📄 Extracted Text (32,198 words)
[00:00:05] Wes Huff, welcome to the show. It's a
[00:00:08] pleasure to be here.
[00:00:09] >> It's a pleasure to have you, man. At
[00:00:11] breakfast this morning, we realized it's
[00:00:12] been almost one year exactly since we
[00:00:15] made contact and we're trying to get
[00:00:17] you. So,
[00:00:18] >> long time coming.
[00:00:19] >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad I'm glad it came to
[00:00:21] fruition.
[00:00:22] >> Me, too. Me, too. But um so I want to
[00:00:25] give I want to start you off with an
[00:00:26] introduction here just
[00:00:30] Wes Huff born in Molton Pakistan. You
[00:00:33] spent part of your childhood in the
[00:00:35] Middle East surrounded by Islam and
[00:00:37] other world views and overcame a rare
[00:00:40] condition as a kid that left you
[00:00:41] temporarily paralyzed without medical
[00:00:43] explanation. I call that a miracle. Now
[00:00:47] you're the vice president of Apologetics
[00:00:49] Canada, where you equip people with
[00:00:51] answers to tough questions about
[00:00:52] scripture, history, and faith. A
[00:00:55] Canadian Christian apologist, reformed
[00:00:58] Baptist theologian, and one of the
[00:01:00] sharpest voices defending historical
[00:01:02] reliability
[00:01:04] of the Bible and our Christian faith.
[00:01:06] You approach skeptics with clarity,
[00:01:08] grace, and rockolid evidence, making the
[00:01:11] case that the Bible isn't just a book of
[00:01:13] faith. It's the most scrutinized and
[00:01:15] preserved text in human history. A
[00:01:18] father to four, husband to Melissa, and
[00:01:21] most importantly, you're a Christian.
[00:01:24] Thanks for being here. So, uh, everybody
[00:01:27] that comes on the show gets a gift.
[00:01:30] >> Okay,
[00:01:30] >> so we got you a couple.
[00:01:32] >> Okay,
[00:01:32] >> first one,
[00:01:35] Vigilance League gummy bears.
[00:01:37] >> Awesome.
[00:01:38] >> Made in the USA. It's just candy.
[00:01:40] They're legal in all 50 states and legal
[00:01:42] in Canada. I'm pretty sure. So, uh, it's
[00:01:45] just candy. Amazing. And then
[00:01:49] >> I got some buddies over at SIG. One of
[00:01:51] them happens to be the VP of marketing.
[00:01:53] His name's Jason.
[00:01:54] >> Okay.
[00:01:55] >> And, uh, I told him you were coming on.
[00:01:57] He got all excited.
[00:01:58] >> Oh, man.
[00:01:58] >> So, we thought you might like this.
[00:02:00] We're not sure how you're going to get
[00:02:01] that back to Canada, but we'll help you
[00:02:03] figure it out.
[00:02:03] >> Oh my goodness, Sean.
[00:02:04] >> So,
[00:02:05] >> okay. Explain to me what I'm looking at.
[00:02:07] >> All right. You're looking at a 6 hour
[00:02:10] P365 Legion.
[00:02:12] >> Okay,
[00:02:13] >> so that is a carry. That's a an everyday
[00:02:16] carry gun.
[00:02:17] >> Okay,
[00:02:18] >> it takes 17 rounds in the magazine plus
[00:02:20] one in the pipe for 18. That's their new
[00:02:22] optics line. They put those little slits
[00:02:25] in the in the front to help with uh
[00:02:27] recoil management. I'm not sure what's
[00:02:30] legal and what's illegal in Canada. So,
[00:02:32] we're going to figure that out and we're
[00:02:33] going to get you
[00:02:34] >> Yeah, we might need to get creative, but
[00:02:36] >> as close to that as we can,
[00:02:37] >> man. That's awesome.
[00:02:39] >> That's awesome. Thank you so much.
[00:02:40] >> Hey, you're welcome.
[00:02:41] >> Are you a shooter?
[00:02:43] >> Uh, I have Sean. Yeah.
[00:02:44] >> Perfect.
[00:02:45] >> Yeah. So, that's amazing. I really
[00:02:47] appreciate that.
[00:02:48] >> My pleasure.
[00:02:49] >> Yeah. I got a couple things for you.
[00:02:51] >> Oh, really?
[00:02:51] >> Yeah. So, we're going to we're going to
[00:02:53] be trading. So, um, the first one I want
[00:02:56] to give you is, so my friends, uh, over
[00:02:58] at Dawson Blades, uh, which is a forge
[00:03:02] that I hooked up with,
[00:03:03] >> uh, not that long ago, we collaborated
[00:03:05] on making a series of historically
[00:03:08] accurate with a modern twist
[00:03:10] >> blades named after early Christians who
[00:03:13] were influential individuals in the
[00:03:15] faith. So, this is a recreation of a
[00:03:17] Roman Puio dagger
[00:03:19] >> that uh, we're calling the Irenaeus.
[00:03:23] And so he was a he was an early church
[00:03:25] father, very prominent individual who
[00:03:26] wrote a series of uh writings called
[00:03:29] Against Heresies, wrote against guys
[00:03:31] like the Gnostics and why they they were
[00:03:34] off base. And so this is the second in
[00:03:36] our series. We have one out called the
[00:03:38] Augustine. This just launched this
[00:03:40] month. Um and that is a size accurate
[00:03:44] historical
[00:03:46] modern kind of twist on what a Roman
[00:03:50] centurion would have carried in the
[00:03:51] first century. This is awesome.
[00:03:55] Wow. Thank you.
[00:03:57] >> Yeah. Yeah. And I also have for you,
[00:04:00] >> beautiful, a page from a 1576
[00:04:05] Geneva Bible.
[00:04:06] >> Oh.
[00:04:07] >> So that's
[00:04:08] >> what year? 1576.
[00:04:10] So the the first Bible that was brought
[00:04:14] over to the United States by the pilgrim
[00:04:16] was the Geneva Bible. Most people think
[00:04:17] it's the King James Bible. So, King
[00:04:18] James Bibles were brought over, but the
[00:04:20] Geneva Bible was actually the Bible of
[00:04:23] the Puritans um because they considered
[00:04:25] the King James uh a a state developed
[00:04:30] Bible
[00:04:30] >> really.
[00:04:31] >> And so when they came over, they brought
[00:04:32] Geneva Bibles. And so that that's one of
[00:04:35] the the first they started printing I
[00:04:38] believe in 1560 and then that's the 1576
[00:04:41] one which was their kind of second
[00:04:43] round.
[00:04:44] >> Man, this is Thank you.
[00:04:46] >> Yeah, of course. It's getting framed and
[00:04:48] putting in here, put in the studio.
[00:04:50] Thank this is Wow.
[00:04:53] This leaf is guaranteed to be an
[00:04:54] original fromif from a 1576 Geneva Bible
[00:04:58] printed in London by Christopher Barker.
[00:05:01] The first year Geneva Bibles were
[00:05:03] printed in England was 1576.
[00:05:07] That's amazing.
[00:05:08] >> There you go.
[00:05:08] >> Thank you.
[00:05:15] >> All right, Wes. So, we're going to do a
[00:05:18] little bit of a life story, talk a lot
[00:05:19] about um a lot of the research you've
[00:05:22] done, and uh but first, I woke up in uh
[00:05:25] in a weird mood today and uh had a had a
[00:05:29] had an interesting conversation with my
[00:05:31] wife
[00:05:32] >> uh this morning. And so,
[00:05:35] last last week was a rough week of
[00:05:37] interviews. We had a interview about all
[00:05:40] of the Epstein stuff going on and you
[00:05:43] know politics right now and that's
[00:05:45] always a dark dark place to be. And then
[00:05:48] the another interview that we had last
[00:05:51] week was uh Elizabeth Phillips
[00:05:54] >> whose brother was um molested at at a at
[00:05:59] Camp Canakook, one of the biggest
[00:06:01] Christian camps in the world. And after
[00:06:03] she dug in, uh, allegedly there's been
[00:06:06] thousands of kids abused.
[00:06:08] >> And I woke up, I just whenever I do
[00:06:10] these, um,
[00:06:12] uncover some this kind of stuff that's
[00:06:14] going on with kids, Epstein, that camp.
[00:06:17] I mean, we've done a lot of them, it
[00:06:19] just it it, um,
[00:06:22] it really throws me into a thing, you
[00:06:24] know, that um,
[00:06:26] >> why is this happening?
[00:06:28] And it make it just man it just it like
[00:06:31] reopens all the questions that I used to
[00:06:34] have before I really came to Christ
[00:06:36] about 3 years ago. And
[00:06:40] you know and and I don't even know how
[00:06:42] to organize all my thoughts. I thought I
[00:06:44] had them all organized before we started
[00:06:45] this but I don't.
[00:06:47] I it basically where the conversation
[00:06:50] ended is what what is what you know if
[00:06:54] what is the point of living like a
[00:06:56] Christian
[00:06:57] >> if
[00:06:59] you know the the the common thing that I
[00:07:01] find in Christianity is really all you
[00:07:03] have to do is believe to go to heaven.
[00:07:06] And so, you know,
[00:07:10] I grew up Catholic, joined the SEAL
[00:07:12] teams, pretty much lost my faith for
[00:07:14] about 14, 15, maybe 20 years, and then
[00:07:18] uh came back about 3 years ago, had a a
[00:07:21] very profound experience in Sedona.
[00:07:24] But
[00:07:26] you know, and so through my journey, you
[00:07:29] know, I've been talking to people like
[00:07:31] you and Lee Strobble and John Burke and
[00:07:33] and and priests and
[00:07:35] >> um Father Rehill that lives down in Col
[00:07:38] just just 45 minutes away and and and
[00:07:40] I'm I'm learning from all of you guys a
[00:07:42] tremendous amount. But, you know, I'll
[00:07:45] bring up John Burke, for example. John
[00:07:46] has researched,
[00:07:48] I think, around 1,500 near-death
[00:07:51] experiences all throughout the world,
[00:07:53] different religions, different
[00:07:55] countries, different ethnic ethnicities,
[00:07:58] different everything. And what he does
[00:07:59] is he finds all the commonalities of
[00:08:02] these near-death experiences and relates
[00:08:04] them all to Christ. H
[00:08:08] now
[00:08:10] in his studies sometimes he talks about
[00:08:13] people will go to hell and they'll have
[00:08:15] a hellish near-death experience where
[00:08:18] they where they where they die on the
[00:08:20] operating table or or wherever and then
[00:08:23] they wind up in hell
[00:08:25] >> and Jesus is there basically saying you
[00:08:28] know
[00:08:30] do you accept me as Lord and Savior?
[00:08:32] Yes. Boom. out of hell into heaven, you
[00:08:35] know, and and
[00:08:38] I was a lot more upset this morning, so
[00:08:39] it would it would have would have flowed
[00:08:41] a lot better. But kind of the point
[00:08:44] being is it's it's hard to live as a
[00:08:46] Christian. It's hard to do the right
[00:08:48] thing. It's hard to admit you're wrong.
[00:08:50] It's hard to say, "I'm sorry." It's hard
[00:08:53] to not lie, cheat, steal, screw people
[00:08:58] over to get what you want. it would
[00:09:00] probably be a lot easier to get what you
[00:09:02] want, get to your goals in life if you
[00:09:04] didn't live as a Christian.
[00:09:07] And so, you know, kind of my point here
[00:09:10] is is
[00:09:13] if you can go through life a [ __ ]
[00:09:16] not being a Christian, lie, cheat,
[00:09:18] steal, kill,
[00:09:20] >> adultery, what, break every one of the
[00:09:22] ten commandments all the time,
[00:09:24] >> and then you die
[00:09:26] >> and you are in hell, but you still have
[00:09:29] that one last chance that says, "Hey, do
[00:09:31] you accept me as Lord and Savior?" Yes.
[00:09:34] then what what is the point
[00:09:37] >> of playing it out every day and
[00:09:41] is a Christian?
[00:09:44] Yeah. I mean, I think there's probably
[00:09:47] two components to that question. One is
[00:09:49] a a very, you know, I think honest
[00:09:54] assessment of what's typically called
[00:09:56] the problem of evil. Um,
[00:09:59] and I think that totally makes sense.
[00:10:01] And I think if you don't feel those
[00:10:03] things, you're probably not living your
[00:10:05] life in the real world. In that we see
[00:10:09] that this world is beautiful, yet it's
[00:10:12] profoundly broken. And that's the that's
[00:10:16] the testimony of scripture ultimately is
[00:10:18] that God created the world to be good,
[00:10:21] but something took place. We know deep
[00:10:24] down that the world is not meant to be
[00:10:27] like this. People aren't meant to die
[00:10:30] prematurely. Children aren't meant to be
[00:10:32] abused. People aren't meant to get
[00:10:34] cancer. And we know that there's
[00:10:37] something wrong. And there's there's
[00:10:41] this
[00:10:43] this, you know, gut feeling that we get.
[00:10:46] And ultimately, I I think it's Jesus who
[00:10:48] puts that gut feeling there. I I think
[00:10:51] the fact that we understand that evil is
[00:10:54] something speaks to the fact that there
[00:10:56] is an objective evil to be outbalanced
[00:10:59] by an objective good. Cuz in one sense
[00:11:03] there's this understanding that if you
[00:11:05] subjectivize evil then we can say we
[00:11:08] don't like those things that that they
[00:11:12] they really you know shouldn't happen.
[00:11:15] But to say that that we need to stop
[00:11:18] them, that these are objectively evil is
[00:11:22] actually admitting that there's some
[00:11:23] sort of moral law. And a moral law needs
[00:11:26] a moral lawgiver. And so ultimately, I
[00:11:29] talked to a lot of people who almost
[00:11:31] assume that taking God out of the
[00:11:32] picture solves the problem. I think it
[00:11:34] actually makes it more complicated. It
[00:11:36] makes it more complicated because now
[00:11:38] you're you've removed the objective
[00:11:39] standard by which to actually say
[00:11:41] something is truly objectively evil.
[00:11:46] And there's there's something that's
[00:11:48] unique about the Christian worldview in
[00:11:50] the question of
[00:11:53] pain and suffering and evil in that the
[00:11:57] God of the Bible describes himself.
[00:12:00] There's this really great instance in
[00:12:02] Exodus where Moses, he's up on Mount Si
[00:12:06] and he says, you know, I I I want to see
[00:12:09] you, God, but God says, you know, I'm
[00:12:12] I'm too great. I'm going to put you in
[00:12:14] the cleft of a rock. I'm going to pass
[00:12:15] by and you're just going to kind of see
[00:12:17] a snippet of me. But God describes
[00:12:20] himself as a God who is as Exodus 34:6.
[00:12:25] He's compassionate. He's gracious. He's
[00:12:28] merciful. And he's overabounding in
[00:12:30] steadfast love and kindness. And there
[00:12:32] are different iterations of that
[00:12:33] particular description of who God is
[00:12:35] throughout the Bible, throughout the
[00:12:37] Psalms, throughout the prophets. In
[00:12:39] fact, if you read the book of Jonah,
[00:12:40] it's actually Jonah's beef with God. He
[00:12:42] doesn't want to go to Nineveh and preach
[00:12:44] repentance. And at the very end, he
[00:12:46] says, "I didn't want to come here
[00:12:47] because I hate the Ninevites. And I knew
[00:12:49] that you are a God who is compassionate,
[00:12:52] that you're overabounding in steadfast
[00:12:53] love and kindness, and that you're true
[00:12:55] to your word, and if they repented, you
[00:12:56] would forgive them." I didn't want that
[00:12:58] to happen, right? His beef is that
[00:12:59] actually God is too good. But I think
[00:13:02] what's interesting about all of the
[00:13:03] common denominators within that sort of
[00:13:06] description of who God is, despite the
[00:13:08] differences, is that it all includes
[00:13:11] some version of what we would translate
[00:13:13] as the English word compassion.
[00:13:16] And compassion in English comes from two
[00:13:17] Latin words. Calm meaning with and
[00:13:19] passion meaning suffering. And I think
[00:13:22] one of the things that's unique about
[00:13:23] the Christian worldview is that the God
[00:13:26] of the Bible actually steps off his
[00:13:29] throne in eternity and into humanity and
[00:13:33] experiences brokenness. He experiences
[00:13:36] abandonment. He experiences pain and
[00:13:39] suffering. And ultimately he experiences
[00:13:41] being murdered. And in that way, the God
[00:13:45] of the Bible is not distance, distanced
[00:13:48] or aloof to the pain and suffering that
[00:13:50] we actually experience because he can
[00:13:53] actually relate to it. That as the
[00:13:56] second person of the trinity entering
[00:13:57] into humanity, he understands what
[00:14:00] depravity actually is. Because he can
[00:14:04] relate to
[00:14:06] the pain, suffering, abandonment, hurt,
[00:14:08] turmoil that we experience in this
[00:14:11] world. And I think that actually changes
[00:14:12] the dynamic uh when we understand the
[00:14:17] different worldview perspectives and how
[00:14:19] they describe God. Yes, God is
[00:14:20] transcendent. Yes, God is holy. Yes, God
[00:14:24] is above anything we could fully
[00:14:26] comprehend. But God actually
[00:14:30] experienced
[00:14:31] what we experience
[00:14:34] in that brokenness in the world.
[00:14:38] >> Mhm. and that he conquered that. I think
[00:14:42] the second part of your question,
[00:14:45] what why do you say he conquered that?
[00:14:48] Cuz it's still here.
[00:14:49] >> Yeah, it's a very good point. So, um
[00:14:51] it's it's what theologians sometimes
[00:14:53] refer to as a now but not yet reality in
[00:14:56] that the when Jesus rose from the dead,
[00:15:00] what he did ultimately is he said that
[00:15:02] death has no hold anymore. You know, the
[00:15:04] wages of sin is death. Paul says, "But
[00:15:07] the gift of God is eternal life through
[00:15:09] Christ Jesus." And so the the the
[00:15:13] punishment that was given to our first
[00:15:15] parents, Adam and Eve, when they ate of
[00:15:17] the fruit of the the tree of knowledge
[00:15:20] of good of evil, good and evil. And God
[00:15:22] said, "If you eat from this, you're
[00:15:23] going to die was that they did die. They
[00:15:25] didn't die right then and there, but
[00:15:27] there was a spiritual brokenness." Let
[00:15:29] me put it this way. So when you read
[00:15:30] Genesis chapter 1, you see all these
[00:15:32] iterations. You know, God makes the sea
[00:15:35] and the fish and the land and and the
[00:15:38] the animals and and the trees and the
[00:15:41] plants and
[00:15:43] if you separate the fish from the water,
[00:15:46] right? It dies. God speaks to the water
[00:15:49] and it teams with life. But if you
[00:15:51] separate the fish from the water, it's
[00:15:52] going to die. God speaks to the land and
[00:15:55] it brings forth vegetation and greenery.
[00:15:58] But if you remove the plant from the
[00:16:00] soil, it's going to die. Who does God
[00:16:02] speak to when he creates humans? He
[00:16:05] speaks to himself.
[00:16:07] What happens when we remove ourselves
[00:16:09] from our creator? We die. There's a
[00:16:12] relational component to it that I think
[00:16:14] is very profound. No matter how you want
[00:16:17] to read the literalism or the figure
[00:16:20] figurative aspects of Genesis chapter 1
[00:16:22] and 2, I think the point there being is
[00:16:25] that we were created for relationship
[00:16:27] with God and that's been affected.
[00:16:29] That's been broken. That's why we have
[00:16:32] covenants that God makes with his
[00:16:33] people. Those are promises. They're
[00:16:35] relational in their ultimate
[00:16:37] articulation and their practicality.
[00:16:40] And so when Jesus comes and he dies a
[00:16:45] death that we deserve
[00:16:47] because of the cosmic rebellion, the
[00:16:52] evil that we commit, the sin
[00:16:55] then
[00:16:57] is in the grave but then rises from the
[00:16:59] dead. What that is symbolic of is that
[00:17:03] the grave death has no hold on those who
[00:17:07] are found in Jesus Christ anymore. So
[00:17:09] though we still live in this beautiful
[00:17:11] yet broken world, all things will be
[00:17:13] made new. And that's the promise. And
[00:17:16] that
[00:17:18] and this kind of leads into the the
[00:17:20] other part of your question. You know,
[00:17:22] why why do we bother living our lives if
[00:17:24] it's just full of pain and suffering? I
[00:17:27] think when Jesus teaches his disciples
[00:17:28] to pray, he says, "Your kingdom come,
[00:17:31] your will be done on earth as it is in
[00:17:33] heaven." you know, this this life
[00:17:35] matters and it can be profoundly
[00:17:38] beautiful. And just as you know, we
[00:17:41] bring children into the world and
[00:17:43] there's a lot of potential for hurt and
[00:17:45] pain and suffering, but we still see
[00:17:47] that as a good thing. We still see the
[00:17:49] beauty and the amazingness of new life.
[00:17:54] When I saw my children come into this
[00:17:56] world,
[00:17:57] >> there's it was incredible. It's a
[00:17:59] miracle, right? How how did this come to
[00:18:02] be?
[00:18:04] And yet we understand that there's
[00:18:07] there's so much opportunity for hurt and
[00:18:11] pain and suffering and getting messed up
[00:18:12] there. And yet
[00:18:16] the potential for goodness and beauty
[00:18:20] and to be poured into in that little
[00:18:23] child to grow up as a virtuous
[00:18:26] individual of character as a good
[00:18:28] citizen and a person who can understand
[00:18:31] what is truly meaningful in this life
[00:18:35] that's worth doing.
[00:18:37] >> Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's
[00:18:39] part of, you know, the surrendering of
[00:18:41] making it's not just about dying and
[00:18:43] going going to heaven. If it was, you
[00:18:47] know, the gospel authors could have just
[00:18:50] solved the whole problem by just having
[00:18:51] Jesus's passionate narrative. But a lot
[00:18:54] of the gospels is about his life. It's
[00:18:56] about just the daily struggle and the
[00:18:58] beauty and the amazingness of friends.
[00:19:03] You know, it's interesting in in
[00:19:04] scripture in in John's gospel, he
[00:19:06] records this event of Jesus's friend
[00:19:08] Lazarus dying and Lazarus goes to the
[00:19:11] tomb and Lazarus's sisters Mary and
[00:19:14] Martha basically think that Jesus has
[00:19:17] procrastinated and he's got there too
[00:19:19] late. Like, if you were only here, our
[00:19:21] brother would still be alive.
[00:19:22] >> Mhm.
[00:19:22] >> And it's interesting because Jesus fully
[00:19:25] knows what he's going to do. He's going
[00:19:27] to speak into that tomb and tell Lazarus
[00:19:29] to get out. And yet John records it and
[00:19:32] says that Jesus stood there and he wept.
[00:19:36] He wept because his friend had died. And
[00:19:41] that feeling of that raw emotion, that's
[00:19:43] not wrong. Jesus knew he was going to
[00:19:45] raise him from the dead. But he's also
[00:19:47] weeping, I think, because Jesus
[00:19:49] understands more than anybody else
[00:19:52] what the true significance of the
[00:19:54] brokenness of this world can be in the
[00:19:57] physical death. but that we look forward
[00:19:59] to something
[00:20:01] amazing in the resurrection of life
[00:20:04] eternal. But that doesn't mean that this
[00:20:06] life is a throwaway by any means.
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[00:22:28] I mean, I I I have I had another
[00:22:30] interesting conversation with Wyatt, who
[00:22:32] you met earlier, uh, and and we were
[00:22:34] just chatting upstairs right before I
[00:22:36] came down, and
[00:22:37] >> we're talking about the same kind of
[00:22:38] thing. And I I can't remember
[00:22:41] how he worded it, but he he had asked,
[00:22:45] "I have a whole another life where I was
[00:22:48] >> addicted to cocaine and partying and
[00:22:50] doing pretty much anything living the
[00:22:52] non-Christian life, right?
[00:22:54] >> It was a lot of fun.
[00:22:55] >> It was maybe the most fun I've ever
[00:22:58] had."
[00:22:58] >> Mhm.
[00:22:59] >> I'm just being honest. I did I wasn't I
[00:23:01] wasn't riddled with anxiety. I didn't
[00:23:04] have to worry about [ __ ] because I had
[00:23:06] no responsibilities. I didn't have a
[00:23:08] son. I didn't have a daughter. I didn't
[00:23:09] have a wife. But
[00:23:13] so there were no worries. There were no
[00:23:15] anxieties. There was I I don't I have to
[00:23:17] get this stuff done. I mean, yes, I had
[00:23:18] a job, but it was it was Do you
[00:23:22] understand what I'm saying? And and so
[00:23:24] in the back then, I didn't I wouldn't
[00:23:27] say I was an atheist. It's not that I
[00:23:29] didn't believe in God. I just didn't
[00:23:30] give a [ __ ]
[00:23:31] >> And I was a sideline person
[00:23:34] >> and with no fear of death. It actually
[00:23:38] went went I lived in Columbia. I went
[00:23:41] down there
[00:23:43] with full intention of dying down there.
[00:23:46] >> You know, OD on drugs and when life gets
[00:23:49] boring, I'm checking out, right?
[00:23:51] >> Well, that didn't happen,
[00:23:52] >> right?
[00:23:53] >> Let's fast forward, you know, and and
[00:23:56] now I've I've come to Christ. I believe
[00:24:00] in Christ. I'm a Christian. I'm scared
[00:24:03] to death of death. H
[00:24:06] >> I'm scared to leave my kid behind, my
[00:24:08] kids, my wife, because I know how [ __ ]
[00:24:11] up this world is.
[00:24:12] >> I'm have more I have a team I'm
[00:24:15] responsible for. I have a business I'm
[00:24:16] responsible for. I have anxieties. I
[00:24:19] have worries. I have
[00:24:22] Does it seems like you would be
[00:24:25] not worried about death after
[00:24:28] >> you believe in Christ? After you come to
[00:24:31] Christ?
[00:24:32] >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think seems like
[00:24:34] life would be I don't know if easier,
[00:24:37] but less anxious, less worries, less I
[00:24:39] mean, but it's actually I'm just being
[00:24:42] honest. It's the opposite for me.
[00:24:44] >> Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think I
[00:24:46] think when we're young, we're we're kind
[00:24:49] of naive in thinking that the
[00:24:53] the indulgences
[00:24:56] are just what matters.
