Josh McDowell never intended to be a defender of the Christian faith. In fact, his goal was just the opposite. As a skeptic at Kellogg College in Michigan , he was challenged by a group of Christian students to examine intellectually the claims of Christianity. He accepted the challenge and set out to prove that Christ's claims to be God and the historical reliability of Scripture could be neither trusted nor accurately verified. The evidence he discovered changed the course of his life. He discovered that the Bible was the most historically reliable document of all antiquity and that Christ's claim that he was God was true. That brought him to the inescapable conclusion that Christ loved him and died to redeem him. Josh then trusted in Christ as the Son of God and his personal Savior.

Josh transferred to Wheaton College and completed a bachelor's degree in language. He went on to receive a master's degree in theology from Talbot Theological Seminary in California . In 1964, he joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) and eventually became an international traveling representative for the ministry, focusing primarily on issues facing young people.

Josh has spoken to more than ten million young people in eighty-four countries, including more than 700 university and college campuses. He has authored or coauthored more than one hundred books and workbooks with more than forty-two million in print worldwide. Josh's most popular works are The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, More Than a Carpenter, Beyond Belief to Convictions and his latest releases The Last Christian Generation and The Da Vinci Code—A Quest for Answers .

Josh has been married to Dottie for more than thirty-four years and has four children. Josh and Dottie live in Dana Point, California.