Thank you for the book recommendations, I will try to look into those books.
One of the most compelling evidences for the Christian faith is an examination of Biblical prophecy. I used to think that Bible prophecy was just a lot of vague hype until I decided to look into it more deeply. I have associates that are not Christians, and in fact some of them hate religion of all types. At a certain point in time I had mentioned to them that I believe that the Bible is a book that is divinely inspired by God, and of course they laughed at me and criticised me. Well, I started showing them several specific prophecies about the Jews and the Arabs, particularly in the last days, and although they maintained their anti God feelings, many of them confessed that these Prophecies are very compelling and raise a lot of questions and posibillities.
Just a quick example, in Mathew 24 Jesus speaks about the end times and tells his followers that when you see and hear about increased wars and rumors of wars, famines, pestilences, all manner of evil that was unheard of before, for example child pornography, increased homosexuality, Kids shooting up schools, kids killing their parents, mass murder, the arise of many different cults and false religions, peoples hearts increasingly growing cold towards each other, the increase of mass information, the increase of mass travel, worldwide financial and economic turbulence, inflation, food shortages, civil unrest, worldwide wars, worldwide tensions between nations, etc. He said that when you see these things start to come about, then you can know that the end of the world and Christs return are imminent.
The Bible also prophecied that the Jews would be evicted from the holy land and be dispersed among the nations. Also that Jerusalem would be totally destroyed. This prophecy came true in 70 AD when the Romans totally destroyed Jerusalem and the Jews were finally and completely banished from Jerusalem and dispersed throughout the world. The prophecies then indicate that God would then bring the Jews back into Isreal in the last days, and they would be surrounded by enemies and be under worldwide contempt. This prophecy was fullfilled in 1948 when Isreal was re-established as a nation after 1900 years. And ofcourse Isreal is surrounded by enemies.
Bible prophecy then indicates that very close to the end of our time as we know it, close to the last hour, Iran and Russia would join forces, along with several other arab nations and groups (probably Hizzbollah, Al Quaida, Hamas, etc.) would launch an attack and invade Isreal once and for all........At this point, right on the brink of world war 3, God intrvenes in a very dramatic way into the affairs of mankind. It also sais that if God does not intervene in this critical hour, that no flesh upon the earth would be saved, indicating nuclear holocaust most likely. These prophecies that are clearly laid out in the ancient texts of the Bible are dramatically unfolding in these last times.
It is interesting how up to a couple of thousand years after these prophecies were written, Muhamed wrote the Koran with a very similiar end times scenario, only replacing Jesus with the Mahdi as the savior. and replacing ancient belief in Yaweh with belief in Allah, as well as replacing ancient scripture with the Koran. He declared a very similiar end times scenario as the Bible, but ofcourse he made the Jews evil and the Arabs Gods chosen people. Ofcourse we Christians realize that Jesus opened the door of salvation to all the peoples of the world equally......very interesting. Their is no doubt that Mahammed read the ancient Biblical scriptures, and then was inspired to write the Koran, attempting to reverse everything in the prior scriptures.
Now this is going to sound blasphemous to you, and I dont mean it that way, but one very eerie thing about the Koran and the Bible is the correlation of the end time anti christ and savior. If you read what the Bible sais about the Anti Christ you would plainly see that the description is very similiar to the description that is given of the Mahdi of Islam. Also, if you read in Islamic eschotology of the discription of the anti christ, it is very similiar to certain characteristics of the promised savior of Judeo christianity. See how all these roles are eerily reversed? This is not just coincidence.
Their are many other prophecies that have been fullfilled or are unfolding even as we speak. I explained all of this so that maybe if you did not know before, you would atleast understand a little better what motivates "people of the book" to believe in this book we call the Bible........thanks for reading