[00:24:59] And as we mature, we realize that
[00:25:01] there's so much more than just pleasure
[00:25:05] and uh you know pouring our lives into
[00:25:09] temporality and and I totally get what
[00:25:12] you're saying in terms of there being no
[00:25:14] outward effect on you don't have a
[00:25:17] family, you don't have friends
[00:25:19] necessarily. I bet though if you had
[00:25:21] died it would have affected somebody and
[00:25:24] there's a ripple effect that we often
[00:25:26] don't realize to how our lives actually
[00:25:29] impact others. I mean this is a lie that
[00:25:32] a lot of people who commit suicide often
[00:25:34] just assume they're better off gone,
[00:25:36] right? Everyone's going to be better off
[00:25:38] without them. And the just the the
[00:25:42] ripple effect outwards of how much pain
[00:25:45] that causes. I also think you know CS
[00:25:49] Lewis the the famous theologian and
[00:25:51] writer he wrote a book called surprised
[00:25:52] by joy in that when he writes he said
[00:25:56] you know if I was looking for happiness
[00:25:58] a good cigar and a bottle of scotch
[00:25:59] could have sufficed that that would have
[00:26:02] got me there and in his own
[00:26:04] autobiography he talks about the fact
[00:26:06] that he was actually surprised at the
[00:26:10] fulfillment that was brought and the
[00:26:13] realization and the maturity that came
[00:26:15] with it of how much his life affected
[00:26:19] the people around him and how much more
[00:26:23] meaningful it could be realizing what
[00:26:26] his purpose and identity actually was in
[00:26:29] Christ that he actually was surprised by
[00:26:31] joy and that he thought his life was
[00:26:32] basically going to be over. He couldn't
[00:26:33] do all the fun things. he couldn't jump
[00:26:36] into those uh vices and indulgences and
[00:26:40] but that he failed to realize that the
[00:26:44] the temporal
[00:26:47] the ecstasies
[00:26:50] those were ultimately fleeting that they
[00:26:53] wouldn't fulfill him in the way that he
[00:26:54] was actually looking for there what I
[00:26:56] was referring to earlier when um you
[00:26:58] know GK Chesterton says that the man
[00:27:00] who's walking into the brothel is
[00:27:02] searching for God he he's he's looking
[00:27:04] to worship something. And I I I think
[00:27:09] maybe the the anxiety and the stress of
[00:27:13] what you're feeling cuz I feel that too
[00:27:15] in that one of my biggest fears is is
[00:27:18] dying and leaving my family and then not
[00:27:21] being able to see my children grow up
[00:27:23] and not being able and then thinking,
[00:27:25] you know, I don't want my children to
[00:27:27] grow up without a father and and that
[00:27:29] that weighs on me.
[00:27:31] >> Mhm. Not because I'm necessarily afraid
[00:27:34] of death, because I truly believe that I
[00:27:36] will be united with my Lord and Savior,
[00:27:38] but it's a grieving of the reality of
[00:27:42] what could be left behind. But I think
[00:27:45] that's a that's a realization of a
[00:27:47] maturity that as we grow older, we
[00:27:49] realize the responsibilities
[00:27:52] that come with the things that we do and
[00:27:55] the people that we're connected to. And
[00:27:58] that though we might feel like the drugs
[00:28:01] and the sex and the the physical things
[00:28:03] and that those are going to give us
[00:28:04] meaning and purpose when we're younger,
[00:28:06] it's largely because we we have a
[00:28:10] mentality that fails to realize our
[00:28:12] mortality
[00:28:14] more broadly.
[00:28:15] >> That that this world has a lot more to
[00:28:19] offer than fleeting pleasures.
[00:28:23] And that, you know, when you pour into
[00:28:26] your kids, when you're building the
[00:28:29] train sets with your son, like the joy
[00:28:31] that that can bring
[00:28:33] >> and just seeing a child light up and and
[00:28:37] and seeing your child being born and the
[00:28:41] love that you share with your wife,
[00:28:44] that's that's something that I think
[00:28:46] goes beyond
[00:28:49] >> a high, right? which is a very in one
[00:28:54] sense a very selfish thing right I'm
[00:28:56] experiencing this but
[00:28:59] when we get to do something like raise
[00:29:01] children as virtuous citizens when we
[00:29:06] instill character in them that that's a
[00:29:09] legacy that goes beyond the simple you
[00:29:13] know I'm feeling this right now and that
[00:29:15] feels great
[00:29:17] >> but
[00:29:19] the thing that lasts
[00:29:21] are the things that are truly going to
[00:29:24] give meaning and purpose in the world
[00:29:26] around us and is ultimately going to
[00:29:28] change the world. We have that
[00:29:29] potential. So maybe we should be looking
[00:29:31] for fulfillment instead of happiness.
[00:29:34] >> I think I think sometimes I wonder you
[00:29:35] know we tease out the differences
[00:29:37] between joy and happiness and in some
[00:29:38] ways those are synonymous. I don't think
[00:29:40] that uh um but yeah fulfillment
[00:29:44] fulfillment goes beyond simple happiness
[00:29:48] in the same way that love is far more
[00:29:51] than an emotional feeling.
[00:29:52] >> Right? There are days that I wake up and
[00:29:54] I don't necessarily feel like I'm loving
[00:29:56] my wife like I did on our wedding day
[00:29:58] >> or on our honeymoon or whatever.
[00:30:01] >> And
[00:30:03] that love transcends that because love
[00:30:06] is actually about sacrifice to a certain
[00:30:08] degree. And that's what we see. I mean,
[00:30:10] if God's character is love, John the
[00:30:13] Apostle in his epistle says God is love
[00:30:17] and love is the greatest ethic. So if
[00:30:20] the greatest God is going to vi going to
[00:30:24] encompass himself, his identity in the
[00:30:26] greatest ethic well the greatest example
[00:30:28] of that ethic is actually
[00:30:29] self-sacrifice, which is what we see in
[00:30:31] the person of Jesus Christ. You know, no
[00:30:34] greater love has this than a man lays
[00:30:37] his life down for his friend, it says in
[00:30:39] scripture. And so whether we're talking
[00:30:42] about happiness or whether we're talking
[00:30:46] about love or whether I think we need to
[00:30:48] calibrate these within a framework that
[00:30:50] actually puts them into an understanding
[00:30:52] that goes beyond
[00:30:54] a simple feeling. Because if love is a
[00:30:57] simple feeling, if happiness is a simple
[00:30:58] feeling, if if if meaning and purpose
[00:31:02] and identity are simple feelings, well
[00:31:04] then those are those are going to change
[00:31:05] with my mood. It's going to change with
[00:31:08] my diet, right? And so these concepts go
[00:31:13] beyond maybe the simplicity that we
[00:31:15] often describe them as because I love my
[00:31:18] wife even when I'm not necessarily
[00:31:20] feeling as in love with her as I could
[00:31:22] possibly be. And I can actually live
[00:31:25] that out in a self-sacrificial way that
[00:31:28] will truly be loving to her, even if I'm
[00:31:31] not feeling the warm fuzzies all the
[00:31:34] time.
[00:31:37] Makes sense. Makes sense.
[00:31:44] I'm trying to think how to ask this. I
[00:31:45] What
[00:31:48] do you think happens when we die? What
[00:31:49] when when you think of heaven, what is
[00:31:51] your imagination? And what does your
[00:31:53] faith tell you? Where where is it? What
[00:31:55] do we see? What where are we going?
[00:31:57] >> Mhm. Well, well, Paul says it is
[00:31:58] appointed uh people once to die and then
[00:32:01] the judgment. So I think you know what
[00:32:05] what's going to happen is we're we're
[00:32:07] going to be
[00:32:09] judged where we're going to stand before
[00:32:12] our creator and there's going to be an
[00:32:14] instance of
[00:32:17] we are either
[00:32:19] theologians sometimes describe it as
[00:32:20] being found in the first Adam or the
[00:32:22] second Adam. So Jesus is described as
[00:32:24] the second Adam in scripture and the
[00:32:27] idea is you're either going to be found
[00:32:29] in your sin and you're going to take the
[00:32:33] brunt of that or you're going to be
[00:32:35] found in the covering of Christ and he's
[00:32:39] taken the brunt of that. So um what we
[00:32:44] do in this life it's not that you know
[00:32:46] we just
[00:32:48] we punch our ticket we say you know
[00:32:50] Jesus I believe in you and then whatever
[00:32:53] we do after that doesn't matter you know
[00:32:55] what we do actually does matter we're
[00:32:58] not saved by our works but we're saved
[00:33:00] for works and those works can actually
[00:33:03] be an example and an outworking
[00:33:05] >> what do you mean by that we're not saved
[00:33:07] by our works we're saved for our works
[00:33:09] what does that mean yeah so in In the
[00:33:11] book of Ephesians, uh Paul writes and he
[00:33:14] says that um in chapter 2,
[00:33:19] he says uh and you were dead in your
[00:33:24] transgressions and sins in which you
[00:33:25] formerly walked according to the course
[00:33:27] of this world according to the ruler and
[00:33:29] the power of the air and the spirit is
[00:33:31] now working in the sons of disobedience
[00:33:33] among whom we all also formerly
[00:33:37] conducted ourselves in the lust of our
[00:33:39] flesh doing the desires of our flesh and
[00:33:41] the mind and were by nature children of
[00:33:44] wrath even
[00:33:47] even as the rest. But God being rich in
[00:33:50] mercy because of his great love which
[00:33:53] has which he loves us even when we were
[00:33:57] dead in our transgressions made us alive
[00:33:59] together with Christ. By grace you have
[00:34:01] been saved and raised up with him and
[00:34:04] seated he has seated us with him in the
[00:34:07] heavenly places in Christ. And he says
[00:34:10] that you are saved.
[00:34:14] So for by grace you have been saved
[00:34:17] through faith and this is not of
[00:34:20] yourselves. It is not the gift of God,
[00:34:22] not of works so that no one may boast.
[00:34:25] For we are his workmanship created in
[00:34:27] Christ Jesus for good works which God
[00:34:29] prepared beforehand so that we would
[00:34:31] walk in them. So, in other words,
[00:34:34] there's nothing you can do or I can do
[00:34:37] that is going to plate God. We're we're
[00:34:40] not going to be able to earn our
[00:34:44] salvation because
[00:34:47] compared to the standard of the holiness
[00:34:49] of God, it's always going to fall short.
[00:34:51] >> Mhm.
[00:34:52] >> We're broken whether we realize it or
[00:34:54] not.
[00:34:54] >> Mhm.
[00:34:55] >> And we're often, I sometimes say, you
[00:34:57] know, worried about the evil out there
[00:34:58] when there's a lot of evil in here. And
[00:35:00] so what God has done on our behalf is
[00:35:03] through Christ Jesus. He has saved us
[00:35:07] like Paul says that we are saved by
[00:35:10] faith in grace and it's not works. So in
[00:35:14] in one sense you know the the law
[00:35:19] is like a mirror.
[00:35:22] So when we see God's law and his
[00:35:25] holiness displayed in his character that
[00:35:27] calls us to righteousness, that calls us
[00:35:29] to do good things, that's like a mirror
[00:35:31] showing us how dirty we are.
[00:35:33] >> But we make a mistake when we think that
[00:35:35] we need to grab the mirror and wash
[00:35:36] ourselves with it, right? That's not
[00:35:39] going to clean us.
[00:35:40] >> We need something external. We need we
[00:35:41] need to jump in the shower. That's
[00:35:43] what's truly going to clean us. The law
[00:35:45] has a purpose and a good purpose, and
[00:35:47] that's to show us that we're dirty. But
[00:35:51] it's through faith alone in Christ alone
[00:35:55] to the glory of God alone that we're
[00:35:56] saved. That that's something that he has
[00:35:58] done. We're saved by works, just not
[00:36:00] ours. Christ who has done them
[00:36:02] perfectly. And the works that we do,
[00:36:06] when I say we're not saved by our works,
[00:36:08] but we're saved for our works. What I
[00:36:10] mean that by that is that the works are
[00:36:12] actually the evidence to show that God
[00:36:16] has truly done something in our life.
[00:36:19] And now we see that movement in our
[00:36:22] heart. So I I talked to I was talking to
[00:36:25] someone recently who was saying, you
[00:36:28] know, I have a friend who uh he he
[00:36:31] claims to be a Christian and um but he's
[00:36:33] he's really not living a life that I
[00:36:35] would say is overly overly
[00:36:39] a good example of what a Christian
[00:36:41] should be living. He said, like, Wes, do
[00:36:43] you think he's a do you think he's a
[00:36:44] believer? Do you think he has a genuine
[00:36:46] faith in God? And what I said to him
[00:36:48] was, you know,
[00:36:50] ultimately that's between him and God.
[00:36:53] But I think it's perfectly reasonable to
[00:36:55] look at that person and say,
[00:36:58] listen,
[00:37:01] your salvation is between you and God.
[00:37:03] But I have no reason to believe that. I
[00:37:06] have no reason to believe that you're
[00:37:08] saved. And I think that should worry
[00:37:09] you. I think it should worry you that
[00:37:13] when I look at the world and I look at
[00:37:16] you, I really don't see that much of a
[00:37:17] difference. And that either means that
[00:37:20] you're you're not living the life that
[00:37:22] God has called you to or you're in real
[00:37:25] danger that you don't actually
[00:37:27] understand who Jesus is and what he's
[00:37:29] done for you on your behalf. And so I
[00:37:33] think the mistake we can make is
[00:37:35] thinking that God is like the gods of
[00:37:37] the Old Testament that the nations
[00:37:39] surrounding Israel were trying to offer
[00:37:41] up sacrifices to the agricultural gods
[00:37:44] so that you know if I sacrifice my son
[00:37:46] on the altar of of Baal, maybe he'll
[00:37:50] grow good crops for me. And and God
[00:37:53] says, I hate that. I hate that because
[00:37:56] that's an it's it's it's making the
[00:37:59] thing a means to an end. I don't want
[00:38:01] you to sacrifice to get.
[00:38:04] >> I want you to love. I want you to love
[00:38:07] me. And I want this to be an act of
[00:38:08] devotion. Which is why eventually God
[00:38:11] through the prophets starts to condemn
[00:38:13] the sacrifices which he commands the
[00:38:15] Israelites to do. Not because the
[00:38:16] sacrifices are bad, but because he says,
[00:38:19] you know, you've just made this you've
[00:38:21] made it a a meaningless act. You've made
[00:38:24] it something that just becomes wrote.
[00:38:28] It's it's just a a ritual. God says, "I
[00:38:31] don't want ritual. I'm not interested in
[00:38:33] that. All those other gods, they can get
[00:38:35] the rituals, right? It's fake. It's
[00:38:38] meaningless. It's purposeless. But I
[00:38:40] love you and I want you to do this
[00:38:42] because I want you to understand the
[00:38:45] relationship that I'm I've called you to
[00:38:48] be in." And so those works those works
[00:38:52] are an outpouring of the love. Right? If
[00:38:55] I were to ask you, Sean, what's the
[00:38:57] opposite of love? What would you say?
[00:38:58] Hate.
[00:38:59] >> Hate. That's a common answer and I think
[00:39:00] that's a good answer. But if you think
[00:39:02] about it, to hate something is actually
[00:39:05] to to invest emotional energy in it.
[00:39:09] Apathy,
[00:39:10] apathy is actually the opposite of love
[00:39:13] because apathy
[00:39:15] just doesn't care. When we see people
[00:39:20] who abandon children
[00:39:23] who um you know evil is being done
[00:39:26] around them and they're just indifferent
[00:39:29] that that stirs us as it should. And
[00:39:33] it's because apathy is the opposite of
[00:39:36] love. And what God is calling us to is,
[00:39:42] you know, the way that we live out that
[00:39:44] love is by showing that that is actually
[00:39:48] not because it saves us because it
[00:39:49] can't. There's nothing that we can do
[00:39:51] that God, you know, God doesn't need us
[00:39:54] to love him. In one sense, God doesn't
[00:39:57] need us to do anything. But it's kind of
[00:40:00] amazing that he he wants us to. God is
[00:40:03] no better off or worse off if I don't
[00:40:06] love him. If I don't worship him. God
[00:40:08] exists perfectly in a set of living
[00:40:10] loving relationships and did eternally.
[00:40:13] And yet out of an outpouring of his
[00:40:15] love, he decides to create. He doesn't
[00:40:18] need to do that. He existed instead of
[00:40:21] living a living relationships in the
[00:40:22] father, the son, and the holy spirit.
[00:40:24] And yet he creates and even he creates
[00:40:26] knowing that
[00:40:29] his creation is going to rebel. that's
[00:40:31] going to cause pain and that he himself
[00:40:34] in the second person as the son is going
[00:40:36] to enter into that pain and yet it's to
[00:40:41] his glory. In the the book of
[00:40:44] Revelation, the last book of the Bible,
[00:40:45] it says that before the foundations of
[00:40:47] the world world were lain, the lamb was
[00:40:49] slain. And so the cross wasn't a
[00:40:51] contingency plan. It wasn't an oops, I
[00:40:54] better fix things. It was all for the
[00:40:56] glory of God because he loves us and he
[00:40:59] wants right relationship with us.
[00:41:02] So you're saying it's not the works,
[00:41:04] it's grace and faith. So the way I
[00:41:08] understand what you're saying is if you
[00:41:10] have faith then you wouldn't do the
[00:41:13] latter anyways. You wouldn't act like
[00:41:15] that anyways. Am I correct in the wrong
[00:41:18] things?
[00:41:18] >> Okay. We're talking about it's not for
[00:41:21] your deeds or your works. Correct.
[00:41:23] That's it's for your grace and faith.
[00:41:26] >> Yeah.
[00:41:27] >> To get you to heaven. Is that that's
[00:41:28] what you said? Correct.
[00:41:29] >> Yep.
[00:41:30] >> So if you had faith in grace,
[00:41:36] then
[00:41:37] maybe you wouldn't have done the works,
[00:41:39] but you wouldn't have lied, cheated,
[00:41:41] steal, murdered, or done any of that
[00:41:43] [ __ ] Does that make sense?
[00:41:45] >> Yeah. I mean, I think
[00:41:46] >> so. But by fa by having faith alone, you
[00:41:48] would not partake in breaking the ten
[00:41:53] commandments.
[00:41:53] >> Or at least there's an understanding
[00:41:55] that this is not what I should be doing.
[00:41:59] >> Right? There's a there's a changing of
[00:42:00] of mind in in the mindset of when I
[00:42:04] think of my life before really
[00:42:06] understanding what Jesus had done on my
[00:42:09] behalf, I I could easily explain away
[00:42:16] bad things, right? Because the
[00:42:19] significance of them was different.
[00:42:22] Martin Luther, the uh the German um
[00:42:25] reformer,
[00:42:27] he he talks about the difference
[00:42:29] between,
[00:42:31] you know, falling in a hole and making a
[00:42:34] bed in a hole
[00:42:36] or if you fall, you trip in the hole and
[00:42:38] then you get out of the hole. But that's
[00:42:42] a mistake and you understand that it's a
[00:42:43] mistake. You don't then set up camp in
[00:42:46] the hole or a bird flying over your head
[00:42:48] and a bird making a nest in your hair.
[00:42:50] Like when we when we truly understand
[00:42:53] the significance of the weight of the
[00:42:56] wrongdoing that we participate in, it it
[00:42:58] grieves us and we want to change, right?
[00:43:01] Maturity is realizing that we shouldn't
[00:43:04] be doing these things, though we do them
[00:43:07] because we're still in the on this side
[00:43:10] of eternity. We're still in a broken
[00:43:11] world, but we have an understanding and
[00:43:14] we have that conviction of the Holy
[00:43:15] Spirit that we shouldn't do them and we
[00:43:18] don't want to do them. When I sin, when
[00:43:20] I when I sin against my wife, when I sin
[00:43:23] against my family, my friends, anybody,
[00:43:26] I I feel convicted of that because I
[00:43:28] know I shouldn't be doing that. But and
[00:43:31] that's not to say that um you know if
[00:43:34] you aren't a Christian that you don't
[00:43:36] feel guilt or conviction or I think we
[00:43:40] all do by nature of the fact that we're
[00:43:42] created in God's image. There's an
[00:43:43] aspect of that that's still it's crying
[00:43:45] out to us in our identity. We know we're
[00:43:47] not meant to be doing these things. But
[00:43:51] uh in the book of James, there's this
[00:43:53] this really great passage where James um
[00:43:57] he talks about the fact that if you
[00:43:59] break one commandment of the law, uh
[00:44:03] you've you've broken all the law. Um
[00:44:08] and what he says there uh
[00:44:11] is
[00:44:14] he says, "What use is it, my brothers,
[00:44:16] if someone says he has faith but he has
[00:44:18] no works? Can that faith save him? If a
[00:44:21] brother or sister is without clothing
[00:44:23] and in need of daily food, and one of
[00:44:26] you says to him, "Go in peace, be
[00:44:28] warmed, and be filled." And yet you do
[00:44:30] not give him what is necessary for their
[00:44:32] body. What is the use? Even so, faith,
[00:44:34] if it has no works, is dead by itself.
[00:44:37] Now, you could read that and think,
[00:44:38] well, he's saying it's it's faith and
[00:44:40] works, right?
[00:44:42] >> Cuz he says, you know, show me your your
[00:44:44] faith and I'll show you my works. But
[00:44:46] what he's getting there is not that it's
[00:44:49] both faith and works. It's that the
[00:44:52] works are going to be an outpouring of
[00:44:54] the faith that you have. He says um
[00:45:00] now uh let me see if I can find it. Um
[00:45:04] that if you if you now if you commit if
[00:45:09] you break one aspect of the law, you are
[00:45:13] held accountable for all of it. And it's
[00:45:16] kind of like this, Sean. If you're
[00:45:17] hanging off this edge of a cliff and
[00:45:19] you're hanging on to uh like a chain,
[00:45:24] if one of those links in the chain is
[00:45:27] cut, you're going to fall as if none of
[00:45:29] those links are holding you up, right?
[00:45:33] >> And it that's kind of what James is
[00:45:35] getting at there. If you if you break
[00:45:38] one of the commandments, you've break
[00:45:40] broken all of them. It's not that if you
[00:45:43] lie, you're now held accountable for
[00:45:45] murder. But it's that
[00:45:47] I'm hanging on to that chain and if one
[00:45:51] of those links is severed, I'm going to
[00:45:54] plummet to my death because there's no
[00:45:56] small sin because there's no small God.
[00:45:59] That doesn't mean all sin is created
[00:46:00] equal. We know that murder is worse than
[00:46:02] sin. And we even see when Jesus is
[00:46:05] handed over to Pilate just before his
[00:46:07] crucifixion, he says, "The one who's
[00:46:08] given given me over to you has committed
[00:46:11] the greater sin." The law has more
[00:46:14] severe penalties for some sins and less
[00:46:17] severe penalties for others in the Old
[00:46:19] Testament. It's not that this is all,
[00:46:22] you know, flattened out. There are
[00:46:24] gradations of sin and we even understand
[00:46:25] that in our own civil law, but
[00:46:29] it's it's cosmic treason against a holy
[00:46:32] God. And so in that sense, it's always
[00:46:34] going to be significant because of who
[00:46:36] it's against.
[00:46:40] >> You know, I read this um have you heard
[00:46:42] of the the Jesus Calling?
[00:46:44] >> Mhm.
[00:46:44] >> I read this every morning. I read it
[00:46:46] more than my Bible cuz I actually
[00:46:48] understand that. And uh I know it's
[00:46:50] funny, but it's true. But you know, this
[00:46:53] morning I was reading it and I was a
[00:46:55] couple days behind so I've caught up.
[00:46:57] But you know, was talking about and a
[00:46:59] common thing in there is it's all It's
[00:47:02] always talking about, "Hand over your
[00:47:04] problems to me. Hand them over to me.
[00:47:06] All the [ __ ] you're worried about, hand
[00:47:08] it over to me. I'll take care of it."
[00:47:10] And I was I just I just I don't
[00:47:12] understand what that means. I mean,
[00:47:14] >> I've got all kinds of [ __ ] problems.
[00:47:16] I pray for them all the time,
[00:47:19] >> years, some of these problems. And I'm
[00:47:22] not saying I have more problems or less
[00:47:23] problems than anybody else. They're just
[00:47:25] problems, you know? And I I pray about
[00:47:27] them.
[00:47:29] A lot of them don't get answered.
[00:47:32] And and and then I think about it and
[00:47:34] I'm like, what what does that mean?
[00:47:36] >> Like I'm it's Monday morning. I'm
[00:47:38] anxious. I'm a business owner. I got I'm
[00:47:42] a family guy. I got I got all kinds of
[00:47:45] problems and and anxieties and
[00:47:48] >> and so what is it when it says don't
[00:47:51] worry about your problems. Hand them
[00:47:52] over to me. I'll take care of them. Like
[00:47:55] >> I've been praying for years for you to
[00:47:57] take care of some of these problems. And
[00:47:59] they're all, not all of them, but a lot
[00:48:01] of them are still here. So, what does
[00:48:04] that mean? Like, I can't just go, "Hey,
[00:48:08] I got all this [ __ ] coming up and there
[00:48:09] are problems and things that I'm
[00:48:11] stressed about, but I'm just not going
[00:48:12] to [ __ ] do any of it because you said
[00:48:14] you're going to handle it,
[00:48:15] >> that's not going to work out well for
[00:48:17] me,
[00:48:17] >> you know, and so I don't even know what
[00:48:19] that means.
[00:48:21] >> Just hand over your problems. Here you
[00:48:23] go."
[00:48:23] >> I think
[00:48:24] >> here they are. Yeah. Exactly. I think
[00:48:26] one way that that it could be looked at
[00:48:29] and maybe this is a diff like unique way
[00:48:31] of framing it. But I think part of that
[00:48:36] calling that God says, you know, come to
[00:48:38] me because my yoke is easy and my burden
[00:48:42] is light is an invitation to be
[00:48:46] transparent with God in those things.
[00:48:50] Psalm 23, pretty famous psalm. The Lord
[00:48:52] is my shepherd. Yahweh is my shepherd.
[00:48:55] that I shall not want. He makes me lie
[00:48:56] down in green pastures. He leads me
[00:48:58] beside quiet waters. He restores my
[00:48:59] soul. He guides me in the paths of
[00:49:01] righteousness for his name's sake. One
[00:49:04] chapter over, Psalm 22 starts very
[00:49:07] different. My God, my God, why have you
[00:49:09] forsaken me? Why are you so far from me?
[00:49:13] From this my salvation and the words of
[00:49:14] my groaning? Oh my God, I call by day,
[00:49:18] but you do not answer and by night and I
[00:49:20] have no rest. You know what I find
[00:49:22] really interesting about the God of the
[00:49:24] Bible is the God of the Bible who calls
[00:49:26] us to come to him sees both the person
[00:49:28] who says Yahweh is my shepherd I shall
[00:49:31] not want and the person who says my God
[00:49:34] my God why have you forsaken me as
[00:49:36] equally valid forms of worship in that
[00:49:40] onethird of the book of Psalms is what
[00:49:43] is sometimes referred to as the lament
[00:49:45] or the complaint psalms and that God
[00:49:48] wants us to come to him he wants wants
[00:49:51] us to be transparent with him. He wants
[00:49:54] us to be like David who says, "I don't
[00:49:57] get it. I'm struggling. I'm lost. I
[00:50:00] don't feel you. I feel like you're far
[00:50:03] away. I feel like I'm forsaken."
