIrV®. Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1998 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIrV and New International Reader’s Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

Scripture quotations marked NCV are taken from the New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked CEV are taken from the Contemporary English Version. Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked The Message are taken from The Message. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 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.

Cover design:

Interior design: Denise Froehlich

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Introduction

1.  What’s Wrong with Me?

PART ONE: WHO IS THIS JESUS?

2.  Did Jesus Really Think He Was God?

Christianity: A Religion of Intolerance?

3.  Was Jesus Crazy to Claim to Be God?

4.  Did Jesus Match the Identity of the Messiah?

Living and Forgiving Like God

PART TWO: HOW RELIABLE IS THE INFORMATION ABOUT CHRIST?

5.  Can You Trust Christ’s Biographies?

6.  Is There a Case for Christ Outside the Bible?

Jesus and Slavery

PART THREE: CAN A DEAD MAN COME BACK TO LIFE?

7.  Did Jesus Fake His Death?

8.  What Happened to the Body?

9.  What Did Jesus Do after Easter?

Conclusion: So What?

An Interview with Lee Strobel

Meet Lee Strobel

Introduction

My friends and I were celebrating at an Italian restaurant across the street from the University of Missouri. I was set to graduate in a few days, and I had just accepted a job offer: a three-month internship at the Chicago Tribune, with a promise that if I performed well, I’d get a permanent job as a reporter.

At one point during the meal, somewhere between the breadsticks and the Neapolitan ice cream, my best friend, Ersin, made an offhand remark about how my internship was certainly a great gift from God.

His comment startled me. During the four years I’d known Ersin, I don’t think we’d ever talked about religion.

Wait a minute, let me get this straight, I said. Are you telling me that someone as intelligent as you—valedictorian, science whiz, and all that—that you actually believe that God exists? I always figured you were beyond that!

It was clear that Ersin was equally surprised. "What are you trying to tell me? he said. Are you saying there isn’t a God? Are you telling me that someone as intelligent as you doesn’t believe in God? You’ve got to be kidding!"

We were both genuinely astonished. I couldn’t believe that a sharp person like Ersin had actually bought into a fairy tale like the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator of the universe. Hadn’t he learned anything at college?

If you could freeze-frame my attitude toward God, that would be it: Intelligent people didn’t believe in him. All it took was a quick look at the evidence to know that Christianity was nothing but superstition and wishful thinking.

But to be honest, that’s all I had ever really given the evidence: a quick look. And I was happy to keep it that way for years—until one day, my life took a strange turn, pushing me into an all-out investigation into the facts surrounding the case for Christianity.

That’s what this book is about. I’ll take you along as I retrace the events that led to a nearly two-year exploration of the evidence for and against believing in Christ.

After weighing the evidence, I made my decision. But I can’t make yours. That’s your choice. I hope you take it seriously, because there may be more at stake than just idle curiosity. If Jesus is to be believed—and I realize that may be a big if for you at this point—then nothing is more important than how you respond to him.

Check out the evidence for yourself.

CHAPTER 1

What’s Wrong

WITH ME?

I could take you back to the very place where I lost my faith in God. I was fourteen years old.

At Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, Illinois, the biology classroom was on the third floor in the northwest corner of the building. I was sitting in the second row from the windows, third chair from the front, when I first learned about Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Revolutionized by Evolution

This was revolutionary to me! Our teacher explained that life originated millions of years ago when chemicals randomly reacted with each other in a warm ocean on the primordial earth. Then, through a process of survival of the fittest and natural selection, life-forms gained in complexity. Eventually, human beings emerged from the same family tree as apes.

Although the teacher didn’t address this aspect of evolution, its biggest implication was obvious to me: If evolution explains the origin and development of life, then God was out of a job! What did we need God for? Life was just the natural result of the random interaction of chemicals.

To my mind, this was great news! Finally, here was a rational basis for atheism. If evolution explains life, then the first chapters of the Bible must be mythology or wishful thinking. And if that were true of the first chapters, why not the rest? Jesus could not have been God. Miracles aren’t possible; they’re just the attempts by pre-scientific people to make sense out of what they couldn’t understand but which now science can explain.

For the first time, I had a rational reason to abandon Christianity.

Bored by Religion

Not that I’d ever really been a Christian.

My parents believed in God and had done their best to try to spark spiritual interest in me. When I was a kid, they brought me to a Protestant church, where I would struggle to stay awake during the twenty-minute sermons. I didn’t understand the rituals, I couldn’t relate to the organ music, and I quickly concluded that religion was a waste of an otherwise perfectly good Sunday.

When I was in junior high, my parents enrolled me in confirmation class. This meant that one day a week after school, I was forced to sit in the church’s airless basement and go through a series of classes.

I can’t recall learning much about the Bible—or about Jesus, for that matter. Mostly, I remember having to memorize things like the Ten Commandments and then stand and recite them. Nobody knew them well; we sort of bluffed our way through as the pastor would prompt us. It was mind-numbingly dull. I don’t remember anything that I was forced to commit to memory back then, although I do have vivid memories of the pastor lecturing us and telling us sternly that we didn’t have enough diligence. I didn’t even know what that was, but apparently we were bad for not having it.

Graduating from Church

When the time came to be formally confirmed