Time & Perspective Quote by Josh McDowell

McDowell’s sentence isn’t really about Paul; it’s about verification. He’s staging a courtroom tableau in which the New Testament looks less like devotional literature and more like a deposition you could, in theory, cross-check. The key move is the quiet rhetorical upgrade from “faith claim” to “public event”: 500 people, at once, with “the majority…still alive.” That detail functions like a dare. If the resurrection were a fabrication, the logic goes, opponents could have hunted down living witnesses and punctured the story early.

The intent is apologetic and strategic: to make belief feel intellectually responsible, even modern. By leaning on Paul’s report (from 1 Corinthians 15), McDowell borrows the authority of an early Christian text and reframes it as evidence with a built-in fact-checking mechanism. “Could confirm” is doing heavy lifting here, suggesting an accessible chain of corroboration while sidestepping the realities of antiquity: most readers cannot actually interview first-century Judeans, and we don’t have those supposed confirmations preserved as independent testimonies.

Subtextually, the line speaks to an audience anxious about gullibility. It offers relief from the caricature that Christianity asks for blind assent; instead, it sells the resurrection as a claim that originally circulated in the presence of potential refutation. In the broader culture-war of ideas, it’s a confidence play: treat the gospel not as private comfort, but as a falsifiable headline that survived contact with eyewitnesses. Whether that argument satisfies depends on how much trust you grant Paul’s access, motives, and transmission-but the persuasive technique is clear: turn the miracle into a matter of record.