[00:50:06] And
[00:50:08] that aspect, I think, of God calling us
[00:50:10] to cast our burdens on him. Part of that
[00:50:14] is an acknowledgment of God realizing
[00:50:17] that this world is hard. that that that
[00:50:20] our burdens aren't meaningless. You
[00:50:22] know, some Eastern philosophies like
[00:50:24] Buddhism and Taoism and Shintoism,
[00:50:26] you read some of these writings and the
[00:50:30] the way that they talk about struggle
[00:50:32] and pain and suffering is is sometimes
[00:50:35] very dismissive and that it's like,
[00:50:38] well, just stop desiring things. Just
[00:50:40] stop. You know that you're too you're
[00:50:43] you're attached to this world because
[00:50:44] you have this desire. So, cast off all
[00:50:47] desires. you know, easier said than
[00:50:49] done, right?
[00:50:50] >> You know, ironically, they desire to do
[00:50:52] that to cast off all the desires. But
[00:50:55] the I think what we see within the just
[00:50:58] honesty of the text of the Bible is that
[00:51:02] you see that God, that God who's
[00:51:04] compassionate, that God who understands,
[00:51:06] that God who says, you know, you can
[00:51:08] come to me
[00:51:10] and you can be
[00:51:13] honest with me about what's going on.
[00:51:16] You don't have to sugarcoat your
[00:51:18] problems. You don't have to pretend that
[00:51:19] you're holier than you really are. You
[00:51:21] don't have to pretend that things are
[00:51:22] going well or that things are easy or
[00:51:25] because listen, I I get it. You know, I
[00:51:30] walked the dusty streets of first
[00:51:31] century Galilee and my my my my feet
[00:51:35] achd and I my friends abandoned me. My
[00:51:40] family members died
[00:51:43] and I was betrayed and I was murdered.
[00:51:46] And I think part of God calling us to
[00:51:50] come to him is less of a cure all. You
[00:51:53] know, all of a sudden all your problems
[00:51:55] are going to be fixed.
[00:51:56] >> Mhm.
[00:51:57] >> That's not realistic. We know we know
[00:51:59] that's not going to happen.
[00:52:01] >> Mhm.
[00:52:01] >> There's a future tense of the fact that
[00:52:03] God says, you know,
[00:52:06] you I'm going to make all things new.
[00:52:09] But he also says, "This world is going
[00:52:10] to be hard, and this world is going to
[00:52:13] be full of pain and struggle, but I've
[00:52:16] overcome the world." And so, all
[00:52:19] authority in heaven on earth has been
[00:52:21] given to me, Jesus says.
[00:52:23] And as part of that, I think the calling
[00:52:28] is less of a Jesus is just a fixer who's
[00:52:32] going to solve all our problems. Jesus
[00:52:34] isn't a genie,
[00:52:37] but
[00:52:38] the relational component is that God
[00:52:41] wants us to come to him. He wants us to
[00:52:44] be honest. He wants us to be transparent
[00:52:47] because he can understand those things.
[00:52:49] And the the reassurance in that is that
[00:52:53] it's not a God that just creates and
[00:52:55] sets the dials in motion and then steps
[00:52:58] back and says, "Well, I hope everything
[00:52:59] works out. you know, let's see how all
[00:53:01] these little people can figure
[00:53:03] themselves out and I hope it I hope it
[00:53:05] works out. No, God desires our good. But
[00:53:08] that good doesn't necessarily mean that
[00:53:11] everything is going to work perfectly in
[00:53:12] this world. Look at the apostles.
[00:53:14] >> Mhm.
[00:53:14] >> Look at Jesus himself. You know, all of
[00:53:17] the apostles
[00:53:19] after coming to the realization that
[00:53:23] their their rabbi rose from the dead and
[00:53:27] that the claims that he made about
[00:53:28] himself were true
[00:53:31] saw that proclamation and the new life
[00:53:34] that was a possibility for others as
[00:53:36] something worth suffering and dying for.
[00:53:39] And although we can't be sure of all the
[00:53:41] martyrdom stories that they're rock
[00:53:43] solid about all the apostles, we know
[00:53:45] that they at minimum suffered pain and
[00:53:47] persecution for that. And they desired
[00:53:50] that. Not that they were going out to
[00:53:52] get hurt, but they understood that, you
[00:53:56] know, the the God who loves us is worth
[00:53:59] knowing personally because the God who
[00:54:02] loves us cares about us. When we are in
[00:54:05] those seasons of my God, my God, why
[00:54:07] have you forsaken me? And in the seasons
[00:54:09] of the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
[00:54:10] want.
[00:54:16] >> All right. All right. Where do you think
[00:54:18] we were before we were born?
[00:54:20] >> I I don't think we existed before we
[00:54:22] were born.
[00:54:23] >> Do you think that it's just you don't
[00:54:25] think I mean when you hear the term old
[00:54:27] soul, does that mean anything to you?
[00:54:29] >> No. I think it's a turn of phrase. You
[00:54:31] know, it is interesting the I thought
[00:54:33] about this with every kid that's been
[00:54:35] born of of mine, you know.
[00:54:37] It's so crazy that a new life just pops
[00:54:41] into existence
[00:54:42] >> and that that is something like the I
[00:54:46] can see the personality of the baby and
[00:54:49] I can see how my wife's personality and
[00:54:53] my personality are articulated in my
[00:54:56] sons and my daughters and how amazing
[00:54:59] that is
[00:55:01] and that that fact is a little bit
[00:55:03] incomprehensible.
[00:55:04] But I don't believe in the pre-existence
[00:55:06] of souls. I don't think that that's
[00:55:07] something that that scripture
[00:55:09] articulates in in a way this concrete.
[00:55:11] But I think there's a divine mystery to
[00:55:13] the act of life. How does non-life
[00:55:15] produce life?
[00:55:17] I I we we don't really have an answer to
[00:55:19] that question in terms of a scientific
[00:55:22] pursuit. Um, and even the fact that, you
[00:55:25] know, this how many pounds of gray
[00:55:26] matter in my brain is able to
[00:55:29] >> ponder those questions is pretty crazy
[00:55:31] in and of itself.
[00:55:33] >> If we really think about it,
[00:55:35] >> why why can I trust this? If this is a
[00:55:38] product of time plus matter plus chance,
[00:55:40] what what is really grounding my ability
[00:55:43] to trust my reasoning faculties? Well, I
[00:55:46] think it's because I am endowed with the
[00:55:49] image of my creator, which gives meaning
[00:55:53] and purpose to that. But man, there's
[00:55:56] something crazy about, you know, seeing
[00:56:00] a new life come into existence and
[00:56:02] watching that person grow up and
[00:56:04] >> Oh, yeah.
[00:56:06] >> Yeah. It truly is miraculous. Yeah. It
[00:56:09] uh it
[00:56:11] there's no doubt,
[00:56:14] Wes, let's take a quick break.
[00:56:18] Think about the last time you were
[00:56:19] getting ready for a big night out. Fresh
[00:56:22] haircut, clean clothes, everything
[00:56:24] dialed in. And before you walk out the
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[00:59:18] All right, Wes, we're back from the
[00:59:20] break. So, all that wasn't on the
[00:59:22] outline before this, but uh so now I
[00:59:24] want to get into your story. Born in
[00:59:26] Pakistan,
[00:59:27] >> what were you doing over there? What
[00:59:29] were your parents doing over there?
[00:59:30] >> Yeah, that's right. Usually when I cross
[00:59:31] the border and and people look at my
[00:59:33] passport, they ask military or
[00:59:35] missionary because why why else would a
[00:59:37] guy that looks like me be born in
[00:59:39] Pakistan?
[00:59:40] >> And it it is it's a missionary. So my
[00:59:42] parents were missionaries in the um uh
[00:59:48] early '9s uh in in Pakistan. So I was
[00:59:52] born there, but we weren't there for
[00:59:53] very long because the Gulf War broke
[00:59:55] out.
[00:59:56] >> Mhm.
[00:59:56] >> And Pakistan sided with Saddam Hussein.
[00:59:58] So it wasn't safe to be in in Pakistan
[01:00:01] anymore. And so we eventually came back
[01:00:03] to Canada. And then we my parents went
[01:00:06] back to the missions field where my my
[01:00:08] dad worked in Aman Jordan where for a
[01:00:11] short time he was the chaplain at the
[01:00:14] British embassy. So uh very short stint
[01:00:17] of my childhood. I actually went back
[01:00:18] after I graduated high school. I went
[01:00:20] back to Jordan. But it was it was very
[01:00:22] different because when I was there as a
[01:00:23] child we were in Aman and we it was very
[01:00:26] rural and uh or very urban and then when
[01:00:30] I went back it was very rural. We were I
[01:00:32] was working with Bedawin with a
[01:00:34] tuberculosis clinic.
[01:00:36] >> Oh wow.
[01:00:36] >> And so it's a very different experience.
[01:00:39] Even the language the Arabic that the
[01:00:41] the Bedawin spoke the locals said like
[01:00:43] don't worry we can't understand them
[01:00:45] either. So it was uh but it was it was
[01:00:49] it was great and I think I think formed
[01:00:52] a lot of my
[01:00:55] desires and interests in even something
[01:00:58] like inquiry into Islam having
[01:01:00] understood what a majority Muslim
[01:01:02] perspective was and some of the things
[01:01:05] that might like not totally compute if
[01:01:10] you were just learning about something
[01:01:12] like a worldview like Islam from a
[01:01:16] Did you how how far into Islam did you
[01:01:19] get?
[01:01:20] >> Um well I researched it pretty heavily
[01:01:22] like I I read I read the Quran cover to
[01:01:24] cover a few times and um connected with
[01:01:27] some people who were doing academic work
[01:01:30] on the Quran. There was a period when I
[01:01:32] was in university where there were uh
[01:01:35] other Muslim students who during Ramadan
[01:01:38] they would read the Quran from beginning
[01:01:40] to end and I would do it with them
[01:01:42] almost as a way to establish
[01:01:44] relationships but also to talk through
[01:01:46] some of these things and then I would
[01:01:48] also share some of what I was reading in
[01:01:50] the Bible as well. But uh in my
[01:01:53] four-year undergraduate degree I
[01:01:55] probably read the Quran five or six
[01:01:56] times.
[01:01:57] >> Wow. And in English, mind you, never in
[01:01:59] Arabic, which my Muslim friends would
[01:02:00] say, you haven't read the Quran because
[01:02:02] it only exists in Arabic, right? An
[01:02:04] English translation, they wouldn't
[01:02:05] consider properly being a Quran. But um
[01:02:10] I I read I read quite a bit of the
[01:02:12] adjacent stuff, the Hadith and uh the
[01:02:16] Sunnah and then the Saratul Allah, the
[01:02:19] biography of the prophet of Muhammad um
[01:02:23] Ibn Ashak. So I was I was genuinely
[01:02:26] interested in it because of the
[01:02:28] interplay historically with Christianity
[01:02:30] and Islam and also just trying to figure
[01:02:33] out you know okay well what what are the
[01:02:35] claims of this worldview? Could they
[01:02:38] actually be legitimate compared to
[01:02:40] something that I was raised to believe?
[01:02:43] And ultimately I found them very wanting
[01:02:47] really. What what what I mean what would
[01:02:49] you say what are some of the main
[01:02:51] teachings in the Quran? Well, I think
[01:02:54] Islam has an issue in that there are
[01:02:59] historical articulations of
[01:03:03] what's going on in the biblical stories
[01:03:05] that are just false. So, the main one
[01:03:08] would be in uh uh in the Quran uh surah
[01:03:13] 147 um it denies the crucifixion. Uh so
[01:03:18] it it says that uh it has the Jews
[01:03:22] speaking and saying be crucified Jesus
[01:03:24] the son of Mary which is kind of an odd
[01:03:25] thing if the Jews believed he was the
[01:03:27] Messiah that they were crucifying him.
[01:03:29] And then it says that uh that he he he
[01:03:33] was not crucified nor was he killed but
[01:03:35] it was made to appear to them. And so
[01:03:36] there's
[01:03:38] a a face value denial of the
[01:03:40] crucifixion. Now
[01:03:41] >> they say that he was real.
[01:03:43] >> Yes. So Muslims believe in Jesus. In
[01:03:45] fact, Jesus is mentioned 25 times in the
[01:03:47] Quran. Uh far more than even Muhammad is
[01:03:50] mentioned in the Quran.
[01:03:51] >> And the the if you think of the
[01:03:54] traditional Islamic narrative of
[01:03:57] Muhammad being a 7th century caravanner,
[01:04:01] I think it makes sense for some of the
[01:04:04] stories that you find of whether that's
[01:04:06] Abraham or Noah or Jesus, John the
[01:04:11] Baptist, Mary who are in the Quran.
[01:04:13] Because I think what's probably going on
[01:04:14] is that you have an individual, if we're
[01:04:16] accepting the traditional narrative that
[01:04:18] there was a historical Muhammad, that
[01:04:20] he's a caravanner, that he's he's
[01:04:23] traveling in and around the Arabian
[01:04:24] Peninsula up into areas like Syria and
[01:04:27] Jordan. He's being exposed to Christians
[01:04:30] and Jews. And I mean, the traditional
[01:04:33] narrative is that he was illiterate. So,
[01:04:35] he's not reading these stories. He's
[01:04:37] hearing them orally. But because there's
[01:04:40] really no exposure to what we call the
[01:04:43] Old and the New Testaments
[01:04:46] and even then it's it's up for debate
[01:04:48] whether they existed in Arabic as Arabic
[01:04:50] existed in like 7th century Hiji script
[01:04:53] at that point in time anyways. But he
[01:04:56] would have been hearing these stories
[01:04:58] with no kind of discerning ability to
[01:05:00] differentiate between fables and
[01:05:03] campfire stories about these characters
[01:05:06] and what were the actual historically
[01:05:08] reliable
[01:05:10] non-apocryphal
[01:05:11] documents. So the earliest source
[01:05:14] material for Jesus are the 27 books that
[01:05:17] we call the New Testament primarily the
[01:05:19] biographies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and
[01:05:21] John. But there are other stories that
[01:05:23] that are apocryphal in nature that talk
[01:05:27] about say Jesus what Jesus was like as a
[01:05:30] child. So there's one called the Arab
[01:05:32] infancy Gospel of Thomas. And the Arab
[01:05:34] infancy gospel of Thomas has a story
[01:05:36] about child Jesus. Now this is coming a
[01:05:40] long time after Jesus. Everyone who knew
[01:05:42] Jesus was dead by the time these stories
[01:05:44] were developing. But the biblical
[01:05:47] gospels are very sparse on what Jesus
[01:05:49] was like as a child. The Gospel of Luke
[01:05:51] has a very brief story of Jesus when
[01:05:54] he's 12 going to the temple with his
[01:05:55] family and teaching in the temple and
[01:05:57] Mary and Joseph forget him in Jerusalem
[01:06:00] and then have to go back.
[01:06:02] But so so there's a an a body of
[01:06:06] literature that pops up that's basically
[01:06:08] talking about well what was Jesus like
[01:06:10] as a child? And so
[01:06:13] infancy narratives become kind of this
[01:06:16] very popular if you want to call them
[01:06:18] fanfiction. It's not really like a a
[01:06:20] proper historical designation, but kind
[01:06:22] of like that. And one of these is the
[01:06:24] Arab Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which has
[01:06:26] a story about Jesus making clay birds by
[01:06:30] a riverbank. And then some of the Jews
[01:06:32] get mad at him because it happens to be
[01:06:34] the Sabbath and he's working on the
[01:06:36] Sabbath. And so the story goes that he
[01:06:37] breathes on the birds, they turn into
[01:06:39] real birds, and the evidence flies away.
[01:06:41] This story ends up in the Quran. And we
[01:06:44] know that this is an apocryphal story.
[01:06:46] We know that it has no historical
[01:06:49] designation of actually being tied to
[01:06:51] the first century itinerate Jewish rabbi
[01:06:54] Jesus of Nazareth, but
[01:06:57] it is something that would have been
[01:06:59] available potentially in oral form in
[01:07:02] the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th
[01:07:04] century. And so you have these things
[01:07:07] that get smuggled into the text of the
[01:07:09] Quran, but they're jumbled and they have
[01:07:13] so there's their characters that that
[01:07:16] are in some places that shouldn't be in
[01:07:18] others. Uh Hmon, who is from the book of
[01:07:22] Esther, ends up in the Exodus story as
[01:07:25] the right-hand man to Pharaoh. Well,
[01:07:27] there are hundreds of years between the
[01:07:29] Persian story of Esther and the Egyptian
[01:07:31] story of Moses and Pharaoh. So there
[01:07:34] there's confusion and conflation that's
[01:07:36] going on. And I was at least when I was
[01:07:40] reading the Quran early on aware of the
[01:07:42] biblical narratives. And so when I'm
[01:07:44] reading the Quran and I'm reading some
[01:07:46] of the Quran's versions of these
[01:07:47] stories, it's not hard to pick up on
[01:07:50] where they're just not right. Gotcha.
[01:07:53] >> And ultimately, uh, surah 4 verse 157
[01:07:56] that denies the crucifixion. That That's
[01:07:58] a pretty serious one.
[01:07:59] >> What I mean, what does it say? What does
[01:08:02] it say? I mean it it denies the
[01:08:05] crucifixion.
[01:08:06] >> Yeah. It says that uh he was neither
[01:08:07] killed nor was he crucified but it was
[01:08:09] made to appear to them. And it says that
[01:08:11] even those who proclaim it are in doubt
[01:08:13] about it. So part of the problem is that
[01:08:15] there's a little bit of ambiguity in the
[01:08:18] wording of the Arabic. So some Islamic
[01:08:24] um exedites and interpreters have have
[01:08:26] interpreted this as he wasn't he wasn't
[01:08:31] killed but he was put on the cross and
[01:08:33] crucified. Others take that but it was
[01:08:36] made to appear to them and take that as
[01:08:39] what's sometimes called the substitution
[01:08:41] theory
[01:08:42] where uh someone else was made to look
[01:08:44] like Jesus and put in his place. Um
[01:08:47] that's a minority view but it is a view
[01:08:49] that some scholars like uh Shabir Ali
[01:08:52] has articulated in the past uh the
[01:08:55] Ahmedia sect of Islam that this is the
[01:08:57] perspective they hold and they actually
[01:08:59] believe that um uh well they believe
[01:09:02] actually so so I'll back up that was a
[01:09:04] mistake they don't believe that they
[01:09:06] believe that Jesus was on the cross but
[01:09:07] he survived which is called the swoon
[01:09:09] theory that in in the crucifixion when
[01:09:13] it says that he he did not die nor was
[01:09:16] he crucified ified it's that he wasn't
[01:09:18] crucified all the way because he didn't
[01:09:20] die but that actually he recovered
[01:09:22] afterwards and they have a story about
[01:09:24] him going to India and living to over
[01:09:25] 100 years and having a family and that
[01:09:27] kind of thing but there is some
[01:09:30] ambiguity in the historical
[01:09:33] uh commentaries the taps on this
[01:09:35] particular passage to where there's
[01:09:38] debate even amongst Muslims as is this a
[01:09:41] full outright denial of the crucifixion
[01:09:43] that's what the kind of mainstream Sunni
[01:09:45] Orthodox perspective would be. But some
[01:09:48] believe that maybe Judas was dressed up
[01:09:51] like Jesus and he was put on the cross
[01:09:53] in Jesus's place or that Jesus recovered
[01:09:56] or that it never happened. It was all an
[01:09:57] illusion to begin with. But no matter
[01:10:00] which way you swing it, it's still a
[01:10:03] denial of one of the most established
[01:10:05] facts of all of history. Yeah. Even like
[01:10:09] the most skeptical of biblical scholars
[01:10:11] that they can say we can basically know
[01:10:12] nothing about the details of Jesus's
[01:10:14] life. We can say that he was crucified
[01:10:17] under Pontius Pilate because we have so
[01:10:20] many intersecting sources Christian and
[01:10:22] non-Christian alike. Wow. That's I mean
[01:10:25] so are they bringing up is the only
[01:10:28] point of bringing up Christianity, the
[01:10:30] crucifixion, Jesus, Moses, everybody you
[01:10:33] know that that plays a role in the B. Is
[01:10:35] it to discredit Christianity in the
[01:10:38] Quran? Um I I mean I think the answer to
[01:10:41] that would be yes and no. There's a
[01:10:43] clear line of succession within the
[01:10:47] Quran. Um, and I think part of this is
[01:10:51] uh the confusion on the author of the
[01:10:52] Quran's part that
[01:10:55] they thought they knew what the Torah
[01:10:58] and the Gospel were. So the Torah and
[01:10:59] the Injil, the Torah and the Gospel are
[01:11:01] referred to multiple times within the
[01:11:02] Quran itself. And you have a a kind of a
[01:11:06] you have succession language that the
[01:11:09] Torah was given to Moses and it was full
[01:11:10] of guidance and light and the gospel was
[01:11:12] given to Jesus and it was full of
[01:11:13] guidance and light and then the final
[01:11:16] revelation is the Quran. But there's
[01:11:18] almost a tacid implication that they're
[01:11:20] all saying basically the same thing and
[01:11:23] that God's message is unified across all
[01:11:26] of them. The problem with that is that
[01:11:29] we know what the Torah and the Gospel
[01:11:30] looked like in the 7th century in
[01:11:32] Muhammad's day. It doesn't look any
[01:11:33] different than what we have now. But I
[01:11:36] don't think that the I don't see any
[01:11:37] evidence that the author of the Quran
[01:11:40] knew what the Torah of the gospel Torah
[01:11:42] or the Gospel were. So you have
[01:11:46] 900 approximately either direct
[01:11:48] quotations or illusions of the Old
[01:11:51] Testament in the New Testament. In the
[01:11:54] Quran, you only have one
[01:11:57] in quotation of either the Old or the
[01:12:00] New Testament. the lexalion, an eye for
[01:12:01] an eye and a tooth for a tooth. So in
[01:12:03] terms of the synchronicity
[01:12:05] of the Quran to these previous books,
[01:12:09] it's lacking to say the least. It's not
[01:12:13] an organic cultural document like the
[01:12:16] New Testament is. The New Testament was
[01:12:18] predominantly written by Jews for Jews
[01:12:21] and is saturated in
[01:12:24] Hebraic and Jewish and Old Testament
[01:12:27] understandings.
[01:12:29] If you don't understand something about
[01:12:31] what's going on in the New Testament,
[01:12:33] going back and reading the Old Testament
[01:12:35] might actually help you because there's
[01:12:36] just so much symbolism and calling back
[01:12:39] to and the gospel authors. Jesus is
[01:12:43] paralleled with Moses and David and you
[01:12:46] know there all these things but the
[01:12:50] author of the Quran I think is aware of
[01:12:52] some of these Jewish Christian and
[01:12:54] Zoroastrian fables is assuming that
[01:12:57] those are what's going on and so he's
[01:12:59] baking those into the text maybe with
[01:13:01] the implication to kind of woo the
[01:13:03] Christians and the Jews to come over to
[01:13:04] his side but you see
[01:13:08] um so I I I think it's uh there's
[01:13:11] there's one passage in the Quran that
[01:13:14] says
[01:13:16] uh it has this kind of succession
[01:13:18] narrative, right? It talks about the
[01:13:20] gospel or the the Torah being full of
[01:13:22] guidance and light and being given to
[01:13:23] Moses and then the the gospel being full
[01:13:25] of guidance and light giving given to
[01:13:27] Jesus. And then it says, "Let the people
[01:13:30] of the gospel judge by what they have
[01:13:32] therein." Talking to Christians, right?
[01:13:34] Those are the people of the gospel, the
[01:13:35] alal.
[01:13:37] But if they do not judge by what they
[01:13:38] have therein, they are the defiantly
[01:13:40] disobedient.
[01:13:42] Now in the grammatical context, what
[01:13:45] they have therein for the people of the
[01:13:47] gospel is the gospel.
[01:13:49] So when I'm talking to my Muslim
[01:13:52] friends, sometimes I I open to this
[01:13:55] passage and I say like, hey, I don't
[01:13:57] want to be one of the definantly
[01:13:58] disobedient. I I I want to stand before
[01:14:01] God and not have that on my shoulders.
[01:14:04] However, in order to be obedient to this
[01:14:07] passage, and I judge using the gospel,
[01:14:11] which it's telling me to do, and I judge
[01:14:12] the Quran by the gospel, I find the
[01:14:15] Quran doesn't understand the gospel, has
[01:14:18] no earthly understanding of what I
[01:14:20] believe, and actually denies central
[01:14:22] points of it, the divinity of Christ,
[01:14:25] the crucifixion.
[01:14:27] And so if the Quran is true and it's
[01:14:31] telling me to do this, then I have to
[01:14:34] conclude that the Quran is false because
[01:14:36] it's telling me to do something that's
[01:14:37] an impossibility. I cannot judge the
[01:14:40] Quran by the gospel and find that the
[01:14:42] Quran actually understands what the
[01:14:43] gospel is saying. And so this kind of my
[01:14:47] Muslim friends often have um large
[01:14:50] articulations. What you have in the
[01:14:51] gospel isn't what they had in the
[01:14:53] gospel. I think that's highly
[01:14:55] problematic.
[01:14:56] I don't see any reason why um at in the
[01:15:00] seventh century a gospel would be any
[01:15:02] different than it is to what it is now.
[01:15:05] Especially when I mean my in my own
[01:15:07] study in manuscript studies I can find
[01:15:09] copies of the gospel in Syriak from
[01:15:12] Syria in the sixth and seventh centuries
[01:15:15] it reads exactly like what my gospel
[01:15:17] reads today. So it's not that there's no
[01:15:19] evidence for that. Um,
[01:15:22] or if that is the case and the Quran
[01:15:26] says that nobody can change God's words
[01:15:29] and the gospel is God's word, who
[01:15:32] changed it? Who was able to kind of
[01:15:36] thwart the God of Islam's ability to
[01:15:39] preserve his word in that endeavor? He
[01:15:42] is either he was either unable to do it
[01:15:45] uh or he didn't
[01:15:49] do that. And when he says, "No one can
[01:15:50] change my words in the Quran," it's not
[01:15:52] true.
[01:15:53] >> And so ultimately, I think Muslims have
[01:15:56] a problem. They're painted into these
[01:15:58] corners. They have these passages about
[01:16:01] the the Torah and the Gospel, and yet
[01:16:03] the Quran doesn't seem to understand
[01:16:04] what those are or just flat out
[01:16:06] contradict it. The Quran denies the
[01:16:08] crucifixion when we know that the
[01:16:10] crucifixion happened. And so they're
[01:16:12] kind of painted themselves into these
[01:16:13] corner corners in defending these
[01:16:15] particular
[01:16:18] positions
[01:16:19] and I just I I don't I don't think that
[01:16:22] they can stand up to scrutiny.
[01:16:24] That is uh I mean I've not I've never
[01:16:26] studied it. I've never read it. I I find
[01:16:28] it very interesting how much of the
[01:16:31] Bible is in there. That's
[01:16:36] Yeah. I mean Jesus is a central figure.
