This is another post from the Errancy Discussion list from June 14, 1997. After Magill, our Christian apologist, committed the logical fallacy of begging the question (i.e., in a debate, when one assumes that what he is arguing for is true without putting forth any evidence for it), Farrell Till, then gives an example of real argumentation:
Magill- Yes, would anyone want to have assurance and peace of
everlasting life in Christ Jesus? It's such a terrible thing to have
one's eternal destiny settled. It's such a horrific thing to know you
are going to live forever in a perfect body that will never again be
subject to corruption and mortality with all its hurts and pains. It's
such a tramatic experience to give one's life over to Jesus Christ
and have the shed blood of His sacrafice be personally applied to
my sin and atone for the penalty that I rightly deserve yet will never
receive because Christ has bore the penalty for me in my place.
"For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is everlasting life
IN Christ Jesus." (Romans 6:23)
TILL
As usual Magill engages in question begging with no attempt at all
to offer reasonable supporting evidence for the questions he begs.
As I said in a posting yesterday, I don't intend to dignify postings
like this with responses. However, I will urge Magill again to make
a serious effort to debate logically. I'll even help get him started.
Long-time subscribers will recall that when he came onto the list, we
were discussing Jesus's prediction that he would be three days and
three nights in the heart of the earth and the contexts of what the
gospels claimed about the length of his burial. Magill sent a posting
that accused us of stupidity and said something to the effect that
we need to study what the OT says about the Messiah's resurrection
on the third day.
In response to this, I challenged Magill to cite the OT scriptures that
refer to or in any way imply that the Messiah would die and be resurrected
on the third day. Magill, of course, was unable to supply the OT
references, because they simply don't exist. I pointed out that NT
writers clearly indicated in the following scriptures that the OT had
predicted a third-day resurrection of the Messiah:
Luke 24:45 Then he [Jesus] opened their minds to understand the
scriptures,
46 and he said to them, "Thus IT IS WRITTEN, that the Messiah is
to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day....
I Corinthians 15:3 For I handed on to you as of first importance
what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in
accordance with the scriptures,
4 and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES....
Now here are two NT writers who clearly said that the OT said that
the Christ would rise from the dead on the third day. If skeptics are
as ignorant as Magill claims we are, then why doesn't he produce
the OT scriptures that Luke and Paul were referring to? That would
really expose our ignorance. Magill, however, hasn't produced these
scriptures for the simple reason that they do not exist. Anyway, I
have presented this challenge to him again, so let's wait and see
if he can produce the OT scriptures that made a third-day
resurrection claim.
Farrell Till