Timothy Paul Jones

Free apologetics resources from Timothy Paul Jones

Timothy Paul Jones

Family Ministry: What Are Faith-Talks and Why Do They Matter?

::WHY FAITH-TALKS?:: The purpose of faith-talks is to restore Christian parents to their God-ordained role as teachers of God’s Word in their children’s lives. Your ministry may choose some term other than faith-talks, of course. “Family devotions” might communicate the point more clearly in your context; somewhere else, you could go with “family faith-training” or […]

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Church History: Why Church History Matters

So why is church history so important?  Or is it? For the average Christian, the thought of studying church history most likely seems boring or irrelevant–but church history is vitally important! So what’s so important about church history? Here’s a question-and-answer I did a short while ago on this topic as part of a discussion […]

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Family Ministry: Why Retention Rates Can’t Determine a Ministry’s Effectiveness

If you’ve spent much time in youth ministry, you’ve probably heard the claim at least a few times: “Nine out of ten youth walk away from the church after high school!” But, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, there’s good reason to doubt this claim. The infamous nine-out-of-ten dropout statistic was always a false alarm. Most […]

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Family Ministry: “As it Were a Little Church,” The Puritan Model for Family Discipleship

Even in the latest models of family ministry, there are components that can be traced back centuries before the recent surge of family ministry books and conferences. Among the Puritan heirs of the Reformation, there was a clear model for family discipleship that could be learned and transferred from one context to another. Brief, daily times […]

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Proclamation: “Don’t Worry. I Read the Book. He Doesn’t Stay Dead.”

One rule in our household is that, if a book is turned into a movie, everyone must read the book before watching the movie. Our oldest daughter was eight years old when C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was turned into a feature film. In the weeks leading up to the movie’s […]

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Apologetics: Why Some Books Made It Into the New Testament and Others Didn’t

It’s New Year’s Eve! Tomorrow, many of you will begin reading through the Bible in a year. Before you do, I want to plant a question in your mind: Why these books? Why spend the year reading through these ancient texts and not some other documents? What’s so important about these books that owe their […]

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Church History: What Did Francis of Assisi Mean When He Said, “If Necessary Use Words”?

You’ve probably heard the quotation at least a few times, most likely in a sermon encouraging people to live their faith in the world. “‘Preach the gospel at all times,’ Francis of Assisi said. ‘If necessary, use words.’” It’s a heartwarming sentiment with two flaws. First off, St. Francis never said it; second, even if […]

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Apologetics: How The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife May Have Been Forged

Earlier this week, I mentioned that the news of the fragment known as Gospel of Jesus’s Wife will end “quite possibly with the revelation that the fragment was a forgery in the first place.” My rationale for this suspicion was and is insufficient to advance any sort of argument. I am no expert in Coptic […]

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Apologetics: Why the Singleness of Jesus Makes the Best Sense of the Evidence

“It is an embarrassing insight into human nature that the more fantastic the scenario, the more sensational is the promotion it receives and the more intense the faddish interest it attracts,” biblical scholar Raymond Brown wrote nearly two decades ago. “People who would never bother reading a responsible analysis of the traditions about how Jesus […]

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Why No Baptized Lions Or Talking Crosses Made It Into Your Bible

From the first century forward, Christians viewed testimony that could be connected to eyewitnesses of Jesus as uniquely authoritative. The logic of this standard was simple: The people most likely to know the truth about Jesus were either eyewitnesses who had encountered Jesus personally or close associates of these witnesses. So, although Christians wrangled for […]

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G.K. Chesterton on the Historical Case for the Resurrection

The historical case for the Resurrection is that everybody else, except the Apostles, had every possible motive to declare what they had done with the body, if anything had been done with it. The Apostles might have hidden it in order to announce a sham miracle, but it is very difficult to imagine men being […]

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N.T. Wright on Why Resurrection Makes the Best Sense of the Historical Evidence

It will not do … to say that Jesus’ disciples were so stunned and shocked by his death, so unable to come to terms with it, that they projected their shattered hopes onto the screen of fantasy and invented the idea of Jesus’ ‘resurrection’ as a way of coping with a cruelly broken dream. That […]

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Apologetics: Gospel-Centered Apologetics

So much can depend on the answer to a single question. “Will you marry me?” “Did he get the job?” “Was I accepted into the program?” “Did she survive?” “Will you forgive me?” Sometimes, everything comes together—or falls apart—in the shadow of a single question. The Christian faith is that way. In the case of […]

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Apologetics: Is It Possible that Jesus’ Body Was Left on the Cross?

  The Obscenity of the Cross in the Ancient World With few exceptions, even the most skeptical scholars admit that Jesus was crucified—and with good reason. Not only Christian authors but also the Roman historian Tacitus mention the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s highly unlikely that first-century Christians would have fabricated such a shameful fate for […]

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