[01:16:37] He's even referred to as the Messiah,
[01:16:40] although it's ambiguous in Islamic like
[01:16:43] understanding what that means.
[01:16:45] >> Um, he's he's said to be sinless. He's
[01:16:48] said to be virgin born. He's said to be
[01:16:50] the one who's going to come back at the
[01:16:52] end of time. So, there are all of these
[01:16:54] things like Jesus is a prominent
[01:16:55] character. Like I said before, I
[01:16:56] mentioned 25 times far more than
[01:16:58] Muhammad has mentioned. In fact, the
[01:17:00] only woman named in the entire Quran is
[01:17:02] Mary, the mother of Jesus. And so the
[01:17:06] these figures have prominence within the
[01:17:08] Islamic holy book, but ultimately they
[01:17:10] have no full historical understanding of
[01:17:13] who they are.
[01:17:14] >> Wow. Very interesting.
[01:17:18] >> Well, I want to talk about this miracle
[01:17:21] about you walking.
[01:17:22] >> Mhm.
[01:17:22] >> I didn't you we we kind of talked about
[01:17:24] a little bit in the hot question. Can
[01:17:26] can we go into that a little bit?
[01:17:27] >> Sure. Yeah, let's do it.
[01:17:29] >> Yeah. So, I was um just before my 12th
[01:17:32] birthday, I was diagnosed with a
[01:17:34] condition called acute transverse
[01:17:35] myelitis. And so, I had the flu and my
[01:17:39] body's immune system in sort of a freak
[01:17:43] accident response attacked the nerve
[01:17:45] endings at the base of my spinal cord,
[01:17:47] the myelin sheath, instead of attacking
[01:17:48] the flu. And so, what that caused is
[01:17:51] inflammation on the base of my spinal
[01:17:53] cord, which severed the communication
[01:17:55] between my legs and my brain. And so the
[01:17:58] diagnosis um I I literally woke up from
[01:18:00] a nap and couldn't feel my legs. And so
[01:18:03] >> Wow. You remember this?
[01:18:05] >> Oh yeah, very vividly. Yeah. Yeah. Um
[01:18:09] the diagnosis was that I would most
[01:18:11] likely be a parapolgic for the rest of
[01:18:13] my life. So recovery wasn't impossible,
[01:18:16] but it was, you know, you're going to
[01:18:19] dig in for the long haul kind of deal.
[01:18:22] um especially because
[01:18:24] transverse myelitis as a condition how
[01:18:27] it's been described to me by medical
[01:18:29] professionals is that the recovery rate
[01:18:33] has a correlation to the quickness of
[01:18:38] the actual paralysis. So because mine
[01:18:41] was instant, the conclusion was that
[01:18:46] the recovery was going to be long and it
[01:18:47] was going to be hard. And um the short
[01:18:51] story is that 1 month from the day that
[01:18:53] I woke up and couldn't feel my legs on
[01:18:55] February 8th, I woke up, got out of my
[01:18:58] uh bed, and walked over to my
[01:18:59] wheelchair.
[01:19:05] How did you know to get up? So, it was
[01:19:07] kind of instinctual. Um it's a Yeah. How
[01:19:11] did I know to get up? I mean, so for one
[01:19:13] month, you were paralyzed. For one
[01:19:14] month, I was completely paralyzed. No
[01:19:16] feeling from the waist down.
[01:19:18] Yeah. And um I don't know how long it
[01:19:23] was that I sat in my wheelchair until I
[01:19:27] realized that I I what I'd done, but I
[01:19:32] knew something was different. And I I it
[01:19:35] could have been 5 minutes, could have
[01:19:36] been 45 minutes. I couldn't actually
[01:19:38] tell you how long it was, but eventually
[01:19:40] I looked down and I wiggled my toe and
[01:19:42] that kind of broke me out of the spell
[01:19:45] and I ran upstairs and got my parents.
[01:19:48] >> You You ran upstairs?
[01:19:50] >> Yeah.
[01:19:51] >> Holy [ __ ]
[01:19:51] >> Which was preceded by my mom telling me
[01:19:53] to run up and down the stairs and
[01:19:55] weeping.
[01:19:58] >> Yeah.
[01:19:59] >> So, you were in bed and you're just
[01:20:02] like, I'm gonna get up and walk over to
[01:20:03] my wheelchair. I mean, did you
[01:20:07] did I mean, did you prepare yourself?
[01:20:09] Was there anything or you just did it
[01:20:10] not even realizing like?
[01:20:13] >> Yeah. What I typically do is I would
[01:20:15] like kind of fall out of bed and crawl
[01:20:17] over um cuz the wheelchair wasn't far
[01:20:20] from my bed. Obviously, it needed to be
[01:20:21] in close proximity. But, uh at that at
[01:20:24] that point, that's basically what I had
[01:20:26] done. I I pull myself up to my
[01:20:27] wheelchair. But, um and it was the
[01:20:30] doctors that first used the word
[01:20:32] miracle. I think my parents are very
[01:20:33] hesitant to use that word, but the
[01:20:36] medical professionals when they were the
[01:20:38] ones who said we really don't have an
[01:20:40] explanation
[01:20:42] cuz the the inflammation was gone. There
[01:20:44] was no evidence of it.
[01:20:49] What happened when you sat in the
[01:20:51] wheelchair?
[01:20:52] Well, I just kind of was trying to
[01:20:54] figure out what hap like cuz you know
[01:20:56] something is different but you don't
[01:21:00] know what it is. It's kind of like, what
[01:21:03] do you mean you don't know what it is?
[01:21:05] You just got out of bed and walked to
[01:21:06] the wheelchair cuz it's so passive
[01:21:10] that you don't it's like the the reality
[01:21:14] of the situation
[01:21:16] it it it precedes like the what is
[01:21:21] actually taking place. So, so I couldn't
[01:21:25] figure out exactly what had happened,
[01:21:28] but I knew something different had
[01:21:30] happened. And then it was the process of
[01:21:33] looking down and wiggling my toe that
[01:21:36] made me realize like
[01:21:38] I
[01:21:39] >> I can move.
[01:21:43] >> Jeez.
[01:21:45] And you you then run upstairs. Mhm.
[01:21:49] Yeah. And got my parents.
[01:21:52] What did your dad say?
[01:21:55] Uh you know what? I can't remember what
[01:21:58] my dad That's probably a good question
[01:22:00] to ask him. I remember my mom cuz she's
[01:22:02] very emotional.
[01:22:04] Um, but I mean it was pretty surreal. I
[01:22:08] think a lot of us were in shock. I I was
[01:22:10] I think after the whole paralysis
[01:22:13] incident I was in shock for a long time
[01:22:16] cuz I remember feeling oddly normal. I
[01:22:18] mean there are obvious times there there
[01:22:20] were definitely times during that 30
[01:22:22] days where I cried myself to sleep. But
[01:22:24] it also was just kind of strangely
[01:22:28] you're kind of strangely numb cuz it's
[01:22:30] such a drastic change to be told, you
[01:22:33] know, you're a healthy child. You're
[01:22:34] 11-year-old playing sports, going to
[01:22:37] school, hanging out with your friends.
[01:22:39] Okay, now you're you're disabled. You're
[01:22:42] you're not going to things are going to
[01:22:43] look very different. You got to put a
[01:22:45] ramp on your house. You know, you can't
[01:22:47] get up and down the stairs with like
[01:22:50] regularity kind of thing. So it was a
[01:22:53] big change and um and I think my parents
[01:22:58] and my family in general they were
[01:23:01] largely
[01:23:02] they were they were kind of you know
[01:23:06] accepted of the fact okay this is our
[01:23:08] reality now we're going to do everything
[01:23:10] we can for this to go well
[01:23:15] we're going to we're going to do we're
[01:23:16] going to put the ramp on the house we're
[01:23:18] going we moved my bedroom to the living
[01:23:20] room um cuz I was upstairs. I couldn't
[01:23:22] get down up and down the stairs very
[01:23:24] easily. And so we were kind of I had
[01:23:26] this temporary room downstairs
[01:23:29] and uh but there was an acceptance that
[01:23:32] this was probably my reality and I was
[01:23:35] doing uh physiootherapy but it was kind
[01:23:38] of a joke. Um you know what do you do
[01:23:40] for a parapillegic? Uh
[01:23:44] you know. Yeah. So, so we uh and me we I
[01:23:49] was ready to be a parapollegic for the
[01:23:52] rest of my life. And I think my my
[01:23:53] parents prayer at the time was always
[01:23:55] that God would be glorified in the
[01:23:56] situation. Not necessarily that I would
[01:23:59] be healed. Not that they were against
[01:24:02] something miraculous happening, but I
[01:24:04] think they their perspective was, you
[01:24:07] know, we we God is in control and we can
[01:24:12] trust him even when things aren't going
[01:24:14] the way we planned or even the way we
[01:24:16] understand.
[01:24:18] >> Gee, man. Wow.
[01:24:21] And nothing I mean nothing
[01:24:26] nothing mirac nothing nothing crazy
[01:24:28] before you went to bed the night before.
[01:24:30] >> No.
[01:24:32] >> Wow. Wow. Yeah. And I think that did
[01:24:35] mark a very powerful what I would
[01:24:37] describe as a supernatural experience in
[01:24:40] my life when the medical professionals
[01:24:43] said this is your lot. You're going to
[01:24:45] be a parapillegic to now I guess you're
[01:24:49] walking again. So that that's it's in
[01:24:51] some ways it's disorienting. In other
[01:24:53] ways I did have a framework for the
[01:24:56] transcendent for things that are out of
[01:24:59] the ordinary happening.
[01:25:01] But it was it was actually connecting
[01:25:05] those those the dots between my heart
[01:25:07] and my head later on that really made
[01:25:10] that more tangible in the intellectual
[01:25:12] questions that I was wrestling with
[01:25:14] later in my teens to going back and
[01:25:17] thinking, you know, I I I can ascribe
[01:25:19] this kind of crazy thing that happened
[01:25:22] to me as a child to something tangible.
[01:25:24] It's not just a random fluke. It's not
[01:25:26] just, you know, strange things happen,
[01:25:29] no explanation. Uh I I I I can assign it
[01:25:34] to an actual individual in this case,
[01:25:37] right? God who operates in time and
[01:25:40] space and history and does things out of
[01:25:42] the ordinary.
[01:25:45] Man, that is amazing.
[01:25:48] Wow. What I mean, do you remember uh
[01:25:51] meeting the doctor? Yeah. would I mean
[01:25:55] you did you walk into his office?
[01:25:57] >> Mhm. Yeah, we did a scheduled
[01:25:59] appointment. I believe it was scheduled
[01:26:00] uh like like regularly scheduled
[01:26:02] appointment shortly after uh I could
[01:26:04] walk and I Yeah, I walked in. I was
[01:26:06] wearing these really big rain boots. I
[01:26:08] don't know why I was wearing them. I
[01:26:09] don't think it was raining. Um and they
[01:26:10] got me to run up and down the hall and I
[01:26:12] remember cuz the rain boots were like a
[01:26:14] little bit too big and they were like
[01:26:16] not just awkward but running up and down
[01:26:19] the hallway for the doctor.
[01:26:23] That's amazing.
[01:26:25] What did he I mean, what did he What did
[01:26:27] he say? This is a miracle. We have no
[01:26:30] medical explanation. I believe I'd have
[01:26:32] to double check. I have my mom's journal
[01:26:34] entries from that time. She photocopied
[01:26:36] them all for me. Um, but they definitely
[01:26:38] the doctor was the first one to drop the
[01:26:40] word miracle. And I could I I think I'm
[01:26:45] remembering this correctly. the do one
[01:26:46] of the doctors cuz there were a number
[01:26:48] of specialists that were assigned to my
[01:26:49] particular case said what did you do and
[01:26:52] my mom said we prayed and I can't
[01:26:56] remember if the story is that they went
[01:26:57] off and printed a list of the other kids
[01:26:59] in the intensive care unit said can you
[01:27:01] pray for these or just said like you
[01:27:03] should pray for the other kids in here
[01:27:05] it was something like that in her
[01:27:07] journal entry because they were like
[01:27:11] >> something happened
[01:27:13] that is wild that just I mean did you
[01:27:18] were you at full faith back then at 11?
[01:27:21] >> As much as an 11-year-old can be.
[01:27:23] >> That's kind of what I'm getting at.
[01:27:24] >> Yeah. I mean I think I made like I made
[01:27:28] a conscious decision that I believe was
[01:27:30] genuine when I was six
[01:27:33] as much as a six-year-old can like in my
[01:27:36] limited understanding of reality and the
[01:27:40] world. And I think I did I remember
[01:27:43] sitting on my bedroom floor and feeling
[01:27:47] like I need God. I I I need God to to
[01:27:54] rescue me to to to lead me in this life.
[01:27:57] And that
[01:27:57] >> age six
[01:27:58] >> age six. Yeah. Yeah. And and that being
[01:28:01] real and I mean that doesn't mean that I
[01:28:04] wasn't like when I was a teenager I did
[01:28:06] go through a period of if you want to
[01:28:08] call it deconstruction or whatever. I I
[01:28:12] wasn't an abandonment of my faith. It
[01:28:14] wasn't a a crisis of faith. I think
[01:28:17] those are too strong for what was
[01:28:20] actually I was experiencing. But I was I
[01:28:22] was investigating. I figured, you know,
[01:28:24] okay, my parents raised me to believe
[01:28:25] something. Do I believe it based on the
[01:28:28] fact that they told me to? Now, I don't
[01:28:29] think that's a bad reason. I want my
[01:28:32] kids to believe what I tell them, right?
[01:28:34] >> Mhm.
[01:28:34] >> But I think everybody at some point goes
[01:28:36] through a period of time where they kind
[01:28:40] of have to figure out where the dividing
[01:28:43] lines are between their parents and
[01:28:45] them. And part of that for me was
[01:28:50] an investigation of, okay,
[01:28:54] what does the Quran say? What does the
[01:28:56] Bavagita say? What does the Book of
[01:28:58] Mormon say? What does what do are what
[01:29:01] are atheists writing about that maybe
[01:29:04] has some credibility? And I did, you
[01:29:07] know, dig into those because I wanted to
[01:29:11] be honest with the fact that believing a
[01:29:16] lie, even if it's a convenient lie, is
[01:29:18] still not worth believing.
[01:29:19] >> Mhm.
[01:29:20] >> And I want I wanted to follow what was
[01:29:23] true. And so if I was living a delusion,
[01:29:28] to some degree, I didn't think I was,
[01:29:30] but if I was, I wanted to at least be
[01:29:33] aware of what that delusion was and what
[01:29:37] maybe was a better explanation for the
[01:29:39] world around me, right? So, you'd think
[01:29:41] that that powerful supernatural
[01:29:42] experience as a child would have
[01:29:43] solidified something. And it definitely
[01:29:46] was a a piece of the puzzle, but I think
[01:29:48] I still needed
[01:29:50] to remedy the intellectual questions
[01:29:53] that I had that were different than the
[01:29:55] ones I was asking as an 11-year-old.
[01:29:56] When I was 11, I was up at night with
[01:30:00] the why me questions. You know, I'm a
[01:30:02] I'm a good kid. My parents are good
[01:30:04] people. Why is this happening to me? But
[01:30:07] when I was a teenager, it was more did
[01:30:09] Jesus actually exist? Like what's what's
[01:30:12] this thing? Can I believe this? like
[01:30:14] 2,000 years old and I'm trying to live
[01:30:17] my life by it. What what what are the
[01:30:20] what are the evidences? What are the
[01:30:23] reasons? What are what are the data
[01:30:26] points that point that to me? Cuz
[01:30:28] ultimately, I think
[01:30:31] the worldview and the Christian
[01:30:32] worldview, it it's existentially
[01:30:35] satisfying. Uh but it's also
[01:30:37] intellectually robust and that there's a
[01:30:40] cumulative case of all sorts of things
[01:30:42] whether that's historical or
[01:30:43] philosophical or um sociological
[01:30:47] that contribute to the truth claims that
[01:30:50] it's ultimately making about who we are,
[01:30:54] why we're here, where we going.
[01:30:57] Questions that all humanity has always
[01:30:58] asked themselves. But it's because I
[01:31:01] think those are imprinted on our our
[01:31:02] being on our soul as imagebearers of
[01:31:06] God. But it was exploring those in the
[01:31:10] capacity that I I I as a teenager could
[01:31:13] explore in the same way that you know
[01:31:15] the commitment that I made at 6 years
[01:31:17] old I believe was genuine.
[01:31:19] And the investigation that I did when I
[01:31:22] was 17 or 18 years old was genuine. And
[01:31:24] that that's just grown, right, as I've
[01:31:27] been exposed to more, been given the
[01:31:30] opportunity to research, to investigate,
[01:31:34] to learn, to grow. Um, I think that's
[01:31:37] only
[01:31:39] operated to bolster my belief. Doesn't
[01:31:42] mean that there haven't been times where
[01:31:44] I've questioned things or thought, you
[01:31:45] know, is this is this really all true?
[01:31:49] But
[01:31:50] >> what are some of the things in there
[01:31:51] that you thought were hard to find true?
[01:31:54] hard to find. True.
[01:31:55] >> She struggled with personally.
[01:31:56] >> Yeah. I mean, I think what we were
[01:31:58] talking about before the the the problem
[01:32:00] of pain and suffering, I think, is a
[01:32:02] genuinely good objection to Christianity
[01:32:05] because it's far it's it goes beyond an
[01:32:07] intellectual question. It's a it's a
[01:32:10] personal question.
[01:32:12] It it it speaks to us in a way that
[01:32:17] a very tidy theological or philosophical
[01:32:20] answer might not actually suffice. you
[01:32:22] know, if I'm hurting, if I have a child
[01:32:26] or a family member or someone who's
[01:32:29] close to me, if they're sick, if they're
[01:32:30] dying, if something if a tragic accident
[01:32:33] happens, um it's hard to to to really
[01:32:38] wrestle with that. And that's why I
[01:32:40] think, you know, what we're talking
[01:32:40] about before, the Psalm 22, my God, my
[01:32:43] God, why have you forsaken me? In one
[01:32:45] way, I think the transparency and the
[01:32:48] honesty of scripture is something that I
[01:32:49] want to align myself with because it
[01:32:52] speaks to the reality of
[01:32:55] uh when I hurt,
[01:32:58] there's something there that I can that
[01:33:01] I can reach out to. God is not afraid of
[01:33:03] our objections, of our doubts, of our
[01:33:06] insecurities. And that's been very
[01:33:08] comforting to me, especially this
[01:33:10] previous year. my my uh my 2-year-old
[01:33:15] daughter uh was having seizures. Uh we
[01:33:18] almost lost her at one point. Um this
[01:33:21] last fall she was uh hit by a distracted
[01:33:25] driver while we were crossing the road.
[01:33:27] and nightmare situations for me as a
[01:33:30] father, like to sit in a hospital room
[01:33:33] with my wife thinking we're going to
[01:33:36] lose our daughter,
[01:33:38] and yet to still believe that God is in
[01:33:41] control, that God is good, that, you
[01:33:46] know, we're going to get through this
[01:33:48] because
[01:33:50] God is with us. In the midst of that, I
[01:33:53] think that goes beyond any like the the
[01:33:56] the personal existential
[01:34:01] struggle
[01:34:02] is hard. But the personal existential
[01:34:06] comfort is also very very comforting in
[01:34:10] in a lot of those moments, you know, to
[01:34:13] to give up my desire for control and
[01:34:16] say, "Listen, there's nothing I could
[01:34:17] do. The doctors are running around. and
[01:34:19] they're intubating her. They're, you
[01:34:21] know, she's a I could see her heartbeat
[01:34:24] being a regular and and saying like,
[01:34:27] "God, I don't know. I don't know what's
[01:34:29] going to happen here." And yet, there
[01:34:33] could still be peace in that despite
[01:34:35] that. And if it that had gone south, I
[01:34:38] could rest in that God is good and that
[01:34:41] he has a perfect plan even if I don't
[01:34:44] understand it. But it's those questions
[01:34:46] that sometimes genuinely make me feel
[01:34:48] like, man, I wish I understood what's
[01:34:51] going on here. I wish I wish I could
[01:34:55] figure out why God allows these things
[01:34:57] to happen cuz I I don't know. I'll give
[01:34:59] you another example. After I experienced
[01:35:02] my my healing, I encountered people who
[01:35:06] were sick and who were say themselves
[01:35:10] like quadripollegics.
[01:35:13] And to wrestle with, okay, I believe you
[01:35:17] healed me, but what about that guy? Like
[01:35:20] why why did you choose? It's almost like
[01:35:23] a survivor's guilt. What about them?
[01:35:26] Why? Why are they still in in their
[01:35:29] particular predicament? I don't I don't
[01:35:32] have an answer to that. And and that's
[01:35:34] that's a hard one to reconcile,
[01:35:37] but
[01:35:38] I have enough to rest on that I know
[01:35:42] that God is good. I know that the
[01:35:45] Christian worldview is true. And I know
[01:35:48] that despite what my maybe fleeting or
[01:35:53] subjective insecurities are about those
[01:35:54] things and there's a comfort in that as
[01:35:58] well.
[01:36:03] Did you struggle a lot when you were
[01:36:04] dealing that with your daughter with
[01:36:06] your faith or it was rock solid by then?
[01:36:08] >> I mean I think I think we all struggle
[01:36:10] in different capacities, right? Like
[01:36:13] >> you still struggle with all the research
[01:36:15] you've done. Dead Sea Scrolls,
[01:36:17] everything. You still struggle. Well, I
[01:36:19] think you know the the human condition
[01:36:20] is that we're fickle.
[01:36:23] >> And nobody is bulletproof.
[01:36:26] And the like I said before, like this
[01:36:29] world is beautiful, but it's also
[01:36:31] profoundly broken. And I think we're
[01:36:33] supposed to feel that brokenness. Like
[01:36:35] that lump that's in my throat. I believe
[01:36:38] God put that there because I think the
[01:36:41] God who is himself worried about things
[01:36:45] like hope and justice,
[01:36:47] he's instilled us with a desire to also
[01:36:53] be concerned with justice, be concerned
[01:36:56] with injustice, be concerned with hurt
[01:37:00] and the brokenness. And like we can say
[01:37:02] all day long, God, why don't you do
[01:37:04] something? But I think God could equally
[01:37:07] say you can do something too. You know,
[01:37:10] I've given you faculties and abilities
[01:37:12] and this this world is not moving
[01:37:15] without your contribution to it. And
[01:37:18] that's why we're we're called to go out
[01:37:21] into the world to make disciples of all
[01:37:23] nations because our actions mean
[01:37:24] something. And does that mean that you
[01:37:28] know I don't wake up in the morning and
[01:37:30] really struggle with this thing or that
[01:37:32] thing? No. I there there are periods of
[01:37:35] my life, periods of time where I just
[01:37:39] sit down and think like, man, I don't
[01:37:42] know. I don't know what's going on here.
[01:37:44] But when I have those moments, I think
[01:37:48] falling back onto
[01:37:51] the foundation of the investigation that
[01:37:55] I have done, you know, I think that the
[01:37:58] publicly available evidence points to
[01:38:00] the truthfulness of the Christian
[01:38:02] worldview to the degree that you would
[01:38:07] have to
[01:38:09] move so much evidence out of the way to
[01:38:11] make me not believe it at this
[01:38:14] that even when I don't understand
[01:38:17] something, I can trust that maybe God
[01:38:20] knows something I don't.
[01:38:22] And there's there's a level of
[01:38:27] giving up control in those moments that
[01:38:30] I think is appropriate. not giving up
[01:38:33] control in that, you know, I'm just
[01:38:35] turning my brain off and I'm, you know,
[01:38:38] uh, gonna I'm just a robot at that
[01:38:41] point, but that
[01:38:44] God calls me personally
[01:38:48] and understands me personally because he
[01:38:51] knit me together in my mother's womb.
[01:38:54] And
[01:38:55] there's there's a an intimacy there that
[01:39:00] exists. The God of the Bible is, you
[01:39:02] know, I sometimes say, you know, when
[01:39:04] God revealed himself to the patriarchs,
[01:39:07] to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to Moses,
[01:39:10] he didn't say, you know, I'm the all
[01:39:12] knowing, all powerful, all everywhere
[01:39:14] God. He said, I'm the God of Abraham,
[01:39:15] Isaac, and Jacob. I'm the God
[01:39:17] relationally. I'm making a covenant. I'm
[01:39:19] making an agreement. I'm making a
[01:39:20] promise with my people. And then that al
[01:39:23] ultimately culminates in him stepping
[01:39:25] into time in reality
[01:39:27] in Jesus and having friends, having
[01:39:30] colleagues and laughing and traveling
[01:39:33] and crying and experiencing all of those
[01:39:36] things. I think that there's there's
[01:39:38] there's something that sets apart the
[01:39:40] Christian worldview with Jesus, that
[01:39:42] he's a real person
[01:39:44] that really lived that we can point to.
[01:39:48] You know, in one sense, if the Buddha
[01:39:51] didn't exist, you could still
[01:39:52] technically have Buddhism. You could
[01:39:54] have the philosophies. You could have
[01:39:56] the noble truths and, you know, the path
[01:39:58] and all of those things. It didn't have
[01:40:01] to be Gutarmas Sedartha who who who came
[01:40:04] up with those things. Could have been
[01:40:05] anybody. And likewise in Islam, it it
[01:40:09] could have been anybody. It didn't have
[01:40:10] to be Muhammad. The God of Islam could
[01:40:13] have chosen any person to be the prophet
[01:40:16] that he revealed his truth to. But it
[01:40:18] does have to be Jesus.
[01:40:20] >> It cannot be anybody else. And there's a
[01:40:24] historical grounding of the Christian
[01:40:26] faith that the tomb is either empty or
[01:40:30] it's not. And if it's empty, now CS
[01:40:33] Lewis, who I referenced before, he said,
[01:40:35] "Christianity of true is of infinitely
[01:40:37] importance. If it's not true, is of no
[01:40:40] importance. The only thing it cannot be
[01:40:42] is moderately important."
[01:40:45] And he's famous for the whole liar,
[01:40:46] lunatic, or lord kind of trilmma.
[01:40:50] >> If you look at what Jesus did and what
[01:40:52] he said about himself, he's either a
[01:40:54] liar and a con man. He's either a
[01:40:57] lunatic and he's crazy or he's the
[01:41:00] creator of the universe and he's Lord.
[01:41:02] Now, we could also add one more legend.
[01:41:05] We could say, well, he's just, you know,
[01:41:07] he's just a good figure. He's just a
[01:41:10] good person to pattern our lives after.
