I wrote yesterday that the fact that people wrote about Jesus and his resurrection is compelling evidence that there was a resurrection since none of his followers expected him to come back to life. But there are some for whom that evidence is insufficient. Bart Ehrman comes to mind. Dr Ehrman is a very popular professor of New Testament at the University of North Carolina. A professor of NT who doesn’t believe the NT.

My friend Rob Webster knows Dr Ehrman from Rob’s time as a Campus Crusade representative at UNC. I asked Rob the other day, “Bart is a graduate of Wheaton! What happened to him?” Rob explained that when Bart was a grad student, a professor made a notation on one of his papers, “What if the Bible is just wrong here?” Bart had never considered the possibility that the Bible could be wrong, and he has devoted the rest of his life and career (so far) to proving just that.

Do you know the name Charles Templeton? How about Billy Graham? You may not have heard about Templeton, but in the late 1940s, he and Billy Graham were both traveling evangelists for Youth for Christ. Thousands came to faith under the preaching of both, and some said that Templeton was a better speaker than Graham. Here’s how his bio begins:

Charles Bradley Templeton (October 7, 1915 – June 7, 2001) was a Canadian media figure and a former Christian evangelist. Known in the 1940s and 1950s as a leading evangelist, he became an agnostic and later embraced atheism after struggling with doubt. – Wikipedia

What happened to him? Same as Bart Ehrman: he began to have doubts about the scripture. His friend Billy Graham began to experience the same doubts, but Billy went for a walk in the woods to figure out what to do. Unlike Bart and Charles, Billy came to a different conclusion as told by his grandson Will Graham:

One night at Forest Home, he walked out into the woods and set his Bible on a stump—more an altar than a pulpit—and he cried out: “O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions Chuck and others are raising.”

And then, my grandfather fell to his knees and the Holy Spirit moved in him as he said, “Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word—by faith! I’m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word!” – The Tree Stump Prayer

Others, and maybe Billy himself, have condensed this commitment to:

I have beliefs and I have doubts. I have decided to believe my beliefs and doubt my doubts.

I have made the same commitment, and I renew it regularly. More tomorrow.

For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? (Romans 3.3, NKJV)