Charlotte Trip for NCCA

October 10-13, 2019

On October 10 we had a beautiful blue-sky day for driving to Charlotte for the National Conference on Christian Apologetics which is held at the beautiful Calvary Church in Charlotte. We have attended the conference for the past several years along with several other active members of our Atlanta Reasons to Believe chapter.

Our first treat was to go out to dinner with John and Mary Keefe, as we have done before when we went to Charlotte. It is always a good time of sharing about our memories and our families. On Friday morning we plunged into the intense agenda of the Apologetics meeting, with talks by Frank Turek, Chip Ingram and Fuz Rana. Brenda and I then made some different choices about breakout sessions. I went to a session on Biblical Archaeology by Jeffrey Hudon and a session on "When Science Conflicts with Christianity" by Jeff Zweerink. We both attended the session with Gary Habermas on updates of the defense of the time-line of New Testament information on the Resurrection.

We then joined Colin and Tracy Green for supper and then returned for the evening session for a debate between Mike Licona and Richard Howe on Biblical Inerrancy with Frank Turek moderating.

On Saturday Colin, Tracy and I attended an excellent session on "Designed for Discovery" by Fuz Rana. I then attended two sessions by Stephen Meyer: One on "Darwin's Doubt", and one on the subject of his new book "Return of the God Hypothesis". In that latter one he made the case that while Darwin's 19th Century information with its simple view of life might seem to make plausible a development of life by chance, the 20th Century information including Hubble and the expanding universe, the 3K background, and the details of molecular views of life strongly support the existence of a creative intelligence. The conference ended with a tribute session for the late Norman Geisler, about whom Ravi Zacharias said at his memorial service "We have come to bury a giant!" The members of the panel with moderator David Geisler were Richard Land, Stephen Cutchins, Richard Howe and Frank Turek.

After the last session we again joined John and Mary Keefe for dinner and spent and enjoyable time with them again just sharing about our lives with these dear friends.

On Sunday morning we joined John and Mary again for the morning worship service at Calvary Church. It is a magnificent church and the large choir and orchestra certainly contributed to the worship service.

We said our goodbyes in the large foyer of the church and gathered in a group hug for John to lead a prayer for us. We look forward to the next time we can be together.

We headed out southward on I-77 to go to visit Carol Richardson in the home of Carol's niece Trish, her husband Dan and two daughters. We enjoyed a long talk with Carol and enjoyed the time with her, being very desirous of being of some blessing to Carol - we hold her in such high regard and have such fond memories of her when she lived in the Mableton area.

Proceeding down I-77 and I-20, we made our way home from an enjoyable and meaningful weekend.