[01:41:12] I I don't actually think Jesus gives you
[01:41:14] the room to to to look at him like that
[01:41:18] because Jesus didn't just say here's a
[01:41:20] philosophy to live by. He said I am the
[01:41:23] way, the truth, and the life. No one
[01:41:25] comes to the father but through me. And
[01:41:27] if you don't believe that I am invoking
[01:41:29] the divine name from the Old Testament,
[01:41:30] then you will die in your sins. You
[01:41:32] know, he doesn't give us the room to
[01:41:35] just say you're a good example. You
[01:41:37] know, I said this on Rogan where I said,
[01:41:41] you know, if Jesus is just a pattern,
[01:41:45] then you don't need a savior because you
[01:41:47] can do it yourself.
[01:41:49] You just need an example. If it's if
[01:41:52] Jesus is only an example to live by,
[01:41:54] then all you need to do is, you know,
[01:41:57] tie up your boots a little tighter and
[01:41:59] do better.
[01:42:01] But
[01:42:03] the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross
[01:42:05] wasn't because Jesus came to show us how
[01:42:07] to live. It was to live the life we
[01:42:09] couldn't live.
[01:42:11] And on that basis, like I said before,
[01:42:13] you're saved by works, but it's Jesus's
[01:42:16] work. It's not yours.
[01:42:25] I want to talk about I don't know what
[01:42:27] you call it but we and I wanted to bring
[01:42:29] this up earlier when we were talking
[01:42:31] about um all the other stuff all the
[01:42:35] reform reform
[01:42:38] >> what is it Christian what Jeremy told me
[01:42:42] about this
[01:42:43] >> the reformers the reformation
[01:42:46] >> you're you have some kind of reform am I
[01:42:49] wrong
[01:42:50] >> yeah so I'm I'm part of kind of a
[01:42:52] tradition of Protestant Christianity
[01:42:54] that would typically be referred to as
[01:42:55] reformed or capital R reformed. And so
[01:42:58] what that is is it's uh going back to
[01:43:02] the Protestant Reformation. So
[01:43:04] individuals like Luther and Calvin and
[01:43:06] Zwingley and Meunkan who were
[01:43:10] there were there were protoreformers
[01:43:12] there were individuals prior to that
[01:43:13] John Hus and um John Wickliffe.
[01:43:17] Um and what that period of time is in
[01:43:20] the Protestant Reformation was it was a
[01:43:23] number of individuals who were looking
[01:43:26] at the church around them and they were
[01:43:28] saying you know there have been these
[01:43:30] traditions that have developed these
[01:43:32] accretions over time and we need to get
[01:43:35] back to the gospel. We need to get back
[01:43:38] to primitive Christianity. There was a
[01:43:41] lot of things that were had taken place
[01:43:43] in the middle ages. a lot of corruption
[01:43:45] within the church hierarchy. Um there
[01:43:47] were a number of popes who basically
[01:43:49] bought themselves into the position of
[01:43:51] the papacy and you had
[01:43:55] um uh children out of wedlock and all
[01:43:58] these sorts of things. It was a little
[01:44:00] bit of a of a crazy time. And there was
[01:44:03] what kind of spawned that the the
[01:44:07] in
[01:44:09] uh the what we typically mark as the
[01:44:13] beginning of the Protestant Reformation
[01:44:15] is uh 1517 when Martin Luther nails his
[01:44:18] 95 thesis to the door the chapel door of
[01:44:22] the um castle church in Vittenberg,
[01:44:24] Germany. So that's kind of this
[01:44:26] placeholder marker as the beginning of
[01:44:27] the reformation.
[01:44:29] uh in in in a historical sense, what
[01:44:31] Luther did wasn't actually all that odd.
[01:44:34] You know, nowadays, uh the equivalent of
[01:44:37] going to a football game now in uh
[01:44:39] Vittenberg, Germany in the 16th century
[01:44:42] was that one theologian would put up
[01:44:45] their debate challenge on the door and
[01:44:47] another theologian would take it up and
[01:44:48] they'd go to the pub and they would
[01:44:50] debate. They'd go back and forth. And so
[01:44:52] in a very practical sense, Luther wasn't
[01:44:55] doing like this wasn't an act of
[01:44:57] vandalism by nailing something to a
[01:44:59] door. And he actually could have very
[01:45:01] well pasted it, but the nailing and the
[01:45:04] hammer makes a a good image.
[01:45:06] >> Um,
[01:45:07] >> but what he was doing was he was
[01:45:09] challenging the church and particularly
[01:45:11] the pope's authority to forgive sins in
[01:45:15] what are referred to as indulgences. So
[01:45:18] there's this idea, I'll try not to go
[01:45:21] into too much detail about like the
[01:45:23] treasury of merit, but the idea is that
[01:45:26] you can by giving money to the church,
[01:45:31] buy
[01:45:32] forgiveness of sins to get yourselves so
[01:45:35] many years off of purgatory.
[01:45:38] >> So in this particular time, there was a
[01:45:40] lot of corruption in that they were
[01:45:42] trying to rebuild St. Peter's Cathedral
[01:45:44] in Rome. And one of the ways they did
[01:45:46] this was that they sent these
[01:45:48] individuals out who were basically
[01:45:49] salesmen. And there was a saying uh when
[01:45:52] a when a a coin in the coffer rings a
[01:45:55] soul from purgatory springs. And the
[01:45:57] idea was that you know you give your
[01:45:59] money and you can get either your family
[01:46:02] members who have passed away or maybe
[01:46:04] you in the future time off of purgatory.
[01:46:07] And so Luther is looking at this and
[01:46:08] he's seeing people being taken advantage
[01:46:10] of. At this point he is uh he's a
[01:46:13] professor. He's teaching at the
[01:46:14] seminary. Um, but he's also a minister.
[01:46:17] He's a priest in the church in in
[01:46:18] Pittenberg. And he sees this and he he's
[01:46:20] seeing this as people who don't really
[01:46:23] have the means to give being taken
[01:46:25] advantage of for the purpose of
[01:46:28] rebuilding the St. St. Peter's um in
[01:46:31] Rome. And so he writes up these thesis
[01:46:35] and uh part and parcel to it is that
[01:46:38] he's saying if the pope has the
[01:46:40] authority to forgive sins, why doesn't
[01:46:42] he just do it? If he can pull people out
[01:46:45] of purgatory by the grace and loving
[01:46:47] kindness that he possesses, why doesn't
[01:46:50] he just do it? Why do you have to pay
[01:46:52] him? Now, that's an kind of an
[01:46:54] oversimplification of the 95
[01:46:56] articulations of what he puts, but
[01:46:58] that's a big part of it. And this gets
[01:46:59] him in trouble. it gets him in trouble
[01:47:02] because he's really pushing against um
[01:47:05] >> it's making sense.
[01:47:06] >> Yeah, I think that's part of it. And
[01:47:08] also he was at a very advantageous time.
[01:47:11] The printing press had just taken off.
[01:47:13] So, it's not that there were other there
[01:47:15] weren't other people who were
[01:47:16] challenging the Pope's authority or the
[01:47:18] magisterium's ability, but because
[01:47:22] people then take his writings and they
[01:47:25] print them and through technology are
[01:47:28] able to get this out and it's just, you
[01:47:30] know, it catches wildfire. Now, all of a
[01:47:32] sudden, Luther's teachings are all over
[01:47:35] Europe. And so the availability of the
[01:47:38] technological advancement aids the the
[01:47:41] change and the questioning and all of
[01:47:43] these things. Well, so Luther is kind of
[01:47:46] championed with starting some of this
[01:47:48] and then that that proceeds into more
[01:47:51] and more and even the questioning of
[01:47:54] okay at the time the Bible is primarily
[01:47:57] read in Latin. It's not widely available
[01:48:00] in the vernacular of the people. And so
[01:48:02] Luther endeavors to translate the Bible
[01:48:04] into German into the language that
[01:48:06] people can read. And this is also seen
[01:48:08] as controversial because the ley are not
[01:48:12] uh seen as being able to properly
[01:48:15] interpret the word of God. You need kind
[01:48:17] of the intermediaries of the priests and
[01:48:20] and the the powers that be to tell you
[01:48:22] exactly what's going on. And so these
[01:48:25] individuals are called the reformers.
[01:48:27] They're reforming the church to go back.
[01:48:30] So there are these things. It's like a
[01:48:32] tree and moss has grown all over it. And
[01:48:35] Luther is looking at this and he's
[01:48:37] saying, "There's a tree in there and
[01:48:38] it's a good tree and it's a healthy tree
[01:48:40] and it's a beautiful tree. Let's just
[01:48:42] shave all that moss off." All of these
[01:48:44] traditions that we've developed. And so
[01:48:47] the kind of cries of the reformation are
[01:48:50] scripture alone, uh, faith alone, by
[01:48:53] grace alone, to the glory of God alone.
[01:48:55] I actually have it inscribed on the side
[01:48:56] of my Bible right here. Solar scriptura,
[01:48:58] solar gracia, solid solar, sol gloria,
[01:49:02] right? Scripture alone uh grace alone,
[01:49:05] faith alone in Christ alone to the glory
[01:49:07] of God alone.
[01:49:08] >> Wow.
[01:49:08] >> And that that was the cry of the
[01:49:10] reformation is that
[01:49:12] they were saying I mean those ideas kind
[01:49:14] of got articulated in those Latin
[01:49:16] phrases a little bit later on. But the
[01:49:18] idea is that scripture is unique in that
[01:49:21] it is the voice of God. It's unique in
[01:49:24] what it is and what it does. And that
[01:49:26] that doesn't mean the tradition is not
[01:49:28] important. That doesn't mean that the
[01:49:29] church is not important. But it means
[01:49:31] that scripture is our only sole
[01:49:34] infallible rule of faith and practice
[01:49:36] for the church. That if you have a
[01:49:39] tradition, but the tradition contradicts
[01:49:43] or contravenes scripture, then you go to
[01:49:46] scripture.
[01:49:48] You don't the the tradition is not on
[01:49:51] the same par. Whereas in the Catholic
[01:49:54] Church then and now, you do have the
[01:49:57] understanding of an infallible church,
[01:49:59] an infallible magisterium and an
[01:50:02] infallible scripture, but they're on
[01:50:04] more of an even playing field. And so
[01:50:06] the the Protestant Reformation said,
[01:50:09] "No, no, no.
[01:50:11] Councils heir, popes heir, people heir,
[01:50:16] God doesn't heir, and so let's go to
[01:50:18] scripture. Let's go to that which is
[01:50:20] infallible. Let's make sure we're doing
[01:50:22] our due diligence. You know, this didn't
[01:50:24] make everyone a pope to themselves. We
[01:50:26] we still you have to read it within a
[01:50:28] proper understanding of the context and
[01:50:29] the history. There's a meaning to the
[01:50:31] text and you have to do your due
[01:50:32] diligence to get to that meaning, but
[01:50:35] ultimately
[01:50:37] in what this is and what it does, it's
[01:50:39] unique. It has an ontological status of
[01:50:43] of of what it is and it being that is as
[01:50:47] as
[01:50:49] uh Peter says this um all scripture is
[01:50:53] this there's this Greek word they uses
[01:50:54] theopnosttoas god breathed
[01:50:57] and so that's that's different
[01:51:00] and I had a systematic theology
[01:51:03] professor when I was in grad school who
[01:51:05] always said tradition has a voice and
[01:51:08] emotion has a
[01:51:10] They have a voice and they have a vote
[01:51:13] but scripture has the veto because
[01:51:15] scripture is the one that comes it or
[01:51:19] origination is God alone. And so in that
[01:51:22] sense the reformed tradition following
[01:51:25] guys like Luther and Calvin and others
[01:51:29] uh is the tradition within historical
[01:51:31] Protestantism that tries to focus on
[01:51:35] that. Those are the ideals of you know
[01:51:38] this is this is our plum line.
[01:51:41] Everything else is measured against this
[01:51:43] and people can get it wrong. Church
[01:51:46] leaders can get it wrong. Popes can get
[01:51:48] it wrong and they do and they will. But
[01:51:53] if this properly understood within its
[01:51:56] historical context
[01:51:58] within digging into what it's actually
[01:52:00] intending to say the author had an
[01:52:02] intention. There are many applications
[01:52:04] but there's only one intention of the
[01:52:06] text in so far as it is communicated by
[01:52:09] the author the human author inspired by
[01:52:11] God.
[01:52:12] >> Mhm.
[01:52:13] >> But
[01:52:14] that's kind of a brief overview maybe
[01:52:18] insufficient um of kind of the tradition
[01:52:20] that I I find myself in. I am a a
[01:52:23] Baptist and I'm reformed.
[01:52:25] >> You try to go all the way back to what
[01:52:28] it was written.
[01:52:29] >> Yeah. I mean ultimately I the thing
[01:52:31] that's different about say the
[01:52:33] Protestant tradition that's different
[01:52:34] from maybe the Greek Orthodox tradition
[01:52:36] or the Roman Catholic tradition is that
[01:52:38] Protestants aren't attempting to look at
[01:52:41] the church within say the first hundred
[01:52:42] years and say they need to look exactly
[01:52:46] like me, right? Like my church needs to
[01:52:49] look like a first century Galilean
[01:52:52] church.
[01:52:53] >> I don't I don't that's not the claim.
[01:52:55] and and
[01:52:57] it is in one sense the claim of Roman
[01:52:59] Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and
[01:53:01] often kind of the accusation is that
[01:53:03] you're not going to find any one who
[01:53:04] looks like a Protestant within the early
[01:53:06] church. I don't I think that's an
[01:53:08] overgeneralization. Um but the claim is
[01:53:11] not
[01:53:13] do the traditions that the Protestants
[01:53:16] adhere to within their church practice
[01:53:18] mirror exactly what the like a church in
[01:53:23] the first, second, third century looked
[01:53:25] like as much as it is are our beliefs at
[01:53:29] their central points of understanding
[01:53:33] and articulation that which the early
[01:53:35] church articulated primarily from here.
[01:53:37] Right? Because even, you know, even Paul
[01:53:40] writes to the churches
[01:53:42] in they're included in scripture. He
[01:53:44] writes to the church in Corenth and
[01:53:46] says, "Listen, you're getting stuff
[01:53:47] wrong. Stop it." Right? So, it's not
[01:53:50] like if it's earlier, it's better
[01:53:52] necessarily.
[01:53:54] >> We're still going to get wrong things
[01:53:55] wrong. Right? Paul writes and he says,
[01:53:57] "There's a guy in your congregation.
[01:53:58] He's sleeping with his he's sleeping
[01:54:00] with his, you know, mother-in-law. Stop
[01:54:03] it. That's that's gross. It's evil." And
[01:54:06] so it's it's that there's a constant
[01:54:10] needing to be shaped by the word of God
[01:54:13] and let the central teachings of what
[01:54:16] God has inspired
[01:54:18] be that thing which which draws us
[01:54:21] together. Oh good.
[01:54:25] Wow.
[01:54:28] I'm learning a lot. Learning a lot
[01:54:31] today. Wesley, let's take one more break
[01:54:33] and then I want to get into uh Dead Sea
[01:54:35] Scrolls.
[01:54:35] >> Let's do it.
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[01:56:45] right, Wes, we're back from the break
[01:56:47] getting ready to dive into the Dead Sea
[01:56:49] Scrolls. But we had we had a uh another
[01:56:52] offline conversation. I love these turns
[01:56:54] into rabbit holes. But we had we had an
[01:56:56] offline conversation about uh in vitro
[01:57:00] and that kind of got mind mind triggered
[01:57:04] into you know there's a lot of new
[01:57:06] things that are happening nowadays that
[01:57:09] with with advances in technology that
[01:57:12] just
[01:57:14] weren't even a possibility or even a in
[01:57:16] in anybody's mind back then I would I
[01:57:19] would imagine in vitro being one of
[01:57:20] them. um sex changes,
[01:57:25] AI, like there's a whole slew of
[01:57:29] >> possibilities
[01:57:32] in present day that were not there back
[01:57:34] then. And so I'm just I'm just curious.
[01:57:36] I mean, with the in vitro thing, you
[01:57:39] know, we just had that discussion. We
[01:57:41] don't have to get into it if you don't
[01:57:42] want to or we can. But but
[01:57:45] point being with all these new advances
[01:57:47] in technology and it's it's it is I mean
[01:57:51] [ __ ] I don't know what you would call it
[01:57:53] other than creation
[01:57:55] >> but
[01:57:56] it where do you send people to for
[01:58:00] guidance for moral guidance on on any
[01:58:04] one of these subjects?
[01:58:05] >> Yeah. And there's a lot more that I that
[01:58:07] I didn't mention that
[01:58:08] >> of course I mean AI alone right when
[01:58:10] we're talking about there are all sorts
[01:58:12] of questions about consciousness in
[01:58:16] regards to what we're looking at with AI
[01:58:19] like is AI is it solving the touring
[01:58:22] test? Can it it recognize its own
[01:58:24] existence and reality? And it's there
[01:58:28] have been examples I think all
[01:58:29] throughout history of things that are
[01:58:31] spoken to directly within scripture. And
[01:58:34] so it's easy when we we're talking about
[01:58:36] moral prescriptions to just go to the
[01:58:39] place where the moral prescriptions
[01:58:41] apply and do this, don't do this, that
[01:58:44] kind of thing. But
[01:58:47] there are so many things that are in
[01:58:51] these weird gray areas that like whether
[01:58:54] you're talking about pastors or
[01:58:56] counselors or theologians or whoever,
[01:58:58] it's it's really hard to try to pin
[01:59:01] down. There isn't just an easy do this,
[01:59:04] don't do this. Here's what the outline
[01:59:07] says. You know, off off air arrow is
[01:59:08] saying you don't you don't open to
[01:59:10] second opinions chapter 3. And you have
[01:59:12] that section on the exact thing you're
[01:59:14] looking for. But I think what what's
[01:59:18] interesting about the Bible is that
[01:59:20] despite it being, you know, its most
[01:59:21] recent book being 2,000 years old, it's
[01:59:24] still informing our mor moral basis for
[01:59:27] so many things. We're still using it in
[01:59:30] some ways as the guiding principles
[01:59:33] because it provides an objective
[01:59:37] framework to understand, you know,
[01:59:39] whether that's when life begins or
[01:59:42] things like consciousness or purpose or
[01:59:45] meaning or identity and how we
[01:59:48] understand things. So I think that
[01:59:50] though there are issues that don't
[01:59:51] aren't spoken to directly, we can look
[01:59:54] at examples that relate to some of the
[02:00:00] very different very not even within the
[02:00:03] consciousness of a first century author.
[02:00:06] >> Mhm.
[02:00:07] >> But yet morality hasn't changed. Good is
[02:00:13] good and bad is bad. And there's still
[02:00:17] things that we need to parse through and
[02:00:19] figure out how do we figure out the
[02:00:22] intricacies of that. And I think that's
[02:00:24] where something like scripture can give
[02:00:26] us guiding principles to the best of our
[02:00:31] ability
[02:00:33] try to speak into those situations. It's
[02:00:35] not always straightforward.
[02:00:37] >> Yeah. I mean
[02:00:40] I don't think any of the thing I think
[02:00:42] one of them's pretty straightforward. I
[02:00:43] don't think the other ones are very
[02:00:45] straightforward. I think I mean I don't
[02:00:47] think in vitro is I don't know, you
[02:00:51] know, I don't know what I honestly I
[02:00:52] didn't know what I thought about it
[02:00:53] until about 20 minutes ago,
[02:00:55] >> right?
[02:00:55] >> You know, and then I thought I was like,
[02:00:57] "Huh, that's an interesting question."
[02:01:00] >> Mhm.
[02:01:00] >> You know, and I mean there's actually
[02:01:03] something has come up in my own life. I
[02:01:04] mean, I've I've uh I talk a lot about
[02:01:06] defense tech here and I've got the
[02:01:09] opportunities to invest in some major
[02:01:12] >> defense tech firms
[02:01:13] >> and I thought uh or companies and I
[02:01:16] thought after the after I made the
[02:01:19] investments I was
[02:01:21] >> actually there was one pending but I had
[02:01:24] already invested in in uh in another one
[02:01:27] in a defense tech ind
[02:01:29] >> but then I then the question after I did
[02:01:32] it popped up into my said, "Shit,
[02:01:36] should I have invested in this?"
[02:01:38] >> M
[02:01:39] >> this is I mean, what do we use these
[02:01:42] things for?
[02:01:42] >> Yeah. Yeah.
[02:01:43] >> And then in the same on the other hand,
[02:01:45] it's like, well, yeah, I should have
[02:01:47] invested in this because this might be
[02:01:49] the very same damn thing that saves my
[02:01:51] kids' way of life, right?
[02:01:53] >> You know, in the future. And so it's but
[02:01:55] it's a question that
[02:01:58] I don't know if I could find the answer
[02:01:59] to uh in there because they didn't have
[02:02:02] defense tech firms back then and I don't
[02:02:04] know if you could even invest in I don't
[02:02:07] know a spear maker.
[02:02:09] >> Yeah.
[02:02:09] >> Yeah. Well, you know what? It's
[02:02:10] interesting. You do have similar
[02:02:12] conversations within the early church
[02:02:13] period because you have um say Roman
[02:02:17] soldiers who come to faith and you do
[02:02:19] have uh in instances where say uh
[02:02:23] especially in the time of Augustine, St.
[02:02:25] Augustine where you have the
[02:02:28] conversations if you are a Roman soldier
[02:02:31] and you've now come to faith, can you
[02:02:33] really be integrated into the Christian
[02:02:36] community? And that's where the whole
[02:02:37] concept of just war theory particularly
[02:02:41] fleshed out by St. Augustine comes into
[02:02:43] purview where you know when is it right
[02:02:46] to fight?
[02:02:47] >> Mhm.
[02:02:48] >> What what do we what do we truly
[02:02:51] understand contextually about a passage
[02:02:53] like turn the other cheek? What does
[02:02:55] that mean? Is it you know always be
[02:02:57] passive? is is um
[02:03:02] you know a complete uh cessation of any
[02:03:05] type of self-defense what scripture is
[02:03:07] teaching. I don't think so. I think I
[02:03:09] think Augustine got it right and he
[02:03:12] outlines that. So there are instances of
[02:03:14] that. What did he outline? Well, he
[02:03:16] outlined basically that you know he has
[02:03:19] these precepts and he says it it's it is
[02:03:24] right to defend the weak. it is right to
[02:03:29] make sure that you know injustice is not
[02:03:31] being done. Paul says that the the
[02:03:33] government has the authority to wield
[02:03:35] the sword and so there's there's a right
[02:03:39] that's actually given to the powers that
[02:03:42] be in order to enact justice. Now we
[02:03:46] especially Christians it is likewise our
[02:03:48] duty to speak into that and make sure
[02:03:50] that the magistrates the officials are
[02:03:53] not doing that unjustly. So there's an
[02:03:56] accountability of speaking into the laws
[02:03:58] that are are being enacted in order that
[02:04:01] God gives the authority to whether it's
[02:04:05] the the the
[02:04:07] pharaoh or the Caesar, the emperor or
[02:04:11] the king or the governor or the
[02:04:14] president or the prime minister. But
[02:04:17] that doesn't mean that everything they
[02:04:18] do is right just because God gives them
[02:04:20] that power. So we need to hold them
[02:04:23] accountable when they are not doing that
[02:04:25] justly. Right? When the laws because
[02:04:28] what what is a law? A law is prescribed
[02:04:32] morality. When people say you can't
[02:04:34] force people to be moral like you can't
[02:04:36] prescribe your morality. Well, it's do
[02:04:38] not murder is prescribed morality. So
[02:04:42] there's always going to be a level of
[02:04:43] that where as a Christian I want our
[02:04:48] society to live by the laws that
[02:04:51] scripture actually dictates. I think
[02:04:52] that's going to be better for it.
[02:04:54] >> Now a good society is one where people's
[02:04:56] hearts are changed not just their
[02:04:57] actions. And so it goes beyond simply
[02:05:01] making people do things because if
[02:05:03] there's one thing we find out time and
[02:05:06] time again is that you can make a law.
[02:05:09] But we're really good at trying to find
[02:05:10] the loopholes. We're really good at
[02:05:12] maybe we'll obey it to not get in
[02:05:14] trouble. But the good society, the just
[02:05:17] society is one where you want people to
[02:05:19] actually their hearts are changed in
[02:05:21] order that they actually want to obey
[02:05:23] because they understand why it is good
[02:05:25] for them, for society, for the world to
[02:05:29] do those things.
[02:05:31] >> But Augustine looks at these things and
[02:05:33] he says
[02:05:36] war is okay
[02:05:38] as long as it is done for the right
[02:05:40] reasons. Like I think we would look at
[02:05:42] something like World War II and we would
[02:05:44] look at the tyranny and the injustice of
[02:05:47] the Holocaust and we would say it was
[02:05:49] right for
[02:05:52] nations to get involved in that to stop
[02:05:54] that from happening. That doesn't mean
[02:05:56] that, you know, it's perfect, that
[02:05:58] everything works out in this nice tied
[02:06:02] up with a bow way, but we
[02:06:07] those kind of understandings of the the
[02:06:11] world around us and um safeguarding the
[02:06:14] weak and looking after those who are
[02:06:17] marginalized and taking care of people
[02:06:19] who are being abused. I I think that
[02:06:22] there is a place for that and we see
[02:06:24] that within the enacting of Israel in
[02:06:27] the ancient world being under a
[02:06:30] theocracy. God is their leader and God
[02:06:33] is actually enacting his justice when he
[02:06:36] tells them to go and
[02:06:39] wipe out certain nations
[02:06:41] because as the as the the people of God
[02:06:46] being his hand of justice in the world
[02:06:49] at that point. Now mind you, this is
[02:06:50] descriptive, right? It's telling us what
[02:06:52] happened. It's not prescriptive. It's
[02:06:54] not saying, "Okay, Sean and Wes, you go
[02:06:56] and do likewise." Now, this is a
[02:06:59] different situation. It's telling us
[02:07:00] what happened. But at the exact same
[02:07:01] time, we do have an example of God is
[02:07:04] judging groups of people because they
[02:07:07] are evil. He's using Israel to do that.
[02:07:10] He's using people to do that. And a lot
[02:07:14] of the time I will have, you know,
[02:07:16] skeptics, atheists, agnostics
[02:07:19] talk about, you know, if God is so good,
[02:07:21] why doesn't he do anything in the world?
[02:07:22] You know, why isn't he stopping evil?
[02:07:25] Well, I think we actually have some
[02:07:26] instances of God stopping evil. And
[02:07:29] ironically, those are often times when
[02:07:31] people say, "Oh, look how bad God is.
[02:07:33] He's he's wiping out these people."
[02:07:36] >> In the grand scheme of things, there's a
[02:07:37] context to that. He was He's told
[02:07:40] Abraham, "I'm going to give you I'm
[02:07:42] going to give you a land. I'm going to
[02:07:43] give you a nation, but the sins of the
[02:07:45] Amorites has not come to its full
[02:07:46] fruition. So, you're going to wait 400
[02:07:48] years." And he wait they wait 400 years
[02:07:51] for those people to repent. God is being
[02:07:55] gracious and slow to his judgment there.
