THE CASE FOR CHRIST
Director: Jon Gunn
Cert: PG. 108 mins

He then went on to write The Case For Christ and numerous other books, sharing his journey and the evidence he’s examined in detail.

From the makers of Do You Believe? and the God's Not Dead films, the film version of The Case For Christ weaves together Lee Strobel's personal story and his journalistic investigation of Christianity’s truth claims, in a way which is consistently engaging and sometimes moving.

When his wife Leslie Strobel (Erika Christensen) becomes a Christian, the empirically-minded investigative journalist Lee Strobel (Mike Vogel) is thrown. He believes in what’s real, what you can see, touch, and feel; and he can’t understand his wife’s new-found faith.

Scrupulous odyssey

But he also believes in checking out the facts, so he sets out on a scrupulous odyssey to investigate the central truth claim of Christianity – the resurrection of Jesus – once and for all.

He interviews every expert he can find, encompassing fields as diverse as history, psychology and medical science. Much to his chagrin, all of his sceptical objections are answered in one form or another.

He discovers the vast number of surviving biblical manuscripts, many of them from shortly after they were written, far outweighing any other historical document which is widely considered to be reliable. He also finds out about the sheer number of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus alive after he had died which, despite his best efforts, can’t be explained away.

Fruiterers, he’s blindsided to discover that even an impartial and academically respected source such as the Journal of American Medical Science has to admit that Jesus actually died. At one point, he asks why, if Jesus was God, would he would allow himself be killed. He’s presented with a simple answer, ‘Love’.

Eventually, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the evidence against his original assumptions, he finally admits, ‘Okay, God, you win’. Shortly afterwards, he becomes a Christian.