I am pleased to inform What is Truth? readers that the Thomas Ross – Benjamin Maisonet debate, “Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels?” is now live and can be watched on YouTube.

Click here to watch the Ross-Maisonet debate, “Does History Validate the Accuracy of the New Testament Gospels?”

The debate took place in Manila, Philippines, in 2019, where I was teaching a class on the preservation of Scripture and preaching for Bro Billy Hardecker of Mt. Zion Baptist Mission in Manila, but issues with the audio and video lining up kept the debate from going live until now. The quality is still not absolutely amazing, but considering the non-first-world setting and the equipment used, I am thankful for the quality that is present. Mr. Maisonet was (and I assume still is) the president of the Philippine Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism (Society), or PATAS.  He told me that he replaced the previous president because that person had been stealing money from the organization.  Atheism and agnosticism are much less common in the Philippines than they are in the United States, which may be one reason that the president of PATAS was born in the United States and moved to the Philippines.  In any case, Mr. Maisonet, as the president of PATAS, was a good representative of atheism in the Philippines.  He made the sort of popular-level arguments that one will run across in personal evangelism, rather than the more scholarly type of arguments against the accuracy of the New Testament made by Islamic apologists such as Shabir Ally.  I confess that I did not find his argumentation particularly convincing, but he seems to have thought he made a good case, and I will allow those who watch the debate to evaluate what was said based on facts and logic in God’s world.

The PATAS debate was set up at short notice, so I employed a lot of the material from my debate with Dr. Ally on “The New Testament Picture of Jesus: Is It Accurate?” which is also in my study on evidence for the New Testament from archaeology, prophecy, and history.  In my view, which is admittedly biased in favor of God and His Word, the arguments made for the historicity of the New Testament have now stood up well against both Muslim and atheist apologists.

Feel free to subscribe to my KJB1611 YouTube channel,”like” and comment on the debate, and share it with others, if you believe it deserves it. Also, if you would be interested in sponsoring a debate with a non-Christian philosophy or a pseudo-Christian cult, please contact my church.

–TDR