[02:07:58] And they don't they don't repent. They
[02:08:00] get worse. And so, when that time comes
[02:08:02] after the Exodus, they're going to the
[02:08:03] land. The people are bad. They're bad.
[02:08:05] They're evil. And so, God judges them.
[02:08:08] Um, so I think pacifism is not
[02:08:12] necessarily what my I believe God
[02:08:16] scripture teaches, but you look at what
[02:08:20] Augustine articulates in saying,
[02:08:23] you know, there needs to be an
[02:08:24] even-handedness in this. There needs to
[02:08:26] be a carefulness to this. You know, he
[02:08:28] even says that uh the defeated peoples
[02:08:31] shouldn't feel disgruntled at the end of
[02:08:33] the battle. That's really hard to do. Um
[02:08:35] maybe that's a too ideal of a situation.
[02:08:38] But unfortunately going forward from
[02:08:41] that, especially into the Middle Ages,
[02:08:44] everybody who pointed to Augustine as a
[02:08:46] justification for war kind of ignored
[02:08:48] all of the things that he laid out and
[02:08:51] only saw fighting. You're allowed to
[02:08:53] fight.
[02:08:54] >> So it didn't always go the way it should
[02:08:58] have gone. But you know it's a it's a
[02:09:01] good example in in terms of you saying
[02:09:04] you know I having reservations about
[02:09:08] contributing financially and what's
[02:09:10] what's the you know downstream effect of
[02:09:13] something like arms you know or or
[02:09:17] anything else. These aren't these aren't
[02:09:19] easy black and white topics. But I think
[02:09:23] I trust I hope that what I see in
[02:09:26] scripture is that God is not going to
[02:09:27] judge us based on what we don't know.
[02:09:30] >> He's going to judge us on what we do
[02:09:32] know. And I think God is going to be
[02:09:36] gracious with us in that if we are
[02:09:39] there's caveats to this obviously, but
[02:09:42] God judges those who know better worse.
[02:09:46] We have a story of this. I was reading
[02:09:48] this recently. Um, so there's uh 1 and 2
[02:09:52] Samuel uh are two books which are really
[02:09:54] kind of one book in the Old Testament.
[02:09:56] And you have uh closer to the beginning
[02:09:59] of 1 Samuel, I have this story where the
[02:10:01] Israelites are uh they're defeated in a
[02:10:05] battle and the the enemies, the
[02:10:07] Philistines, they take the Ark of the
[02:10:09] Covenant, which the Israelites have kind
[02:10:11] of prematurely brought into battle with
[02:10:12] them because they think it's going to be
[02:10:14] some sort of magic fix all. It's it's
[02:10:17] captured
[02:10:18] and the the Philistines just pick it up.
[02:10:20] They take it away and uh they put it in
[02:10:23] the temple of Deeon. It causes all sorts
[02:10:25] of problems because the aisle of Deeon
[02:10:26] falls over and breaks and they're like,
[02:10:28] "We need to get this thing out of here,
[02:10:29] right? The god of the Israelites is
[02:10:30] causing us too much trouble." But they
[02:10:32] just pick it up and they leave. Whereas,
[02:10:34] if you go to second Samuel, uh there's a
[02:10:38] guy named Usuza and the Israelites, once
[02:10:41] again, they're kind of playing fast and
[02:10:43] loose with God's laws. They go into a
[02:10:45] battle um and they're moving the ark of
[02:10:47] the covenant, but they're not moving it
[02:10:49] how God actually told them to move it.
[02:10:51] They're they've put it on a cart and
[02:10:52] it's being carried with oxen, whereas
[02:10:54] they're supposed to have four priests
[02:10:56] carrying it on either side and march
[02:10:58] with it. Well, they're they're
[02:11:02] improperly and inappropriately carrying
[02:11:04] the Ark of the Covenant and the the
[02:11:08] wheel of the the wheel of the the the
[02:11:12] wagon hits a pothole or whatever and the
[02:11:15] ark becomes unsteady and Usuza, who's
[02:11:19] right there, puts his hand out to steady
[02:11:20] the ark. He touches the ark and he
[02:11:22] immediately dies.
[02:11:25] And you read that. I remember reading
[02:11:28] that as a teenager and thinking, "Wait,
[02:11:30] hold on. The Philistines in First
[02:11:33] Samuel, they just pick the thing up.
[02:11:36] They just take it and they leave. What's
[02:11:37] going on here?"
[02:11:38] >> Mhm.
[02:11:39] >> I think this is a good example of, you
[02:11:41] know, Usuza was part of a nation that
[02:11:42] said, "I'm going to obey laws. I'm going
[02:11:45] to obey the good laws that God has given
[02:11:47] us as a chosen people, as an example to
[02:11:50] the surrounding nations." And there's a
[02:11:52] responsibility there of what I'm
[02:11:54] supposed to do and how I'm supposed to
[02:11:56] the standard that I'm supposed to be
[02:11:57] held by. And so Usuza knew better. The
[02:12:01] group that he was with knew better than
[02:12:03] to move the ark in the way that they
[02:12:05] were doing.
[02:12:06] >> That was inappropriate of them to do
[02:12:07] that.
[02:12:08] >> So because they knew better, God judged
[02:12:11] them based on that accountability.
[02:12:13] Accountability was higher. And so when
[02:12:15] he touches the ark, he dies because the
[02:12:18] ark is a dangerous thing. But he knows
[02:12:21] it's a dangerous thing and he should
[02:12:23] know better than to just kind of very
[02:12:26] glibly be treating the presence of God
[02:12:29] on the mercy seat like he is. Whereas
[02:12:32] the Philistines don't know any better.
[02:12:33] Now it still causes them lots of trouble
[02:12:35] and they need to get it out of their
[02:12:37] camp eventually.
[02:12:39] >> But I think in like telling that story
[02:12:43] what I'm communicating there is that
[02:12:45] there's a level of accountability. Not
[02:12:47] that God is is arbitrary and subjective
[02:12:52] in the way that he treats us, but I
[02:12:55] think that
[02:12:58] we are going to be judged on the basis
[02:13:00] of what we do know, not on what we don't
[02:13:01] know. And that doesn't mean that our sin
[02:13:04] is insufficient. That doesn't mean that
[02:13:06] our sin is wked at. But at the exact
[02:13:09] same time, I think there are certain
[02:13:11] things that we we need to weigh based on
[02:13:15] our conscience and on the level of uh
[02:13:20] accountability and understanding that we
[02:13:22] are given and do our best to operate on
[02:13:28] that knowledge. And sometimes that's not
[02:13:31] easy. Sometimes it is. I think this is
[02:13:33] why we should seek the wisdom and the
[02:13:38] understanding of people who know a lot
[02:13:40] more than we do, who are wise, who have
[02:13:43] walked through these things, who are um
[02:13:46] you know, elders in our, you know,
[02:13:48] whether that's
[02:13:48] >> that's why you're here, Wes.
[02:13:49] >> Well,
[02:13:51] that's why I'm here um to learn from
[02:13:54] you. Um, but so I think we should
[02:13:58] continually be trying to mature and
[02:14:00] trying to learn, but at the exact same
[02:14:02] time, you know, there's going to be
[02:14:05] things that I do that I'm going to
[02:14:08] realize in retrospect maybe, oh, I I I
[02:14:11] should have done that very differently.
[02:14:14] Um, and that's okay. But we we should be
[02:14:18] trying to do our due dil diligence to
[02:14:20] try to the best of our ability to
[02:14:22] conform that to scripture and the right
[02:14:27] teaching that God reveals to us. Makes
[02:14:29] sense.
[02:14:31] A little bit ago when I when I had
[02:14:33] mentioned when I called called it
[02:14:36] creation, I thought I noticed your face
[02:14:39] kind of change there all of a sudden. I
[02:14:41] did.
[02:14:43] What would you What is your definition
[02:14:45] of creation? Did I Did I strike a chord
[02:14:47] there accidentally?
[02:14:49] >> Uh not that I am aware of. Maybe that's
[02:14:52] an involuntary face twitch.
[02:14:54] >> Um but uh uh maybe I need to see my
[02:14:57] doctor, get that looked after. There's
[02:14:59] um
[02:14:59] >> yeah, I mean I think it's really
[02:15:01] interesting the topic of creation. I
[02:15:03] mean when I when I brought it up, we
[02:15:04] were talking about in vitro,
[02:15:06] >> but then I think about what else are we
[02:15:08] doing? We can, we now have the ability
[02:15:11] to clone. People clone in their animals.
[02:15:13] We can clone humans. We have organs.
[02:15:15] Yeah, we're growing organs. We can grow
[02:15:17] organs in a basically a plastic bag now.
[02:15:20] Or if you're China or
[02:15:22] >> yeah,
[02:15:23] >> a bad guy, you can just harvest them.
[02:15:26] But you know what I mean? So all these
[02:15:27] things and I I I don't know what else to
[02:15:30] call it other than creation. But um
[02:15:35] but you know like what I'm just
[02:15:37] >> What are your thoughts on all of that?
[02:15:40] >> I think
[02:15:40] >> because it's not
[02:15:42] >> it's different.
[02:15:43] >> Yeah.
[02:15:45] >> I you know I've heard some people
[02:15:46] >> Neurolink
[02:15:47] >> putting a chip in your head.
[02:15:49] >> Exactly. I I've heard some people argue
[02:15:51] that
[02:15:53] this is evidence that we don't need God.
[02:15:55] Right. Like we can create we can make
[02:15:58] life.
[02:15:59] What I always think is interesting about
[02:16:02] >> that's interesting. Is that what this is
[02:16:04] all about? Is this I mean in the grand
[02:16:06] scheme of things and the battle of good
[02:16:09] and evil is this is that all of that
[02:16:11] going to create a godless society?
[02:16:13] >> Well, I think if anything what it points
[02:16:15] to is that all of these things need an
[02:16:18] originator. They need a creator, right?
[02:16:21] Like and we are created in the image of
[02:16:23] God who is himself the author of
[02:16:25] creation. And so I think it's just part
[02:16:28] and parcel. makes sense that we would
[02:16:30] then try to create something in our
[02:16:34] image, right? Whether you're talking
[02:16:35] about AI or whether you're talking about
[02:16:37] like computer models or whatever, all of
[02:16:40] that just in my mind points to the fact
[02:16:42] that we're we're just patterning
[02:16:45] ourselves after our own creator. Mhm.
[02:16:48] >> And all of these things, whether it's a
[02:16:50] a beautiful painting or like a work of
[02:16:52] art or um you know, how an artist puts
[02:16:58] together
[02:16:59] visually or you know, there are all
[02:17:02] different ways that that can manifest.
[02:17:05] These are testimonies to
[02:17:09] our ability to
[02:17:11] exemplify what God has instilled in us
[02:17:15] as humanity. There's something unique
[02:17:17] about humanity that other living things
[02:17:21] on this planet just doesn't. They don't
[02:17:23] do it in the same way. You can get an
[02:17:24] elephant to paint a picture with its
[02:17:26] trunk, but is it really meditating on
[02:17:31] the beauty and the aspects and the
[02:17:34] angles and the if a if if a monkey
[02:17:36] painted the Mona Lisa,
[02:17:39] would it be really thinking about, you
[02:17:42] know, the expression on the individual's
[02:17:44] face and how that might be understood by
[02:17:46] the view? All of these things, I think,
[02:17:48] are unique to humanity. There's
[02:17:50] something about us, something about this
[02:17:52] species on this planet that is just
[02:17:55] completely different than every other
[02:17:57] species. And I think as technology
[02:18:00] advanced and you get to something like
[02:18:02] AI or Neuralink or
[02:18:05] in my mind, these are just testimonies
[02:18:08] to we are endowed with an ability to
[02:18:12] create. I mean, that's the whole the
[02:18:14] concept of the Sabbath um within the old
[02:18:18] covenant system. you work six days uh
[02:18:20] but the seventh day you rest and it's
[02:18:23] not resting you know God doesn't rest on
[02:18:25] the seventh day because God is tired God
[02:18:27] rests because he is viewing his creation
[02:18:31] and he's he's just looking over it and
[02:18:35] so there's an understanding within I
[02:18:39] think you see how ancient Jewish
[02:18:42] writings talk about okay why do we rest
[02:18:44] on the Sabbath what is the purpose of
[02:18:46] this there's all sorts of reasons why
[02:18:48] One of them is that there's a there's an
[02:18:51] understanding that the only being in
[02:18:54] this universe that has the authority to
[02:18:58] create is God. And we create six days a
[02:19:00] week. And we stop to acknowledge that
[02:19:03] God is the author of creation, not us.
[02:19:06] And so all of our creative acts are
[02:19:08] going to be an expression of that
[02:19:11] everything from nothing act of God.
[02:19:13] Right? Exhal.
[02:19:15] But we pause to reflect on the fact that
[02:19:20] that doesn't come from me. That comes
[02:19:22] from the image that I bear. And this is
[02:19:24] why it's so significant when Jesus calls
[02:19:26] himself the Lord of the Sabbath. When
[02:19:29] he's accused of working on the Sabbath,
[02:19:31] it's in all four gospels. In John, it's
[02:19:33] a little bit different. He says, "My
[02:19:34] father is working um until now, and I am
[02:19:37] also working." But if you kind of put
[02:19:40] that in the framework of Jesus's
[02:19:43] historical context and you look at some
[02:19:46] of the articulations of ancient Jewish
[02:19:48] understanding of what the Sabbath is,
[02:19:50] when Jesus says, "I am the Lord of the
[02:19:52] Sabbath," there's an aspect of what he's
[02:19:54] saying that is, "I'm the only one who's
[02:19:58] allowed to work on this day."
[02:20:00] And and he's what he's really claiming,
[02:20:02] and the Jews get very mad at him for it,
[02:20:04] is you saw that sunrise in the morning?
[02:20:07] It was me.
[02:20:09] >> I did that. I'm the Lord of the Sabbath.
[02:20:11] So, you know, being accused of picking
[02:20:13] some heads of grain uh with his
[02:20:15] disciples and eating on on on Saturday,
[02:20:18] you know, he's like, "Listen, I'm in
[02:20:21] control of all of this." And so, that
[02:20:23] goes over our heads because we don't
[02:20:24] have a framework for it. Jesus's claims
[02:20:26] to be God are not him saying, "I am God.
[02:20:29] Worship me." It's said in a much more
[02:20:30] Jewish accent than that, but they are no
[02:20:33] no less a claim of divinity. And so
[02:20:36] that's when you when you look at these
[02:20:38] understandings of what the Sabbath is,
[02:20:40] of who God is, and how he's the one who
[02:20:43] is the author of creation, which by the
[02:20:45] way is a title that's given to Jesus.
[02:20:47] He's also said to be the author of
[02:20:49] creation, the alpha and the omega, the
[02:20:50] beginning and the end. that in John
[02:20:52] chapter 1, in Colossians chapter 1, and
[02:20:54] Hebrews chapter 1, all three of those
[02:20:56] authors give this
[02:20:59] exhaustive list that nothing was made
[02:21:02] without Jesus, that everything was made
[02:21:04] for him and by him. Paul exhausts the
[02:21:07] prepositions, you know, the the author
[02:21:10] of Hebrews, you know, calls him the
[02:21:12] progenitor of all things, the in the
[02:21:14] exact image and likeness of God. And
[02:21:19] it's a reflection of our character that
[02:21:22] we also then create because we're made
[02:21:24] in the image of a God who is an artist
[02:21:28] who who paints a picture of the universe
[02:21:33] with his words.
[02:21:35] >> Wow.
[02:21:37] You brought up the ark of the covenant.
[02:21:39] >> What is that?
[02:21:40] >> The ark of the covenant was the presence
[02:21:42] of God on earth in the Old Testament. So
[02:21:46] you have uh eventually the temple being
[02:21:49] made or prior to that is the tabernacle
[02:21:51] and then you have this really
[02:21:52] interesting box that God tells the
[02:21:55] Israelites to make and he says I'm going
[02:21:57] to dwell with you with the presence like
[02:22:00] the presence in the garden. So you go
[02:22:02] all the way back to Genesis chapter 1
[02:22:04] and um Adam and Eve are
[02:22:08] have this communi communicative
[02:22:10] relationship with God in a very unique
[02:22:12] way. In fact, when they eat of the fruit
[02:22:15] and they realize
[02:22:17] their shame in their nakedness and they
[02:22:19] hide, it says that they heard the Lord
[02:22:22] God walking in the cool of the day. And
[02:22:25] so, there's a presence there that's
[02:22:27] tangible and real, but that like I was
[02:22:29] talking about before, that separation
[02:22:31] from God, it's created a rift in that
[02:22:34] relationship.
[02:22:35] And so
[02:22:38] there's there's the the rift has made
[02:22:41] the proximity to God dangerous. And
[02:22:46] eventually what you get in God's chosen
[02:22:49] people, the Israelites, having that the
[02:22:52] presence in God in the tabernacle and in
[02:22:54] the temple, God says, "I'm going to
[02:22:57] dwell with you, but you need to be
[02:22:58] careful. You need to be careful with
[02:23:00] this. So there's a particular way that
[02:23:01] you're going to build this and I'm going
[02:23:03] to my presence, my glory is going to
[02:23:07] exist on the top of this box and that's
[02:23:10] the ark of the covenant. Now,
[02:23:12] interestingly enough, when Jesus comes
[02:23:14] around, John's gospel starts out right
[02:23:18] in the beginning was the word and the
[02:23:19] word was with God and the word was God.
[02:23:21] But then in John 1:14, it says, "And the
[02:23:26] word became flesh and made his dwelling
[02:23:28] among us." And that word that we
[02:23:31] translate as made his dwelling is
[02:23:33] actually the same word that is used in
[02:23:36] the Greek translation of the Old
[02:23:37] Testament translated prior to Jesus for
[02:23:40] tabernacled. So referring to the tent
[02:23:43] that the ark of the covenant which held
[02:23:45] the presence of God had. So I think it's
[02:23:48] very overt. It would have been far more
[02:23:50] overt to the Jewish reader. So some
[02:23:53] translations just say made his presence
[02:23:56] u made his dwelling. There are some
[02:23:58] translations that say tabernacled among
[02:24:00] us. Um, but I think the Jewish reader
[02:24:04] who's reading the Greek there, if they
[02:24:06] were aware of the Greek translation of
[02:24:07] the Old Testament, would have
[02:24:08] immediately thought he's talking about
[02:24:11] God's presence. He's talking about what
[02:24:13] was dwelling over the ark of the
[02:24:15] covenant. And guess what? God is with us
[02:24:18] again,
[02:24:20] but it's in Jesus. Jesus is that
[02:24:23] presence. He's dwelling with us. He's
[02:24:24] walking with us. He's in the midst of
[02:24:26] his people. And that's what ultimately,
[02:24:29] you know, in Revelation, in the last
[02:24:30] book of the Bible, it says that that's
[02:24:33] going to be there. That presence is
[02:24:34] going to be there in the new heavens and
[02:24:36] the new earth. And so the ark of the
[02:24:40] covenant was
[02:24:42] part of this old covenantal system which
[02:24:46] is always meant to point to something.
[02:24:48] And this is if people are interested in
[02:24:49] this, reading the book of Hebrews in the
[02:24:52] New Testament, the whole theme is how
[02:24:56] all of these things in the Old Covenant
[02:24:58] were shadows cast by Jesus.
[02:25:02] All of these things are fulfilled. You
[02:25:03] like Moses, Jesus is the new Moses. You
[02:25:05] like the priestly system, Jesus is the
[02:25:07] priest who's never going to die. He's
[02:25:09] always going to intercede on your
[02:25:10] behalf. You like the angels, Jesus is
[02:25:13] greater than the angels. You like the
[02:25:14] temple, Jesus has fulfilled the temple.
[02:25:18] you are now the presence of the Holy
[02:25:19] Spirit. You are now the temple. So, it's
[02:25:21] all of these things. It's an amazing
[02:25:23] book in that way and that it's talking
[02:25:25] to Jews who are tempted to go back to go
[02:25:28] back. They've been ostracized from the
[02:25:30] pagan Greor Roman culture of their day
[02:25:33] and now they're proclaiming Jesus as the
[02:25:35] Messiah and they're being ostracized by
[02:25:36] their Jewish communities as well. The
[02:25:38] author of Hebrews says there's nothing
[02:25:40] to go back to. Don't be tempted. Jesus
[02:25:43] is the fulfillment of all these things.
[02:25:45] Don't go back to the shadows when you
[02:25:47] know what casts. It's it's foolish. And
[02:25:51] ultimately part of that is that you know
[02:25:53] that presence of God in the tabernacle
[02:25:56] that so there was a uh there was a
[02:25:59] curtain in front of the holy of holies
[02:26:02] where the ark of the covenant was in the
[02:26:04] temple. And in the gospels it says that
[02:26:06] when Jesus died the temp the the the
[02:26:10] um curtain was actually ripped in two.
[02:26:13] And there's a symbolic meaning in there
[02:26:16] in that the divide between the priests
[02:26:18] who get to go into the holy of holies
[02:26:21] once a year on Yamapour on the day of
[02:26:24] atonement. Well, now
[02:26:26] you that that that's been that divide
[02:26:29] that's been eradicated
[02:26:32] because the author of Hebrews says you
[02:26:35] have a priest who now intercedes on your
[02:26:36] behalf where you can go into the holy of
[02:26:39] holies into the presence of God. You can
[02:26:40] talk to God directly. So, that was a
[02:26:42] long-winded answer.
[02:26:43] >> Wow.
[02:26:45] What about the Ark of the Covenant does
[02:26:46] that?
[02:26:47] >> All right. The Dead The Dead Sea
[02:26:49] Scrolls.
[02:26:50] >> Yeah. What are they? So, the Dead Sea
[02:26:52] Scrolls are a collection of ancient
[02:26:54] Jewish writings. They were discovered
[02:26:56] between 1947 and 1956. We have
[02:27:00] discovered some since then, just
[02:27:02] fragments. But the story is that there
[02:27:06] were some beduin on the northwest side
[02:27:08] of the Dead Sea uh between the border of
[02:27:11] Israel and Jordan and they were uh
[02:27:14] hurting some sheep and um they
[02:27:17] discovered these jars full of documents.
[02:27:22] So in the Roman Jewish wars which
[02:27:25] happened kind of into the mid late uh
[02:27:30] 1st century right after Jesus which also
[02:27:33] ultimately culminated in 70 AD when Rome
[02:27:38] they marched into Jerusalem and they
[02:27:40] sacked Jerusalem and they destroyed the
[02:27:41] temple. Um,
[02:27:44] these Jews went and they hid kind of
[02:27:47] maybe knowing that danger was coming.
[02:27:50] They hid these documents in these caves
[02:27:53] in the the hills along the coast of the
[02:27:56] northwest side of the Dead Sea. That's
[02:27:58] why they're called the Dead Sea Scrolls
[02:27:59] cuz that's the location. 11 caves
[02:28:01] altogether that that they were
[02:28:03] discovered in uh probably with the
[02:28:05] intention to come back and get them when
[02:28:07] things were a little bit like had
[02:28:09] simmered down, but they got wiped out
[02:28:11] and so they never had the chance to go
[02:28:14] back and get them. So, ironically, the
[02:28:17] arid environment of the the region there
[02:28:20] preserved these things for close to
[02:28:22] 2,000 years.
[02:28:24] >> We discovered them in, like I said, the
[02:28:26] late 1940s into the 1950s. and they
[02:28:30] revealed a ton of uh around 970
[02:28:37] documents in um between 10,000 and
[02:28:40] 11,000 fragments. So, some of them are,
[02:28:44] you know, entire books. Uh others of
[02:28:47] them are very very fragmentaryary. They
[02:28:49] need to be pieced together. Now,
[02:28:51] interestingly enough, the Dead Sea
[02:28:53] Scrolls are on exhibition at the Museum
[02:28:56] of the Bible in Washington, DC.
[02:28:58] >> Oh, really?
[02:28:58] >> Right now. Wow.
[02:29:00] >> And I will actually be given be giving a
[02:29:02] tour on March 28th
[02:29:05] >> of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So if people
[02:29:06] are listening and this goes out in time,
[02:29:08] um you can actually have a tour of the
[02:29:10] Dead Sea Scrolls with me uh in my
[02:29:12] partnership with the Museum of the
[02:29:14] Bible. But otherwise, I think it's worth
[02:29:16] seeing. I think these are probably the
[02:29:20] most important archaeological discovery
[02:29:22] of the 20th century.
[02:29:24] >> Wow. And they shed so much light on
[02:29:28] ancient Judaism leading up to the time
[02:29:30] of Jesus in understandings of different
[02:29:33] Jewish thought and practice. But also
[02:29:38] every book of the Bible apart from two
[02:29:42] of the Old Testament was discovered in
[02:29:44] in these. And some of them were so well
[02:29:49] preserved that what they did is they
[02:29:52] pushed back our understanding of the
[02:29:54] text of the Bible close to a thousand
[02:29:56] years, sometimes even further than that
[02:29:59] because for a long time our copies of
[02:30:03] particularly the Hebrew Old Testament.
[02:30:05] So we had translations like I've
[02:30:06] referred to the Greek translation of the
[02:30:08] Old Testament. Those those have have
[02:30:10] existed for a long time. Um it's called
[02:30:12] the Septuagent is one of the mainstreams
[02:30:14] of the Greek translation of the Old
[02:30:16] Testament. Most people in the time of
[02:30:19] Jesus uh were speaking and reading Greek
[02:30:23] if they were able to read because that
[02:30:25] was the lingua frana the language of the
[02:30:27] day. And so about 200 years prior to
[02:30:31] Jesus a bunch of the books particularly
[02:30:34] the Torah the first five books of the
[02:30:35] Bible were translated from the Hebrew
[02:30:36] into the Greek. And then as time went
[02:30:38] on, more and more books were translated
[02:30:40] of the Old Testament into Greek. Um, so
[02:30:42] that started about the 3rd century BC.
[02:30:45] It didn't really finish until the 1st
[02:30:47] century AD, but
[02:30:50] our Hebrew copies of most of the Old
[02:30:54] Testament were from the Middle Ages for
[02:30:56] a long, long time.
[02:30:58] >> Wow. And what the Dead Sea Scrolls did
[02:31:00] is all of a sudden we have prest century
[02:31:04] copies of some of these books and we're
[02:31:08] able to compare them to compare
[02:31:10] something like the great great Psalm
[02:31:12] scroll or the great Isaiah scroll with
[02:31:14] copies of what's called the Maseretic
[02:31:17] text which is the text of the Hebrew
[02:31:19] Bible from the Middle Ages copied by
[02:31:21] these scroll these uh um scribes the
[02:31:24] Mazerites.
[02:31:25] And
[02:31:27] they're surprisingly similar, shockingly
[02:31:31] similar. Some of them are are exact. Not
[02:31:34] all of them are. Um, but it the
[02:31:38] testimony of the fidelity between the
[02:31:41] time when we get something like the
[02:31:44] Leningrag codeex in the Middle Ages to
[02:31:46] something like the Dead Sea Scrolls is
[02:31:49] an huge gap. And yet you you have now
[02:31:54] evidence of this faithful copying
[02:31:57] process over the centuries of scribes to
[02:32:01] the point where you can follow them, you
[02:32:04] know, to the letter and see the fidelity
[02:32:08] of of these texts.
