Person of Interest- Book Review Introduction

J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide detective who, when he was an atheist, used his investigative skills to investigate the claims of Christianity. In recent years he has written several books describing his investigations and the results of those investigations. He investigated the claims that the gospels are eye-witness accounts of actual events ("Cold-Case Christianity"), the existence of God ("God's Crime Scene"), and the claim that Jesus and the New Testament writers encouraged a trust based not in evidence but in blind faith ("Forensic Faith").

What Is "Person of Interest" About?

In "Person of Interest" Wallace takes the reader through another one of his cold-case homicide investigations as he also takes them through his parallel investigation into Jesus as a person of interest regarding human history. In this investigation he had no body and no direct evidence of a murder, so he had to use a different method in his investigation. He explains that planned murders have a series of events that take place over time, a fuse of sorts, that lead up to the murder, the explosion. That explosion results in numerous impacts, or fallout, that can be traced back to the event. The fuse, looking forward, points to a person of interest; and the fallout, looking backward, points to a person of interest. This person is pivotal to the event in question (the murder), and if ignored, the investigator will not solve the crime, and the murderer will escape justice.

J. Warner Wallace takes this same approach as he investigates the split in the timeline of human history. Historians refer to the "common era" and "before the common era." Why this time in history and not another time in history? And, if it is centered on a specific person, who is that person that they could have such an impact on the entire world's timeline?

Wallace looks at several series of events in ancient human history before the split in the timeline (the fuse) and examines several series of impacts after the split (the fallout) in modern human history. He shows that if his approach to his murder investigation is legitimate for discovering the true identity of the murderer, then it is also legitimate for discovering the true identity of the person responsible for the split in the world's timeline. If this person is ignored, then the investigator will never be able to solve the mystery of the split and the person responsible will escape their notice. Here is a collection of several quotes that will give you a quick view of some of the evidence, arguments, and conclusions in the book.

Quotes

"Forensic scientists examine and analyze evidence from crimes scenes and elsewhere to develop objective findings that can assist in the investigation and prosecution of perpetrators of crime or absolve an innocent person from suspicion. Forensic science is used to study past events (like crimes), but it can also be used to examine past historical events (like the origin of the universe or the resurrection of Jesus)."

"I...expected the fuse to act as a timer. If Jesus was something more than human, was the timing of his appearance significant? Was there a reason why he didn't arrive centuries earlier or decades later? Was there a historic 'deadline' he had to meet? The fuse would reveal the answer."

"A cultural fuse was burning, preparing antiquity for whatever would eventually initiate the Common Era. The Roman Empire had unified much of the known world, adopted a popular language, provided a shared alphabet, established peace, constructed, roads, developed the world's best postal service, and embraced just enough religious tolerance to detonate an explosion. Even before the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth, it ought to have been apparent to any careful student of history that events within the Roman Empire were aligning for someone special to arrive and for something special to happen."

"Early in my investigation, because of my distrust of the New Testament accounts, I was inclined to believe that the gospel authors simply cobbled the story of Jesus from prior mythologies. But did these authors really know enough about the pantheon of gods (across all history and every region) to shape such a tale? Would they really expect Jewish readers to accept a patchwork, pagan 'copycat' as their Messiah?"

"When you examine the details related to each similarity between Jesus and ancient, mythologies, the resemblances begin to vanish, Jesus isn't much like the other gods after all."

"While Jesus met ancient overarching human expectations related to deity, many Jews of the time held a different inconsistence expectation related to the Messiah. Many Jews who expected a spiritual savior and redeemer became Christ followers, but Jews who expected a *temporal king and conqueror *(who would save the nation of Israel and restore the Jewish kingdom) did not. Jesus met the expectations of those who sought eternal, spiritual truth."

"...the more the 'expected' meets the expectations of the 'expecter,' the better the response...If there is a God and he wanted to evoke the best possible response, wouldn't be meet the expectations of the expecters?"

"While 'clear' evidence points to the suspect from the onset (before he is contacted), 'cloaked' evidence points to the suspect only in hindsight (after he is identified)...The cloaked prophecies are limited in their ability to point us to the Messiah. They may, however, help or confirm his identity once we have him in view."

"Jesus was a thinker, and he encouraged his followers to be similarly committed in using their minds, even as an act of worship."

"Education is predicated on the notion that there are objective truths about mathematics, history, science, and other topics that can be transmitted from on generation to another."

'Even though many of [the top fifty universities] have abandoned their Christian identity; their buildings and charters tell a different story, unanimously pointing back to the man who inspired their creation."

"Jesus matters to the sciences. The history of scientific exploration was forever changed as Jesus followers studied the 'book of nature.' Christians are the 'fathers' and founders of these disciplines...Jesus followers didn't simply contribute to the sciences, they founded and led the sciences."

