Coffee and Evangelism. Two Peas in a Pod.

Caution: Coffee puns may start steaming from your screen!

October usually brings those cool, crisp mornings when a good cup of hot coffee tastes even richer! Have you been grinding down the days until Pumpkin Spice Lattes were available again since last November? Nothin’ beats telling someone about how much Jesus loves them over a cup of coffee. But then again, maybe you are a little more introverted and approaching a total stranger with the Gospel seems intimidating.

Eric has been brewing up an evangelistic tool to help fill this vacuum for over three years! We can hardly wait to “spill the beans”! Until we espresso our grande reveal, let’s take a moment to reflect on just one example of coffee beans offering a very robust argument for why we can trust the New Testament Scriptures’ authority.

Watch Tim Chaffey take a straight shot at the skeptics’ questions! Take it away, Barista Chaffey!

 

Manuscript Evidence*

Here is a comparison of manuscript evidence for the New Testament compared to the manuscripts of other ancient works.

AUTHOR/WORK DATE WRITTEN EARLIEST FRAGMENTS AND COPIES APPROXIMATE TIME GAP NUMBER OF MANUSCRIPTS
Tacitus (Annals) c. AD 100 c. AD 900 ~750 years 2
Plato (Dialogues) c. 350 BC c. AD 900 ~1,200 years 7
Herodotus (Histories) c. 430 BC c. AD 900 ~1,300 years 9
Julius Caesar (Gallic Wars) c. 50 BC c. AD 900 ~900 years 10
New Testament c. AD 45–95 c. AD 125 ~50 years** ~26,000

Wow! The skeptics’ arguments about the veracity of the New Testament Scriptures don’t even add up to “a hill of beans”! Doesn’t that inspire you to talk to an atheist right now? Uh . . . oh yeah. The shyness factor. Stay tuned! We can’t “tamp on green coffee beans,” but Eric has something extraordinary roasting up his sleeve! We’ll be dripping out a latte more this month on Coffee and Evangelism! 

How many coffee related words and puns did you find in this article?


Tools for Evangelism: