Click HERE to check out some photos from our amazing baptisms on January 29!  A special thanks to Nate Dawson for snapping these great pics!

Those who don’t live at the top of the hill in West Linn might have wondered at our wimpiness in closing our building for much of Monday evening through Wednesday morning.  Please trust us when we say that you didn’t want to brave the icy roads leading up to the church – the cars and buses littering the ditches were a testament to that!

Snow doesn’t phase us, but we’ll close whenever the roads or our parking lot are too icy for you to get here safely. On Tuesday, the wet snow was coming down too quickly to clear it so we could reach the ice below to deal with it. Enjoy the pictures from earlier this week as we move back into our typical winter rain…

It’s warmed up slightly, and the weather report calls for above-freezing temperatures until after 8pm, so we’re holding our 6pm service as usual.  Come join us!

On Sunday Pastor Joel taught the first message in our new series The Face of God. We began with The Gospel Truth, looking at the evidence for Jesus and answering common questions on the reliability of the Gospels. We can confidently read the four Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — trusting they preserve true arguments for the person of Jesus with historical reliability. (We have a paper trail centuries back.) There we discover who He is, why He came, and what it means to follow Him.

We also handed out a document at the end of each service, available below. See more resources — online articles and books — linked to at the bottom.

Did you know that …

• … approximately 6,000 ancient handwritten Greek New Testament manuscript copies still exit today? The earliest dates to 130 AD. Homer’s Iliad ranks 2nd in terms of the number of remaining copies, with 650 still in existence (but the gap between Homer’s writing and the earliest copies we have is 500 years).
• … as of the 1950s, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has confirmed archeological evidence for the Old Testament text preserved through the centuries?
• … evidence for Jesus Christ comes many written documents from the first century, including 39 ancient sources in addition to the New Testament and early church leaders?
• … the text of the Bible is far better preserved than the writings of Caesar, Plato or Aristotle?

Download: Did You Know? [PDF]

Additional Resources:

Online Articles:

• “Can We Trust the New Testament as a Historical Document?” article on the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry website
• Archaeology and the Bible Q&A, ChristianAnswers.net website

Books:

• The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, by Lee Strobel [Kindle]
  • Also see Strobel’s video “Is the Bible Reliable as a Historical Document?” an interview with Jerry Johnston on the Investigating Faith website

• Can We Trust the Gospels?: Investigation the Reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, by Mark D. Roberts [Kindle]
  • Also see his blog series, “Are the New Testament Gospels Reliable?” the first draft of his book

• Rose Book of Bible Charts, Maps & Timelines (a reference book available in WCC library)
• The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F.F. Bruce [Kindle]
• The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, by Craig L. Blomberg (more academic; deals with every supposed contradiction and discrepancy in the Gospels)
• Reinventing Jesus: how contemporary skeptics miss the real Jesus and mislead popular culture, by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer and Daniel Wallace (more academic)

Click here to check out a few pics from our Christmas Eve services!

A lot of you have been asking about the Christmas Story video we showed at the start of our services on Christmas Eve.  Click here to watch!

On December 11, we had the privilege of hosting a concert with Future of Forestry and Kye Kye!  Check out the pics HERE!

We had a great time baptizing people on December 4 after the 11am service.  Check out some pictures HERE!

We had an awesome time baptizing over 20 people on October 23 after the 11am service.  Check out some pictures HERE!

Thanks to the 100+ people who came out to the I BELONG HERE class on Oct 18! We are so excited that so many of you are going “all in” and becoming part of the family at Willamette Christian Church!