[02:32:09] >> Is there any New Testament in there?
[02:32:12] >> No. So it's all Old Testament. So the
[02:32:14] thing with the Dead Sea Scrolls is that
[02:32:16] most of them predate Jesus. Some of them
[02:32:18] are written in around the time when
[02:32:20] Jesus was was living. But they're mostly
[02:32:24] the writings we think of a group called
[02:32:26] the Essenes who were a sectarian group
[02:32:29] of Jews who had removed themselves from
[02:32:32] the Jerusalem community and gone out
[02:32:33] into the desert in this area called
[02:32:35] Kuman. So they were a if you read the
[02:32:39] New Testament, you're going to hear
[02:32:40] about groups like the Sadducees and the
[02:32:42] Pharisees. The Essenes were a group
[02:32:45] aside from that and they had gone out
[02:32:48] into the desert and they had kind of
[02:32:50] their own uh rules and regulations but
[02:32:53] they also copied a lot of these books
[02:32:55] and so along with a lot of other books.
[02:32:59] They had uh like rules and and wrote
[02:33:03] about what their their religious
[02:33:05] practices were and then had some other
[02:33:06] theological writings that they deemed
[02:33:09] valuable. But they clearly viewed what
[02:33:11] we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew
[02:33:13] Bible, the scriptures as as incredibly
[02:33:15] important, as scriptural, as their
[02:33:17] guiding principles.
[02:33:19] But they often viewed
[02:33:22] the propheticness of those as applying
[02:33:25] to their day right then and there. like
[02:33:27] they thought kind of apocalyptically
[02:33:30] that they were going to be the reason
[02:33:33] why, you know, everything was was solved
[02:33:36] because of their uh their very faithful
[02:33:38] practice. Okay,
[02:33:40] >> in Jerusalem they' capitulated. They
[02:33:42] were, you know, in in bed with Rome and
[02:33:44] they'd removed themselves. They were
[02:33:45] pure. They were holy and uh they had
[02:33:48] some other, you know, practices that
[02:33:50] were a little bit more um sectarian and
[02:33:52] eggmatic there. So, not all of the
[02:33:56] documents in the Dead Sea Scrolls are
[02:33:58] part of the Kuman community. A lot of
[02:33:59] them are, but then there are other
[02:34:02] writings from groups that uh were hidden
[02:34:05] in the caves that kind of and then some
[02:34:08] of them are just like very unusual.
[02:34:11] There's a treasure map um included
[02:34:13] >> treasure map, too.
[02:34:14] >> So, it's it's known as the copper
[02:34:15] scroll. Uh, so it's the only one that's
[02:34:18] not on either um parchment or on
[02:34:21] papyrus, but it's on very thin sheets of
[02:34:24] copper and it was rolled up and it's a a
[02:34:26] treasure map with all of these locations
[02:34:29] uh uh of of a lot of gold and silver
[02:34:34] >> really. So, some people have tried to
[02:34:36] kind of decode it and figure out where,
[02:34:38] you know, is this some of the stuff uh
[02:34:40] that's the treasure from the temple? Is
[02:34:42] this, you know, some of the treasure of
[02:34:44] Solomon from the Old Testament? It's not
[02:34:47] entirely clear. Um, but it does appear
[02:34:49] to be like the person who wrote it does
[02:34:53] seem to think that this is where
[02:34:54] treasure is, but that's kind of an
[02:34:57] outlier. A lot of the others have to do
[02:34:58] with religious practice or kind of
[02:35:01] historical scriptural things.
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[02:36:34] >> Do you feel it that something's off?
[02:36:36] >> This is propaganda as a weapon.
[02:36:39] >> The revolutionary audio docuer.
[02:36:42] >> It's essential for the experiment that
[02:36:43] you continue.
[02:36:45] >> Hosted by Sha Ryan. They're called SCOPS
[02:36:48] is now available to you for free.
[02:36:50] >> There's no question that it is my
[02:36:53] control.
[02:36:54] >> Hear from whistleblowers.
[02:36:55] >> Why have I got a letter from the CIA?
[02:36:57] >> Shocking insights from experts.
[02:36:59] >> If you've ever wondered who's really
[02:37:01] pulling the strings, it's time to find
[02:37:04] out.
[02:37:08] >> Target Intelligence SCOP, an ironclad
[02:37:11] original hosted by Sha Ryan. Listen
[02:37:14] today wherever you get your podcasts or
[02:37:17] watch the enhanced version on YouTube at
[02:37:20] this is ironclad.
[02:37:26] >> What percentage of this is in the Bible
[02:37:28] or is a book in the Bible?
[02:37:30] >> So about uh um so all of the books of
[02:37:35] the Bible apart from uh one prophetic
[02:37:38] book and uh Esther were were found with
[02:37:41] in amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. Um it's
[02:37:44] it's also in a number of different
[02:37:46] languages. So about 75% of it is written
[02:37:48] in Hebrew, but some of it is written in
[02:37:50] Greek and some in Aramaic and uh a
[02:37:54] minority a very small minority in
[02:37:55] Nabotian. So um that's where it's like
[02:37:59] it's kind of a grouping. The Dead Sea
[02:38:02] Scrolls is an umbrella term for all of
[02:38:04] these writings. They just happen to be
[02:38:07] discovered in these 11 caves on the
[02:38:10] northwest side of the Dead Sea. But
[02:38:13] they're
[02:38:14] incredibly important and shed light on
[02:38:17] even things like uh there's one
[02:38:19] particular manuscript which talks about
[02:38:21] the Messiah and talks about the Messiah
[02:38:23] in divine terms. And so this kind of
[02:38:28] sheds light on our understanding of
[02:38:30] accusations that early Christians are
[02:38:34] imposing a foreign idea on to Jesus. You
[02:38:39] know that the Messiah was going to be a
[02:38:40] divine figure. Well, we have actually
[02:38:42] some texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls which
[02:38:45] actually do kind of indicate that the
[02:38:47] Messiah who's about to come, the this
[02:38:49] anointed one, he's actually going to
[02:38:52] have
[02:38:54] a divine quality to him that exceeds
[02:38:56] just a mere man.
[02:38:57] >> They're they're writing about this
[02:38:59] before he came.
[02:39:00] >> Mhm.
[02:39:00] >> Really?
[02:39:01] >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was the
[02:39:02] expectation that the Messiah was going
[02:39:04] to come. Mhm.
[02:39:05] >> So that that's going on all throughout,
[02:39:08] you know, the Old Testament period, but
[02:39:11] the the Essenes
[02:39:14] uh they they they have an understanding
[02:39:16] that there's there's going to be two
[02:39:18] messiahs. One from the line of Aaron,
[02:39:19] who's going to be a priestly Messiah,
[02:39:21] and one from the line of David, who's
[02:39:22] going to be a kingly Messiah. and that
[02:39:24] these people are going to fulfill the
[02:39:27] expectation of making all things right
[02:39:29] with the nation of Israel, particularly
[02:39:32] their kind of sect of Israel that they
[02:39:35] see as the the pure one. Um, and part of
[02:39:40] that was going to be they were going to
[02:39:41] drive out the Romans and make all things
[02:39:44] right. And they have a lot of um
[02:39:48] writings about them being the children
[02:39:50] of light and it's going to they're going
[02:39:52] to defeat the children of darkness which
[02:39:54] could be assumed as you know the Greeks
[02:39:56] or the Romans or whoever. But either way
[02:39:59] they're very apocalyptic in their
[02:40:00] understanding of these things.
[02:40:04] What else have we learned from them?
[02:40:06] I mean, they're they're very
[02:40:09] uh I mean, the Dead Sea Scrolls are so
[02:40:12] fascinating because they shed
[02:40:16] so much understanding on
[02:40:19] like how Jews were say parsing out some
[02:40:22] of the things within the Old Testament
[02:40:25] that maybe
[02:40:27] um we'd like to know more about. So
[02:40:31] something like the Enochian literature,
[02:40:33] >> I don't know.
[02:40:33] >> So there's a the book of Enoch. So
[02:40:36] there's there's actually three books of
[02:40:38] Enoch. First, second, and third Enoch.
[02:40:39] The one that's typically referred to as
[02:40:41] the book of Enoch is first Enoch. And
[02:40:44] some it's it's it's an amalgamated group
[02:40:47] of different literature, the Book of the
[02:40:50] Watchers, the Book of the Giants, uh the
[02:40:52] Book of Parables, these kinds of things
[02:40:54] that we all put into one book that we
[02:40:56] call First Enoch. Some of it's really
[02:40:58] old. Uh, and actually right now on
[02:41:01] display at the Museum of the Bible, you
[02:41:02] can see a fragment of astronomical
[02:41:04] Enoch, which is on display, I think, for
[02:41:06] the first time ever. I don't think it's
[02:41:07] ever been displayed, this fragment of
[02:41:09] astronomical Enoch. But what the
[02:41:12] documents that make up what we call
[02:41:14] first Enoch are trying to extrapolate on
[02:41:16] is what's going on before the flood. So
[02:41:19] you have in Genesis chapter 6 this very,
[02:41:23] you know, cryptic passage of the sons of
[02:41:26] God saw that the daughters of men were
[02:41:28] beautiful and they came and they slept
[02:41:29] with them and these women gave birth to
[02:41:32] these children that were the Nephilim
[02:41:35] that were the heroes of old, men of
[02:41:37] renowned. And so there's a bunch of
[02:41:40] different interpretations in the ancient
[02:41:41] world as to what this means. the um the
[02:41:44] Greek translation of the Old Testament
[02:41:45] translates Nephilim as uh gigas which is
[02:41:48] giants. And so there's a there's one
[02:41:51] particular understanding of that. Uh and
[02:41:54] there's both a kind of naturalistic
[02:41:57] explanation that the sons of God weren't
[02:42:00] necessarily angels. But then there's
[02:42:02] another stream of interpretation that's
[02:42:05] fleshed out in something like the book
[02:42:06] of Enoch where it talks about, okay,
[02:42:09] well, who are these sons of God? And so
[02:42:13] why were they um
[02:42:16] why why why were their their progeny?
[02:42:20] What were the Nephilim? And how did this
[02:42:22] come into being? And so uh it kind of
[02:42:24] does this through a narrative about the
[02:42:27] great-grandfather of Noah, Enoch, and
[02:42:30] fleshes some of these things out. And
[02:42:33] this goes into like a long history of
[02:42:36] leading up to the New Testament where
[02:42:40] there's a, you know, the demons kind of
[02:42:43] show up in the New Testament. There
[02:42:44] really isn't all that much said in the
[02:42:46] Old Testament about demons, but in some
[02:42:48] of this ancient Jewish literature that's
[02:42:51] incorporated and found in the Dead Sea
[02:42:53] Scrolls, we have some of these
[02:42:55] discussions of things like what are the
[02:42:57] demons? Well, there was a pretty strong
[02:43:01] thread of thinking within ancient
[02:43:03] Judaism that demons were disembodied
[02:43:06] spirits of the Nephilim. So, the
[02:43:09] Nephilim, if you're taking a
[02:43:11] supernatural
[02:43:13] understanding of who they are, their
[02:43:15] fathers are angels
[02:43:18] >> and their mothers are humans. So,
[02:43:21] they're kind of these half supernatural,
[02:43:23] half carnal things. So when they die,
[02:43:27] their spirits don't have anywhere to go.
[02:43:29] So now they're trapped and they're
[02:43:30] wandering the earth. They're aimless and
[02:43:32] they're constantly trying to get back
[02:43:34] into
[02:43:36] a a physical form. And so they possess
[02:43:39] people and because they're not really
[02:43:42] meant to do that because they're these
[02:43:44] weward supernatural beings, it never
[02:43:46] really works out and they end up making
[02:43:48] people do all sorts of crazy things and
[02:43:52] they're they're cursed because they're
[02:43:55] unholy. They're the the progeny of
[02:43:58] fallen angels. And so there's all this
[02:44:00] stuff. So some of this literature is
[02:44:02] fleshing that out. Now, is that really
[02:44:04] what's going on? I don't know.
[02:44:05] >> What do you think about that? I think
[02:44:07] it's very very interesting. I think some
[02:44:09] of it makes sense. I think on things
[02:44:12] that scripture whispers about, I don't
[02:44:14] want to yell too loudly. Uh I I'm very
[02:44:18] cautious.
[02:44:19] Um, I think it's entirely plausible
[02:44:23] given what the what we see within
[02:44:27] scripture and the fact that it's not
[02:44:30] 100% clear exactly what demons or even
[02:44:34] angels are, but that's what something
[02:44:36] like the book of Enoch is trying to
[02:44:37] flesh out. And so some of this
[02:44:39] literature will kind of falls into the
[02:44:41] category of what's called
[02:44:42] pseudopagraphical writing. So pseudo
[02:44:45] means false, right? In Greek and graph
[02:44:47] means writing. So, it's a false writing.
[02:44:49] So, it's attributed to uh an author
[02:44:52] who's not really the author or about an
[02:44:54] author that's not necessarily meant to
[02:44:56] be thought of realistically as that
[02:44:58] author. So, Enoch um the book of Enoch
[02:45:02] almost certainly wasn't written pre
[02:45:04] flood in the time of Enoch. And there's
[02:45:06] all sorts of ways that we can tease that
[02:45:08] out with even the timekeeping that it it
[02:45:11] includes is very influenced by the
[02:45:15] henistic timekeeping, the Greek
[02:45:17] timekeeping in the day. There are
[02:45:19] illusions to the book of Daniel, to the
[02:45:21] book of uh Deuteronomy and the book of
[02:45:23] numbers which are in the inkian
[02:45:27] literature which means that they're
[02:45:29] probably being written after those and
[02:45:31] especially with the book of Daniel which
[02:45:32] is in the Persian period. Uh that's
[02:45:34] quite late. So, and even some ancient
[02:45:38] Jewish writers like Josephus who comes
[02:45:40] around at the end of the first century
[02:45:42] very beginning of the second century
[02:45:45] when he has his conversation in um in a
[02:45:49] writing of his uh where he's talking
[02:45:52] about scripture he specifically says
[02:45:55] that nothing was written before Moses.
[02:45:57] So he kind of disqualifies Enoch as
[02:46:01] being, you know, this is claiming to be
[02:46:02] written prior to there's no scripture
[02:46:04] that's written prior to that. So that's
[02:46:06] kind of his category category of of
[02:46:09] articulating that.
[02:46:11] >> Uh but I mean these things are you look
[02:46:15] at the ancient world and how they're
[02:46:17] trying to flesh things out. And
[02:46:20] though they're some in some ways very
[02:46:23] ambiguous, like scripture tells us what
[02:46:25] we need to know, not always what we want
[02:46:27] to know. But I don't think that that
[02:46:29] means that we cancel out any idea of a
[02:46:34] theory or a probability or a possibility
[02:46:37] of say, you know, what is a demon? I
[02:46:40] don't claim to totally know, but I think
[02:46:42] it's very interesting that the Jews
[02:46:45] themselves in the ancient world prior to
[02:46:47] and leading up to and during the time of
[02:46:49] Jesus, they're also discussing these
[02:46:52] things, wrestling with them and coming
[02:46:54] up with these ideas that we can read
[02:46:56] too.
[02:46:57] >> Interesting.
[02:46:57] >> And kind of like postulate on why did
[02:47:01] why did um well, how many Dead Sea
[02:47:04] Scrolls didn't make it how many of the
[02:47:05] scrolls did not make it into the Bible?
[02:47:08] So, uh, yeah. So, I mean, part of the
[02:47:11] trickiness, like I said before, is that
[02:47:12] the Dead Sea Scrolls are kind of an
[02:47:14] umbrella category.
[02:47:15] >> It's like saying library, right? Like
[02:47:18] there's a whole bunch there's a range of
[02:47:20] literature.
[02:47:21] >> So, by the time in and around Jesus, the
[02:47:26] Protestant, what we have in the
[02:47:28] Protestant Old Testament was, I would
[02:47:31] argue, established as the Hebrew
[02:47:33] scriptures. So modern orthodox Jews
[02:47:36] today, their Bible is the Tanakh, the
[02:47:39] Torah, the Naim, and the Ketvim, the
[02:47:40] law, the prophets, and the writings.
[02:47:42] That's the same number of books that are
[02:47:44] in a Protestant Old Testament. So there
[02:47:47] are other books that are also uh
[02:47:50] included in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like I
[02:47:52] said, some of them are apocalyptic. The
[02:47:55] war scroll is a really interesting one,
[02:47:57] which is, you know, another apocalypse.
[02:47:59] So, we have an apocalyptic book in our
[02:48:02] Bible, Revelation,
[02:48:04] >> right? But apocalypses weren't that
[02:48:07] uncommon in ancient Jewish writings. In
[02:48:10] fact, Enoch is in many ways an
[02:48:13] apocalyptic book. Um, but the War Scroll
[02:48:17] is an apocalyptic book. And uh so
[02:48:22] there's different categories that are
[02:48:26] um included within the Dead Sea Scrolls.
[02:48:29] But
[02:48:29] >> what do you mean different? I mean it
[02:48:31] sounds like way I'm hearing that is
[02:48:33] there's different apocalypses.
[02:48:35] >> Mhm. Is is that what you're saying?
[02:48:37] >> So uh apocalypse is just a category of
[02:48:39] literature. It's like saying biography
[02:48:41] or letter or so the one that ends up in
[02:48:45] the Bible is the book of revelation and
[02:48:47] that's tied to specifically the John
[02:48:51] who's you know traditionally associated
[02:48:53] with John uh the apostle of Jesus
[02:48:56] >> and so when we're talking about the
[02:48:58] canon of scripture what books are or
[02:49:01] aren't included in our Bible what the
[02:49:03] early church is doing first of all they
[02:49:05] have a direct connection in association
[02:49:07] with the early Jesus community so
[02:49:09] there's a chain of custody in that there
[02:49:12] are individuals who are disciples of the
[02:49:14] disciples of Jesus. So you have guys
[02:49:17] like so the dagger I gave you is named
[02:49:19] after Irenaeus. Erynaeus is part of a
[02:49:22] community where they're called the
[02:49:24] apostolic fathers where their own
[02:49:28] teachers are the apostles. So in one
[02:49:31] sense the earliest Jesus community has a
[02:49:34] direct line of communication with people
[02:49:37] who knew Jesus.
[02:49:38] >> Okay. And so when they're talking about,
[02:49:41] okay, you had the old covenant and there
[02:49:44] were books that were associated with the
[02:49:45] old covenant, right? God makes a
[02:49:47] covenant with Moses, you have the Torah,
[02:49:48] you have the law. God makes covenant
[02:49:51] with Israel, you have prophetic
[02:49:53] writings. And there was an understanding
[02:49:55] in ancient Judaism that covenant and
[02:49:58] writings were in intricately connected.
[02:50:01] So Jesus comes along. He establishes the
[02:50:04] new covenant.
[02:50:05] He establishes even like the signs of
[02:50:09] that in the last supper in the the
[02:50:13] eukarist to the Lord's table. And the
[02:50:16] apostles see themselves as kind of the
[02:50:19] arbiters of the new covenant. So the
[02:50:22] natural question for the earliest
[02:50:24] Christians who were Jews who believe in
[02:50:26] Jesus as the Messiah is okay new
[02:50:28] covenant where are the books cuz that
[02:50:32] understanding is is carried over. It's
[02:50:34] an ancient Jewish understanding. God
[02:50:36] makes a promise. He makes a covenant
[02:50:38] with the people and it's followed up by
[02:50:40] books.
[02:50:41] We have the new covenant. Where are the
[02:50:43] books? It's kind of the natural organic
[02:50:45] question that follows that. And so very
[02:50:48] very early on the four biographies of
[02:50:50] Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
[02:50:52] they are uh being read as scripture. Um
[02:50:57] Justin Martyr, this early Christian
[02:50:59] writer refers to them as the memoirs of
[02:51:01] the apostles. He says when Christians
[02:51:03] gather together early in the morning,
[02:51:04] they read the memoirs of the apostles
[02:51:06] and and the letters of Paul are very
[02:51:09] early collected together and even in one
[02:51:12] single document. So we in the late
[02:51:14] second early third century we have two
[02:51:16] collections of manuscripts uh when
[02:51:18] they're referred to as P46 and P45 and
[02:51:21] those are a grouping of the four-fold
[02:51:24] gospel cannon and acts and Paul's
[02:51:26] letters. So like I said before, most of
[02:51:29] these are circulating independently.
[02:51:31] >> Okay.
[02:51:32] >> As like you have a copy of Paul's letter
[02:51:35] to Romans. Um
[02:51:38] because once again it's super expensive,
[02:51:40] right? I mentioned Codex Vaticanis
[02:51:42] earlier. There's another one Codex
[02:51:44] Sanaticus uh which comes from the 4th
[02:51:46] century. It would have taken 360 sheep
[02:51:48] to make. So like no small uh commitment
[02:51:52] and effort and financial you know uh uh
[02:51:55] contribution.
[02:51:57] So you would usually just have them in
[02:51:58] single books but the four gospels we do
[02:52:01] find collections of them alto together
[02:52:03] and whenever we have conversations of
[02:52:06] what is scripture there's very little
[02:52:10] debate about the gospels and there's
[02:52:14] knowledge of other gospels the gospel of
[02:52:16] Thomas gospel of Peter gospel of
[02:52:18] philillip but they're always mentions in
[02:52:21] connection of saying they have no
[02:52:23] connection to the actual apostles we
[02:52:25] know what are the documents ments that
[02:52:26] have connection to the apostles. It's
[02:52:28] Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The
[02:52:30] Gospel of Thomas doesn't. It's it's it's
[02:52:32] a it's a forgery. It's false. Thomas was
[02:52:35] dead by the time it was written. So, we
[02:52:38] have early Christians talking about this
[02:52:40] stuff and
[02:52:43] in in going back to your um original
[02:52:45] question, like when we have these
[02:52:47] conversations on canon,
[02:52:49] the
[02:52:51] the Christians are wrestling. Some books
[02:52:55] are a shoein. The gospels we can tie
[02:52:58] directly to. Matthew, he was a disciple
[02:53:00] of Jesus. John, he was a disciple of
[02:53:02] Jesus. Luke is a traveling companion of
[02:53:04] Paul. And Mark is intricately and
[02:53:06] closely tied to Peter. So those are kind
[02:53:08] of a shoein, right? And then you have
[02:53:11] the letters of Paul. Those are kind of a
[02:53:13] shoein. But then you have questions
[02:53:14] about some of the others. And some of
[02:53:16] those questions have to do with the fact
[02:53:18] that you have other letters floating
[02:53:20] around with apostles names. So in our
[02:53:24] New Testaments, we have 1, second, and
[02:53:27] third John, right? The letters of John
[02:53:29] and first and second Peter. Those took a
[02:53:32] little bit longer for the dust to settle
[02:53:35] on to get into what we would consider as
[02:53:38] like a closed cannon. And it it was
[02:53:41] partly because the early Christians were
[02:53:43] looking and they were looking around and
[02:53:44] they were saying, "Okay, there are other
[02:53:46] groups writing documents and they're
[02:53:49] co-opting
[02:53:51] popular figures names like Peter and
[02:53:53] like John cuz those are very, you know,
[02:53:56] key individuals in the early Jesus
[02:53:58] community. So we need to do our due
[02:54:01] diligence because we have
[02:54:04] we have first and second Peter. We have
[02:54:07] this other writing called the Gospel of
[02:54:09] Peter. We have an Apocalypse of Peter.
[02:54:11] We have an Acts of Peter. Let's let's
[02:54:13] make sure we know. Let's make sure we're
[02:54:15] actually reading the book that is tied
[02:54:18] to the actual Peter. And so some of
[02:54:21] these books take a little bit longer to
[02:54:23] get full wide acceptance. And I think
[02:54:25] that's a good thing. And in terms of
[02:54:28] like books that are maybe found in the
[02:54:30] Dead Sea Scrolls that are like other um
[02:54:34] Jewish writings, uh the Jews had already
[02:54:36] fleshed a lot of that out in that they
[02:54:39] saw some of these books as very
[02:54:41] valuable, very um like key into the
[02:54:44] historical understandings of the Jewish
[02:54:47] nation, especially during the time of
[02:54:50] the Greek occupation and the Hasminian
[02:54:53] revolt and like these are important
[02:54:55] writings.
[02:54:56] Um, but the Jews didn't consider them
[02:54:59] scripture. And we can look at
[02:55:01] individuals like I mentioned before,
[02:55:02] Josephus, who talk about this and kind
[02:55:04] of lay out guidelines and say like
[02:55:07] here's we don't have an innumerable
[02:55:09] books of uh holy scripture like the
[02:55:12] Greeks do. We have a set number and here
[02:55:15] is how we understand that set number.
[02:55:19] And Paul says in the book of Romans that
[02:55:22] the Jews were entrusted with the oracles
[02:55:24] of God. And so part of the conversation
[02:55:28] of the Old Testament scripture is okay
[02:55:32] some people like Jerome in the 4th
[02:55:34] century who's responsible for putting
[02:55:36] together the Latin Vulgate which was the
[02:55:39] Latin copy of the Bible that was the
[02:55:41] Bible of the church for a thousand
[02:55:42] years.
[02:55:42] >> Okay.
[02:55:44] >> He goes back and he's a he's a very
[02:55:47] competent linguist. So he knows Greek
[02:55:48] and Hebrew and he's going back and he's
[02:55:50] talking with rabbis and he's saying,
[02:55:51] "Okay, well what do you consider
[02:55:52] scripture? What are these
[02:55:53] conversations?" Um
[02:55:55] and uh there's kind of a disagreement
[02:55:57] between him and Augustine about some Old
[02:55:59] Testament books, but and so there are
[02:56:02] all these conversations happening, but
[02:56:05] ultimately the dust does settle and
[02:56:08] there is an established core of books
[02:56:12] and that's the 66. the 66 that's in this
[02:56:15] Bible are the established core and
[02:56:18] there's debate about some others even
[02:56:20] leading up to the reformation which is
[02:56:22] why Luther says you know let's not worry
[02:56:26] about some of these other books that
[02:56:28] there's continual debate for that you
[02:56:30] know even some popes are not are saying
[02:56:32] that's not scripture um let's let's
[02:56:35] stick to the ones that we know the Jews
[02:56:38] themselves considered scripture and
[02:56:40] that's the central core and that's what
[02:56:43] we will hold to as the word of God. But
[02:56:46] all that to say, it's the Dead Sea
[02:56:49] Scrolls that kind of elucidate some of
[02:56:51] our understandings of that in looking
[02:56:53] at, okay, what were some of these groups
[02:56:56] reading and maybe how were they treating
[02:56:58] these books in the way that they were
[02:56:59] copying them? That sheds light on some
[02:57:02] of these conversations.