"[Jesus] matters because he established a worldview that encouraged exploration in an explosion of scientific discovery, the scientific revolution, and an unparalleled history of excellence in the sciences. From the writings of the 'science fathers'--the vast majority of whom were Jesus followers--Jesus's life, ministry, and mission could be reconstructed, even if all the Christian Bibles were destroyed."

"The religions of the world made room for Jesus, but Jesus never budged. His teaching mattered to the other religions, but Krishna, the Buddha, Muhammad, Baha'u'llah, and Ahmad combined didn't have a similar impact on Christianity. That, I thought, was remarkable."

"Jesus doesn't matter because he influenced the world; Jesus influenced the world because he matters. Everything that was important to me as an atheist was ultimately indebted to Jesus, the man who was *with *God and is God and *through whom *'all things were made' (John 1:3). Jesus is who he said he was; God incarnate."

"Our current terms fail to explain the reason why human history changed so dramatically. The period BCE is better described as BC (the period 'before Christ'), and the years we now refer to as part of the Common Era (CE) are better labeled as AD (*Anno Domini, *or the 'year[s] of our Lord"). While the designations BC and AD may seem like artifacts from the past, they are a far more accurate description of history's timeline, given that they reference the divine person of interest, who divided history."

"Only if Jesus was truly more than a man, if he was God incarnate as...the gospel authors claimed, would his unparalleled impact on history make sense."

Reviewer's Thoughts

First, my summary and the few selected quotes do not do justice to the scope of the investigation that Wallace conducted and describes in "Person of Interest." If you have not read the book and you are tempted to think that this review covers it all, you are woefully mistaken. I have often wondered myself why Jesus appeared at the time that he did. I did not realize all the conditions that needed to be in place technologically, politically, and culturally for Jesus to have the impact that he did. I also did not realize the range of Jesus' impact on all cultures of the world after he arrived in history.

Wallace definitively shows that if some government or group of people wanted to expunge culture of Jesus, they would have to destroy nearly all humanity and definitely all vestiges of the arts, the sciences, technology, history, education, and even knowledge; humanity would necessarily HAVE to be taken back to before the stone age with an extremely small group of people in uniform agreement to never speak the name of Jesus nor allow any of his teachings or the results of his appearance to influence their attempted "rebuild" of society. If they allowed their existing technological or artistic knowledge to guide their rebuild, then they would inadvertently allow Jesus back in. Society could never become "high-tech" nor educated nor artistic because the paths that lead to those attributes are necessarily grounded in the historical person of Jesus Christ.

If we expect investigators to find and bring justice to perpetrators of well covered-up crimes, then we accept their methods of investigation to be valid. If we accept their methods of investigation to be valid, then when those methods are applied to an investigation, we commit ourselves logically (though not emotionally) to the results. In one of these investigations, the investigator (J. Warner Wallace) identified Jesus as the person of interest in the event of the split of the calendar. If you accept the validity of the investigative tools used yet reject his conclusion, you must demonstrate logically how the tools were misused.

Recommendations

First, I will recommend this book for anyone who enjoys reading about crimes and how investigators out-smart the perpetrators' attempts to escape justice. These readers love to see methods used in order to reveal the truth of the event in history (even recent history). J. Warner Wallace demonstrates in his book not only how his method allowed justice to be served for a murder but also how the same methods can be used to reveal the truth about other events in history, particularly the truth surrounding Jesus of Nazareth.

Second, I will recommend this book to unbelievers. If you find the revelation of truth regarding crimes to be important to civilized society, then Wallace's methods to reveal the truth of crimes committed in the past (history) cannot be ignored. His methods work to reveal truth about history. The claims about Jesus Christ from Christians are claims about history, and if Wallace's methods to reveal truth about history reveal truth about history, then when the methods are applied to the claims of Christians about history and find those claims to be true, then it is hard to escape Christians' claims about Jesus without simultaneously dismissing the claims of a perpetrator's guilt using the same method of investigation.

Third, I will recommend that this book be in the library of every Christian. It is a fascinating read and will strengthen the Christian's faith. Not only that, though, but because our culture is so fascinated with crime, the revelation of truth, and the subsequent serving of justice. Wallace's book is a tool that will help Christians in their witness for Christ in everyday conversations. Because it is so valuable to evangelical witness, I will specifically recommend this book to pastors. They need to be aware of Wallace's work so that they can recommend it to their congregations and even have copies in their church libraries. Also because Wallace's work is part of the case for the truth of Christianity, I will recommend it to all Christian apologists (case-makers). His work provides yet another tool in our tool belt that expands the range of people's values and interests that we can directly speak truth to.

Check out J. Warner Wallace's other excellent books:

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