J. Warner Wallace is unique among Christian apologists. Pretty much anyone can do their homework and come up with a decent argument for the existence of God or the resurrection of Jesus. But Wallace brings his background as a cold case detective to his apologetics and this makes his work particularly compelling.
This does not just come out in how he does his investigations but in how he writes. There is a reason why there are so many police and detective shows on television. We are drawn to the process of investigation, piecing together various pieces of evidence and then solving the mystery.
This is the case (pun intended) with Wallace’s latest book Person of Interest. The book is organized around a missing person case. It is not initially clear who is responsible for the girl disappearing but there is a person of interested. There is not one single piece of convincing evidence that will close the case. But there are numerous lines of evidence that keep point back to this one person.
This is a nice model for how we look at Jesus. While Christians might see the biblical account of Jesus as being all the evidence that we need to believe that Jesus was the Son of God that died and rose again. Skeptics and seekers may not be so convinced.
So Warner takes us through numerous aspects of religion, history and culture that keeps bringing us back to Jesus. As much as some people would want to, we cannot ignore Jesus. Something happened two thousand years ago that changed the world forever. Even the most diehard atheist is still affected today by the life of Jesus.
One of the things that I really appreciated about Person of Interest is that Wallace actually confronts the Jesus Myth Theory. Too often apologists ignore this as something not worthy of their time. The truth is that many people are deceived by the JMT and we need people to speak to it. Thankfully Wallace does this.
Not only is Person of Interest a valuable resource for Christian apologetics, it is also an enjoyable read. This book is a powerful reminder of why Jesus a is a person of interest.