[02:57:03] >> Are the are the other books that aren't
[02:57:04] in the Bible, are they published
[02:57:06] somewhere? Can you get them?
[02:57:07] >> Oh, yeah. I mean, a Roman Catholic Bible
[02:57:09] will have what's called the
[02:57:10] Duderoconical Booksh. Mhm.
[02:57:12] >> So dudero canon means second canon. Um
[02:57:15] so to give the you know the Roman
[02:57:18] Catholic Church their due they would say
[02:57:19] second in reception not second in
[02:57:22] authority. So they were officially
[02:57:25] pronounced as part of the official
[02:57:26] cannon at the council of Trent in the
[02:57:30] after the reformation. There was a
[02:57:31] counterreformation after the protestant
[02:57:33] reformation and that's when those books
[02:57:35] were officially designated as these are
[02:57:37] included in scripture. So you can get um
[02:57:40] Protestants typically typically refer to
[02:57:42] it as the apocrypha
[02:57:44] uh which is just a designation that goes
[02:57:46] back to the ancient church for books
[02:57:48] that are not canonical. They're
[02:57:50] canonical or apocryphal. Doesn't mean
[02:57:53] all apocryphal books are heretical.
[02:57:55] They're not part of scripture. Um but
[02:57:58] you can read them. Yeah. First and
[02:57:59] first, second, and third Mcabes. Um
[02:58:02] Tobit, Judith, you know, the bell and
[02:58:05] the dragon. Uh there's an extra chapter
[02:58:08] of the Psalms. These are I think good,
[02:58:11] useful books to read. I would encourage
[02:58:13] everybody to read them because I do
[02:58:15] think that they they shed light on our
[02:58:18] understanding of ancient Jewish culture.
[02:58:21] And something like the Mcabes
[02:58:24] tell us about the story of Hanukkah
[02:58:29] where uh you had the Greeks, they go in
[02:58:32] and they take over Jerusalem and uh the
[02:58:36] the Greek emperor goes in and he he
[02:58:39] desecrates the temple by sacrificing a
[02:58:41] pig on the altar of God to Zeus. So like
[02:58:44] bad news bears all over the place,
[02:58:46] right? Mhm.
[02:58:47] >> And uh then um Judas Makabeas uh Judas
[02:58:51] the Hammer, he goes in and he he he
[02:58:55] defeats them and he rededicates the
[02:58:58] temple to God. And that's Hanukkah. This
[02:59:01] is this story that happens prior to the
[02:59:03] time of Jesus. And then you get to Jesus
[02:59:06] and in the Gospel of John, it talks
[02:59:08] about Jesus going to Jerusalem to the
[02:59:10] temple for the feast of dedication.
[02:59:11] That's Hanukkah. So something like the
[02:59:14] Mcabes can they can actually shed a lot
[02:59:17] of light on what's going on even in how
[02:59:21] we understand what Jesus is doing in his
[02:59:24] own day. Like why do Jews today
[02:59:25] celebrate Hanukkah? Well, it's about
[02:59:27] this historical event that took place
[02:59:29] prior to Jesus. And we read about that
[02:59:31] in these very valuable books, these
[02:59:34] these historical books. But the the the
[02:59:37] differentiation is
[02:59:39] are these considered scripture? And as a
[02:59:42] Protestant, I would say no. And I would
[02:59:44] say that they're good historical reasons
[02:59:45] to believe that going through all of the
[02:59:47] conversations of the the last 2,000
[02:59:51] years. Um but I think people should read
[02:59:53] them whether they think that they're
[02:59:54] scriptural or not.
[02:59:56] >> What's in the what do you call the war
[02:59:58] scroll?
[02:59:59] >> Yeah, the war scroll.
[03:00:00] >> What's that about?
[03:00:00] >> So that's uh that's the battle. So, it's
[03:00:02] either called the war scroll or the
[03:00:04] battle of the sons of light versus the
[03:00:05] sons of darkness. And it's this big
[03:00:08] cosmic battle of uh kind of the the the
[03:00:13] Essenes, the Kuman community seeing
[03:00:15] themselves as the ones that are holding
[03:00:17] down the fort for the people of God. Um
[03:00:20] so the the high priest under David in
[03:00:24] the Old Testament was a guy named Zodok.
[03:00:26] So, uh, there's a, uh, they see
[03:00:29] themselves as kind of successors of the
[03:00:31] high priest under David, and they see
[03:00:35] themselves as the ones who are undefiled
[03:00:38] from all of the corruption that they see
[03:00:40] going on in Jerusalem. So, they there's
[03:00:42] this they write this document that is
[03:00:45] this cosmic battle between
[03:00:49] angels and demons and all these things.
[03:00:51] And really it's a it's a representation
[03:00:55] of what they see as you know the
[03:00:58] marching orders of how they need to be
[03:01:01] as holy as possible and that there's a
[03:01:04] cosmic battle that's raging in in the
[03:01:07] background in the supernatural realm uh
[03:01:10] that is going to influence how one day
[03:01:14] all things are going to be made right.
[03:01:15] God's going to win and they're going to
[03:01:18] be the ones that are going to be kind of
[03:01:20] the the way that this comes into
[03:01:22] fruition.
[03:01:24] Wow. Wow. You know, this morning uh at
[03:01:27] breakfast we were talking about um a lot
[03:01:30] of the people that have studied this
[03:01:31] have never been to the location where
[03:01:33] they were found.
[03:01:33] >> Mhm.
[03:01:34] >> Why do you think that's important?
[03:01:36] >> I think to be there.
[03:01:37] >> Yeah. I think it connects us to the
[03:01:40] times and places where these things
[03:01:44] happened. And so, so one of the the
[03:01:47] things that we with the organization uh
[03:01:49] that I have the the pleasure and
[03:01:52] opportunity to be the vice president of
[03:01:54] Apologetics Canada, we have this video
[03:01:56] series, Can I Trust the Bible? And what
[03:01:58] we want to do is we want to tell some of
[03:02:00] those stories in the places where they
[03:02:03] happen to try to make that kind of
[03:02:05] connection. So we go to Nagamadi where
[03:02:08] the Nagamadi library was discovered in
[03:02:10] the desert in Egypt where the Gospel of
[03:02:12] Thomas and the Gospel of Philip were
[03:02:14] included and I we went to the Nagamadi
[03:02:17] desert. I stand in an approximate
[03:02:20] location of where it could have been
[03:02:21] potentially found. And I tell the story
[03:02:24] of this Bedawin shepherd who is
[03:02:27] wandering through the desert. He's
[03:02:29] digging for what's arguably fertilizer
[03:02:31] and he finds this jar and in it are
[03:02:34] these books. And I think, you know, for
[03:02:38] me personally, there's something really
[03:02:40] amazing about kind of just standing and
[03:02:43] visualizing
[03:02:45] where this happened and then being able
[03:02:47] to tell that story in the location. So
[03:02:50] the one we recently did, we were just in
[03:02:52] Turkey, my colleague Gandhi and I, and
[03:02:55] we were filming in Isnik, which is the
[03:02:58] modern site of the ancient city of Nika.
[03:03:01] Because the council of Nika often
[03:03:03] becomes this uh kind of uh uh catchall
[03:03:08] for conspiracy theories about whether
[03:03:10] that's the books of the Bible or the
[03:03:12] divinity of Christ. That's kind of the
[03:03:14] Da Vinci Codeesque argument is that all
[03:03:16] of these things get pinned on
[03:03:18] Constantine and the Council of Nika. So,
[03:03:20] we went to Nika and the the Basilica,
[03:03:23] the church where they think it happened
[03:03:26] was discovered recently. It's in a lake.
[03:03:29] So, the there's been a drought. The
[03:03:31] lake's been receding over time. And when
[03:03:33] the lake receded, it actually revealed
[03:03:35] the footprint of this ancient church.
[03:03:39] >> No way.
[03:03:40] >> Yeah. It's really cool.
[03:03:41] >> Where is this? This is in Isnik, Turkey.
[03:03:43] >> Is this where you you were just there?
[03:03:45] >> Yeah. So, we my colleague Andy and I,
[03:03:47] weighed out into the lake in front of
[03:03:49] the ruins. You can see them. We fly a
[03:03:52] drone over top and you can see the
[03:03:53] ruins. It's like this this footprint of
[03:03:55] a church. Um, really amazing stuff. And
[03:03:58] we talk about
[03:03:59] >> Did you dive it?
[03:04:00] >> No. So, at this point when it was
[03:04:02] discovered, you actually had to dive it.
[03:04:03] And we planned when we like mapped this
[03:04:05] out, we were going to dive it. Um my my
[03:04:08] colleague Andy is actually a pretty
[03:04:10] experienced uh uh scuba diver and so
[03:04:12] that was our intention but the lake has
[03:04:15] receded so much that it's basically on
[03:04:17] dry land at this point.
[03:04:18] >> No kidding.
[03:04:19] >> So we we we were like not that far off
[03:04:24] the shore and uh uh like the waves are
[03:04:26] lapping up on the top of of the ruins.
[03:04:29] >> Wow. But um we went there to tell the
[03:04:33] story cuz it in 2025 it was 1,700 years
[03:04:37] cuz it was 3:25 is when the council of
[03:04:39] Nika happened. And so we went and we're
[03:04:42] like we don't we don't just want to
[03:04:44] clear up the details of what didn't and
[03:04:46] did happen to the council of Nika. We
[03:04:48] want to do it in Na. We want to do it in
[03:04:51] front of the the ruins of the the sunken
[03:04:53] basilica. And I think that just
[03:04:56] that I hope what that does for the
[03:04:59] viewer is it connects them in a more
[03:05:02] tangible way that these aren't just
[03:05:05] facts and these aren't just kind of data
[03:05:08] points. This is real history and when we
[03:05:12] can connect with the real history and
[03:05:14] talk about what actually happened
[03:05:17] that that connects us to something
[03:05:19] bigger than just me as a talking head.
[03:05:23] Um, and I think it just like those
[03:05:25] opportunities are
[03:05:26] >> man, that is amazing.
[03:05:28] >> Amazing.
[03:05:31] >> All right, Wes, we're winding down the
[03:05:32] interview.
[03:05:34] I want to ask,
[03:05:38] what is the most compelling
[03:05:40] piece of evidence for you
[03:05:43] >> that proves J that proves Jesus's
[03:05:46] existence? I'm always curious every, you
[03:05:49] know.
[03:05:50] >> Yeah. You know, I think I don't think
[03:05:52] it's necessarily one thing. What I'm
[03:05:56] always blown away with for the
[03:06:00] multivalent case of the Christian
[03:06:02] worldview is that when you look at the
[03:06:05] claims of Christianity and ultimately
[03:06:08] like them centering on who Jesus is,
[03:06:13] there are so many
[03:06:17] crossover interlocking
[03:06:20] areas of inquiry
[03:06:23] and evidence. It's, you know, and I I
[03:06:26] went to university because I had full
[03:06:28] intention of going into the police
[03:06:29] force.
[03:06:30] >> What?
[03:06:30] >> Yeah. I wanted to be I wanted to be a
[03:06:32] police.
[03:06:32] >> Are you serious?
[03:06:33] >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to be a
[03:06:34] police detective. God had other plans
[03:06:35] and I kind of went off. Now, unbeknownst
[03:06:37] to me, historioggraphy and detective
[03:06:39] work are not all that
[03:06:40] >> I was just going to say that. But in
[03:06:45] police work, especially with something
[03:06:47] like uh like an investigation on a
[03:06:50] murder, say, you want a number of lines
[03:06:54] of evidence that vary on how good or not
[03:06:58] good they are, right? Because it makes a
[03:06:59] cumulative case. Some evidence is a lot
[03:07:02] better than other evidence, but when you
[03:07:03] put it all together, it makes that
[03:07:05] cumulative case to point to the evidence
[03:07:08] of a specific thing happening. And this
[03:07:10] is where I think people people often
[03:07:12] miss the boat in that we don't just
[03:07:15] believe the God of the Bible
[03:07:16] arbitrarily. It's not like I picked
[03:07:19] Yahweh but I could have picked Zeus. You
[03:07:22] know, I believe that there's evidence
[03:07:23] that ultimately points to
[03:07:26] the truthfulness of the Christian
[03:07:28] worldview. So when you have someone like
[03:07:30] Ricker Jerves who says you there are
[03:07:33] 30,000 religions out there, you really
[03:07:35] think yours is true? In my mind
[03:07:37] sometimes I think that's like standing
[03:07:40] in front of a judge and saying there are
[03:07:43] 30,000 people in this town. You really
[03:07:45] think this guy's the guy who did it?
[03:07:47] Well, it depends what the evidence is,
[03:07:49] right? It depends whether the evidence
[03:07:50] is pointing in the direction of that
[03:07:52] person being the culprit. And so it's
[03:07:54] not just arbitrary. We didn't just pick
[03:07:56] a random person and put them on trial.
[03:07:59] There's evidence that actually points to
[03:08:01] whether that person is guilty or not.
[03:08:04] And actually there could be good
[03:08:05] evidence and bad evidence and the judge
[03:08:07] could throw out some evidence as being
[03:08:08] inconsequential or weak, but it's all of
[03:08:11] that evidence together. And so when I'm
[03:08:14] looking at the historical evidence and
[03:08:16] I'm looking at something like whether
[03:08:17] that's the transmission history of the
[03:08:19] the manuscripts that I see, you know, we
[03:08:22] can look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and we
[03:08:23] can see their fidelity to a thousand
[03:08:25] years later and that being
[03:08:29] so close that it's staggering sometimes
[03:08:33] or just you know uh a copy. I have some
[03:08:38] like high-grade photocopies, faximiles
[03:08:40] of manuscripts that I I do my academic
[03:08:42] work on and I have a couple of like late
[03:08:44] second early third century copies of the
[03:08:46] gospels and I'm looking at and I'm I'm
[03:08:49] looking at it. I'm reading the Greek and
[03:08:51] when I'm site translating it and I look
[03:08:54] at my English Bible I'm like guess what
[03:08:57] I'm translating like I could I might as
[03:08:59] well just open this up.
[03:09:00] >> Wow.
[03:09:01] >> Cuz the connect the connectivity is just
[03:09:04] there. Now, that's not to say there
[03:09:05] aren't like differences in spelling,
[03:09:07] word order, or variances. Those do
[03:09:09] exist, but it's just like the fidelity
[03:09:12] is just so
[03:09:14] mind-blowing to me personally. And then
[03:09:16] you look at the internal evidence and
[03:09:18] you look at the fact that the names, the
[03:09:21] places, the facts, the information all
[03:09:24] tie it to the first century in Galilee
[03:09:29] of people who either they were there
[03:09:31] themselves and they're communicating
[03:09:32] this or like the gospel author Luke says
[03:09:36] that he's interviewing eyewitnesses. He
[03:09:38] says that at the beginning of his
[03:09:40] gospel. He's very purposeful. you know,
[03:09:41] I'm not I wasn't there, but I'm writing
[03:09:45] the these things down. I'm making an
[03:09:46] orderly account. I'm interviewing
[03:09:47] eyewitnesses so that you may know the
[03:09:49] things you are taught. And so you look
[03:09:53] at these levels of the things that we're
[03:09:55] trying to highlight with the Can I trust
[03:09:57] the Bible series, the internal evidence
[03:09:59] and with the names, the places, the
[03:10:01] people, and you you see that and you go,
[03:10:05] "Wow, this this is testifying to it
[03:10:07] being written in the place is claiming
[03:10:09] to be written, in the time frame it's
[03:10:11] claiming to be written." And when we use
[03:10:13] that exact same methodology and criteria
[03:10:15] for something like the Gospel of Judas,
[03:10:18] guess what? It reveals that the names,
[03:10:21] the places, the details outed as being
[03:10:23] written in 3rd century Egypt. And so
[03:10:26] you're like, so
[03:10:30] when you ask, well, what is the piece of
[03:10:31] evidence? I think I think it's a
[03:10:34] multi-valent
[03:10:36] web
[03:10:38] that all conjoins at the truthful claim
[03:10:42] of all of these things are pointing to
[03:10:44] this guy, Jesus. Oh, good. They're all
[03:10:46] pointing all of there's prophecies in
[03:10:49] the Old Testament. There's an
[03:10:51] expectation. This guy Jesus, he comes on
[03:10:53] the scene. He fulfills in some instances
[03:10:58] very specific prophecies. He predicts
[03:10:59] his own death and resurrection and then
[03:11:01] he does it. And as a friend of mine
[03:11:04] likes to say, people who rise from the
[03:11:05] dead have more credibility and authority
[03:11:07] than people who don't rise from the
[03:11:09] dead.
[03:11:10] >> Right? And so, so I find it so
[03:11:13] fascinating that I'm I'm a trained
[03:11:15] historian, so I look at the historical
[03:11:16] data, but when I talk to my my
[03:11:18] colleagues and friends who are
[03:11:19] scientists, who are philosophers, who
[03:11:21] are sociologists, and they also have all
[03:11:24] of these different kind of lines of
[03:11:26] argumentation, some of which, you know,
[03:11:28] I don't like this one, I don't like that
[03:11:30] one, but it's the cumulative case that
[03:11:33] points to the truthfulness. So you could
[03:11:35] eliminate one and I don't think it would
[03:11:38] it wouldn't collapse my worldview cuz I
[03:11:41] genuinely believe that at this point
[03:11:44] with my inquiry and investigation
[03:11:47] like I said before I think it's
[03:11:49] intellectually robust but it's also
[03:11:52] existentially satisfying. It's changed
[03:11:54] my life. It's changed the way that I
[03:11:56] think.
[03:11:57] >> You know uh CS Lewis who I quoted before
[03:11:59] he said you know I believe in Jesus like
[03:12:01] I believe in the sun. Not that I see it,
[03:12:03] but that by it I see everything else.
[03:12:06] And so it's that's why we call it a
[03:12:08] world view, right? It's how we view the
[03:12:11] world around us. And when we were
[03:12:15] talking before about, you know, those
[03:12:16] those times where we struggle, those
[03:12:19] those seasons of the dark nights of the
[03:12:21] soul,
[03:12:23] it's not that those aren't tangible, but
[03:12:26] it's when I'm really struggling, I go
[03:12:28] back to listen, I have something that
[03:12:32] points to truthfulness.
[03:12:34] And despite
[03:12:36] my very subjective
[03:12:39] feelings,
[03:12:40] despite what I might be struggling with
[03:12:43] right now, I I genuinely believe this is
[03:12:46] true. And the truthfulness of that
[03:12:49] changes the way that I live for the
[03:12:51] better. that has echoes into not just
[03:12:54] this life which should be lived well
[03:12:57] which should be lived with integrity but
[03:13:00] after
[03:13:02] my mortal coil is given up and I go into
[03:13:06] eternity uh that I
[03:13:10] more questions will be answered in a way
[03:13:12] that I never could have understood
[03:13:13] before.
[03:13:15] >> I'm actually I'm curious about this too.
[03:13:17] What what has strengthened your faith
[03:13:19] more? Or is it through your research or
[03:13:20] is through your personal experiences?
[03:13:22] When I say personal experiences, I mean
[03:13:26] the miracle that you're not a par
[03:13:28] paralyzed from the waist down now. Yeah.
[03:13:31] Stuff like that.
[03:13:32] >> I I'm not sure it's an either or. I
[03:13:33] think it's a both and. Um I don't think,
[03:13:37] you know,
[03:13:40] faith isn't an intellectual endeavor.
[03:13:44] I don't think we're going to stand
[03:13:46] before God and he's going to give us a
[03:13:48] theological test because if he did I'd
[03:13:51] fail,
[03:13:52] >> right? I think we'd all fail. Um it's
[03:13:55] it's it goes beyond that. You know, Paul
[03:13:58] I I read his is in Ephesians chapter 2
[03:14:00] earlier. He says, you know, faith is a
[03:14:02] gift. It's a gift. You're saved by faith
[03:14:05] through grace. And there's something
[03:14:08] about that which has always been very
[03:14:09] tangible for me, especially in my field
[03:14:11] where there are plenty of non-believing
[03:14:14] atheist, agnostic, biblical scholars who
[03:14:17] know all sorts of things that um are
[03:14:21] even like like go beyond even my level
[03:14:23] of understanding. And that's been a
[03:14:26] testimony to me that you can't you can't
[03:14:30] intellectualize yourself into the
[03:14:31] kingdom of God. It's not about that.
[03:14:33] It's not about knowing the most. There
[03:14:36] is something that is genuinely goes
[03:14:37] beyond that's transcendent beyond just
[03:14:40] the simple understanding right James
[03:14:43] even says you believe that God is one
[03:14:46] says great even the demons believe that
[03:14:49] and they shudder at that fact it's not
[03:14:52] about you know who knows God the best
[03:14:55] >> that's probably Satan
[03:14:57] >> but what what is different about the
[03:15:02] understanding that goes beyond I think
[03:15:04] the factual knowledge sits as kind of
[03:15:06] the confidence building of I I can have
[03:15:09] hope because I truly believe that this
[03:15:11] is something that is true with a capital
[03:15:12] T.
[03:15:14] But beyond that, I've actually seen
[03:15:16] Jesus changed my life. I've seen Jesus
[03:15:19] take my heart of stone and give me a
[03:15:20] heart of flesh and remove desires that I
[03:15:23] had before to do things that were wrong.
[03:15:27] >> You had a heart of stone.
[03:15:29] >> Yeah, we all have hearts of stone.
[03:15:31] >> Can't see it.
[03:15:32] >> We all have hearts of stone. And apart
[03:15:33] from the saving work of the spirit
[03:15:35] speaking into our life, you know, we are
[03:15:37] going to choose death 100% of the time.
[03:15:40] Me, I, Wes,
[03:15:42] >> you know, without
[03:15:44] God working in me, I am going to fight
[03:15:48] him with everything I have because I
[03:15:51] don't know what's good for me. And so, I
[03:15:54] mean, that's why it's such the
[03:15:56] invitation that Christ extends is so
[03:15:59] amazing because he doesn't need to do
[03:16:01] that. He doesn't need to save us. Like I
[03:16:04] said before, he's never He's not better
[03:16:06] or worse off if I choose to follow,
[03:16:08] choose to worship. He's still God. He's
[03:16:11] still ruling and reigning. He's still
[03:16:13] the author of creation and the creator
[03:16:15] of the universe. And yet, not only does
[03:16:18] he invite me into that, but he himself
[03:16:22] steps into the conversation and he
[03:16:25] becomes a human being. come as a baby,
[03:16:28] vulnerable and and and
[03:16:32] you know crying in a manger, a feeding
[03:16:34] trough in Israel and in Bethlehem.
[03:16:39] And how does God show he he can't he
[03:16:43] can't become any greater, right? So he
[03:16:46] steps down from the highest highs into
[03:16:49] the lowest lows to show how great he
[03:16:52] truly can be. And that like I said
[03:16:56] before, if God is love and love is the
[03:16:58] greatest ethic and the greatest example
[03:17:00] of that greatest ethic is
[03:17:02] self-sacrifice, then the God of the
[03:17:04] Bible has truly in himself exemplified
[03:17:09] what love embodies and it's in Jesus
[03:17:12] Christ.
[03:17:15] Wow.
[03:17:17] Do you think God speaks to you? I think
[03:17:19] God speaks to me in so far as
[03:17:24] he moves me. I don't think I've never
[03:17:27] heard an audible, you know, thus sayaith
[03:17:30] the Lord statement. Mhm.
[03:17:32] >> But I think the ways that God
[03:17:34] communicates with us in in leading us um
[03:17:40] I think through our conscience
[03:17:43] in in how he directs us in the ways that
[03:17:47] certain things come together I think are
[03:17:50] tangible that are not necessarily
[03:17:54] uh like a a prophetic thus sayeth the
[03:17:58] Lord statement. the the author of
[03:17:59] Hebrews, who I mentioned before, opens
[03:18:01] his book by saying, "God, having spoken
[03:18:03] long ago to the fathers and the prophets
[03:18:04] in many portions and in many ways in
[03:18:07] these last days, spoke to us in his son,
[03:18:11] whom he appointed heir of all things,
[03:18:13] through whom he also made the worlds,
[03:18:16] who is the radiance of his glory and the
[03:18:18] exact representation of his nature, and
[03:18:20] upholds all things by the word of his
[03:18:23] power, who having accomplished cleansing
[03:18:25] of sins, sat down at the right hand of
[03:18:27] the majesty on I and I think, you know,
[03:18:29] there's something beautiful about God
[03:18:32] presenting us with his word that's
[03:18:36] tangible that we can look at and can
[03:18:38] influence us. And I think in the moments
[03:18:41] where I've heard God's voice speak to me
[03:18:44] most is in the quiet moments of
[03:18:48] reflection of reading scripture and
[03:18:50] seeing just the profound truths through
[03:18:55] all 66 books woven together that speak
[03:18:59] to things that I didn't even know I
[03:19:02] needed to know about who I am, about the
[03:19:06] people around me, about who God is, and
[03:19:09] how that just so drastically and and
[03:19:13] impactfully
[03:19:14] changes the way that I understand the
[03:19:16] world.
[03:19:18] >> Man, I love that.
[03:19:20] >> Would you uh would you mind leading us
[03:19:23] in prayer?
[03:19:24] >> Yeah, I'd love to.
[03:19:25] >> And this Thank you, Lord.
[03:19:28] >> Honor to pray with you.
[03:19:30] >> I I thank you for this time, Lord. I
[03:19:32] thank you for Sean and I thank you for
[03:19:35] just the giftings and opportunities that
[03:19:37] you have given him.
[03:19:39] that you have blessed him with. And
[03:19:42] Lord, I pray that you would continue to
[03:19:44] lead him in your understanding for your
[03:19:47] glory.
[03:19:49] Lord, would you shape us into the image
[03:19:52] of your son Jesus Christ each and every
[03:19:54] day by the power of your word and your
[03:19:58] spirit who leads? Lord, that your word
[03:20:00] would be our rule and your spirit our
[03:20:02] teacher and your greater glory our
[03:20:05] supreme concern for the growth of your
[03:20:07] kingdom in the name of the one who has
[03:20:09] saved us Jesus Christ. Amen.
[03:20:11] >> Amen.
[03:20:13] >> Wes woke up very restless this morning
[03:20:17] and um you put me at ease.
[03:20:19] >> Oh, I appreciate that.
[03:20:20] >> Thank you.
[03:20:21] >> Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure.
[03:20:23] >> It has been. I I'm
[03:20:26] so glad we met.
[03:20:28] >> Yeah.
[03:20:29] God bless.
[03:20:44] No matter where you're watching the
[03:20:45] Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get
[03:20:48] anything out of this at all, anything,
[03:20:51] please like, comment, and subscribe. And
[03:20:55] most importantly, share this everywhere
[03:20:59] you possibly can. And if you're feeling
[03:21:02] extra generous, head to Apple Podcast
[03:21:05] and Spotify and leave us a
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