Have you ever wondered about Jesus' childhood? I have! Mary and Joseph knew his miraculous origin, yet they still must have wondered about him. So must his half-brothers and half-sisters. We, too, wonder what it was like. Yet maybe there was wisdom in the Bible's silence. Maybe we would have been misled to follow Jesus in ways he doesn't call us to follow him, such as being a craftsman — which not all of us are called to be.

Based on a blog post, "Jesus Was Perfect. That's Why I'm Glad We Don't Have a Record of His First Thirty Years," and also on material in Tom Gilson’s book Too Good to be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality, available here.

Many who’ve read this book have had their lives lit up for Christ, so I encourage you to see what God does for you through it!

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Is it possible to be surprised all over again by the story of Jesus' birth? Believe it or not, yes! Sure, it's just September, but we're taking things in order as we walk through the Gospel of Luke to discover the extraordinary again in Jesus' life, ministry, and teachings.

Based on material in Tom Gilson’s book Too Good to be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality, available here.

As noted in the podcast, others who've read it have had their lives lit up for Christ.

Subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher. And please take a moment to rate the Thinking Christian podcast on your podcast provider of choice. It really helps make this content visible and available to more people. Thank you!

How can we ever hope to relate to a God as great as our God? I've asked myself that question and found my hope in Jesus, who came to be one of us. He himself, the hope of Israel, the hope of all the nations, is extraordinary beyond any hope of matching his character. Yet he came in humility, the man who was God, God who became man.

In today's Thinking Christian podcast I explore the great things said about him at the time of his birth, by Mary, Zechariah, the angels, and Simeon, as recorded in the first chapters in Luke. They expected him to be extraordinary — and thus his story begins.

Based on material in Tom Gilson’s book Too Good to be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality, available here.

As noted in the podcast, others who've read it have had their lives lit up for Christ.

Subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher. And please take a moment to rate the Thinking Christian podcast on your podcast provider of choice. It really helps make this content visible and available to more people. Thank you!

Why did the gospel authors write the gospels? For believers the answer might be a question: "Why even ask? Isn't it obvious?" That answer isn't universal, though. Today on the Thinking Christian podcast we launch a new series on Jesus through the gospels, starting with Luke's answer to that question in Luke 1:1-4, with a quick comparison to skeptics' unlikely theories about the gospels.

Based on material in Tom Gilson's book Too Good to be False: How Jesus' Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality, available here.

Subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher. And please take a moment to rate the Thinking Christian podcast on your podcast provider of choice. It really helps make this content visible and available to more people. Thank you!

Announcing a change in the plan for this podcast: Instead of a weekly podcast of 20-25 minutes, I'll be publishing up to 3 times a week, with shorter content focused on Jesus in the Gospels (with occasional other topics).

I'm making the change in response to what I keep hearing from readers of my book Too Good to be False: How Jesus' Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality (available here). They're discovering that Jesus is even greater than they knew — and many of them are calling it life-changing. I want to help keep those exploration alive.

So join me as we begin a journey of discovery through the Gospels, seeing Jesus with fresh eyes. Please spread the word! Subscribe to the podcast, too, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher.

And please take a moment to rate the Thinking Christian podcast on your podcast provider of choice. It really helps make this content visible and available to more people. Thank you!

How will unbelievers answer the case for the Gospels in Too Good to be False? We haven't heard from major skeptics yet, though I'm sure that's coming.

In the meantime we have clues, and I have a prediction: Some will say they see reality in the life of Christ like they've never seen before, and they'll turn to Christ. Others, though, will harden themselves against him, contributing further to the polarization between committed believers and committed atheists.

Jesus said, "If they hated me, they will hate you also" (John 15:18). Yet he's worth following no matter what.

Links mentioned:

• One skeptic's review (see the comments below the article) after reading the entire Too Good to be False.
• Studying Reviews of Stephen C. Meyer's Signature in the Cell.

Bob Seidensticker, atheist blogger at Patheos, tells us that if you "strip away" the miraculous from the story of Jesus, "you’re left with a fairly ordinary rabbi." He says, "The Jesus story is nothing but the supernatural elements." In this episode of the Thinking Christian podcast I take him up on that. Take the miracles out of the Jesus story, and what do you have left? You have the character of Jesus, and even as stories go, even without the miracles as plot points, there's nothing remotely ordinary about who Jesus was.

I could only tell part of that in one podcast, unfortunately. There's much more in my forthcoming book Too Good to be False. You can pre-order the book on Amazon today, and a free preview chapter is yours, too, if you simply subscribe to updates at the Thinking Christian blog. More on the book here!

Subscribe to the podcast, too, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher.

0:36: Introducing the question, based on a comment by atheist blogger Bob Seidensticker: Take away the miracles from Jesus' story, and what do you have left? He says it's an "ordinary rabbi" story.
2:30: Game on. Let's see what happens to the story without its miraculous element.
3:22: Elements of a story: setting, plot, dialogue, character. Seidensticker comes out okay on the first two.
5:15: What about dialogue and character, though?
5:23: Interlude on an upcoming webinar, Junday, July 26 at 7:30 pm Eastern.
6:30: Jesus' extraordinary claim in the Beatitudes
9:14: Jesus' extraordinary authority claim in Matthew 5:17.
12:45: Jesus' extraordinary — and extraordinarily fulfilled — commission to his disciples.
16:20: So what, though? For one thing, Seidensticker is showing his prejudice against the story.
18:20: Does this prove the story is true? Not on its own, though it does put pressure on the atheists' explanation for the story.

For the whole year and a half I've been working on Too Good to be False, I've felt like I've been sitting on a secret -- two of them, actually -- secrets too great to hold inside. Now as the book nears its August 1 publication date, it's time to start getting the word out on those secrets. I've even discovered there's a third one, from those who've read pre-release copies of the book. Those three secrets: Jesus is better than you knew; he's too good to be false; and (the one that surprised me) this message turned out to be a "fun read," suitable for everyone from laypersons to the "professionals!"

You can pre-order the book on Amazon today. A free preview chapter is yours, too, if you subscribe to updates at the Thinking Christian blog.

Subscribe to the podcast, too, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or Stitcher.

(Show transcript is automatically generated and uncorrected.)

01:36: Source of some of the book's information

03:30: Secret 1: Jesus is way more amazing than you've realized. Even though that sounds like a strong statement, it's very probably true.

5:10: Confirmation from Sean McDowell, Josh McDowell, JP Moreland

6:49: It's about Jesus: What he didn't do.

9:45: Secret 2: Jesus is too good to be false.

11:15: More confirmation: J. Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, Jeff Myers

13:40: Problems with the skeptics' backstory for the story of Jesus

14:45: Secret 3: What I never expected: This book is working for everyone from layperson to the "professionals." It's a "fun read!"

16:54: I don't want to be holding in these secrets any longer!