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What's up? Welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. Man,
breakfast this morning we realized it's been almost one year exactly since we've made contact
and we're trying to get you. So long time coming. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad I came to fruition.
Me too. Me too. But so I want to give I want to start you off with an introduction here. Just
Wes Huff. Born in molten Pakistan you spent part of your childhood in the Middle East surrounded
by Islam and other world views and overcame a rare condition as a kid that left you temporarily
paralyzed without medical explanation. I call that a miracle. Now you're the vice president
of Apologetics Canada where you equip people with answers to tough questions about scripture,
history and faith. A Canadian Christian apologist reformed Baptist theologian in one of the
sharpest voices defending historical reliability of the Bible and our Christian faith.
You approach skeptics with clarity, grace and rock solid evidence making the case that the
Bible isn't just a book of faith. It's the most scrutinized and preserved text in human history.
A father to four husband to Melissa and most importantly your Christian. Thanks for being here.
So everybody that comes on the show gets a gift. Okay. So we got you a couple. Okay. First one
vigilance league gummy bears. Awesome. Made in the USA. It's just candy. They're legal in all
50 states and legal in Canada. I'm pretty sure. So it's just candy. Amazing. And then
I got some buddies over at SIG. One of them happens to be the VP of marketing.
He's named Jason. Okay. And I told him you were coming on. He got all excited. Oh man.
So with that, you might like this. We're not sure how you're going to get that back to Canada,
but we'll help you figure it out. Oh my goodness. Okay. Explain to me what I'm looking at.
All right. You're looking at a six hour P365 Legion. Okay. So that is a carry. That's an
every day carry gun. Okay. It takes 17 rounds in the magazine plus one in the pipe for 18. That's
their new optics line. They put those little slits in the in the front to help with recoil
management. I'm not sure what's legal and what's illegal in Canada. So we're going to figure that
out and we're going to get you. Yeah. We might need to get creative, but it's close to that as we
can. Man, that's awesome. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Hey, you're welcome. Hey, shooter.
I have shot. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So that's amazing. I really appreciate that. My pleasure. Yeah.
I got a couple things for you. Oh, really? Yeah. So we're going to we're going to be trading. So
the first one I want to give you is so my friends over at Dawson Blades, which is a forge that I
hooked up with. Well, not that long ago. We collaborated on making a series of historically
accurate with a modern twist. Blades named after early Christians who were influential individuals
in the faith. So this is a recreation of a Roman Pugio dagger that we're calling the Irenais.
And so he was he was an early church father, a very prominent individual who wrote a series of
writings called against heresies, wrote against guys like the no sticks and why they they were off
base. And so this is the second in our series. We have one out called the Augustine. This just
launched this month. And that is a size accurate historical modern kind of twist on what a Roman
centurion would have carried in the first century. This is awesome. Wow. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.
And I also have for you beautiful a page from a 1576 Geneva Bible. So that's what you're 1576.
So the the first Bible that was brought over to the United States by the pilgrim was the Geneva
Bible. Most people think it's the King James Bible. So King James Bibles were brought over. But
the Geneva Bible was actually the Bible of the Puritans. Because they considered the King James
a state developed Bible. Really? So when they came over, they brought Geneva Bibles. And so that
that's one of the the first they started printing. I believe in 1560. And then that's the 1576
one, which was their kind of second round. Man, this is thank you. Yeah. Of course.
getting framed and put in here. Put in the studio. Thank this is wow. This leaf is guaranteed
to be an original from from a 1576 Geneva Bible printed in London by Christopher Barker.
The first year Geneva Bibles were printed in England was 1576. That's amazing. There you
thank you. All right, Wes. So we're going to do a little bit of a life story talk a lot about
a lot of the research you've done. And but first I woke up in in a weird mood today and had a
had an interesting conversation with my wife this morning. And so
last last week was a rough week of interviews. We had an interview about all of the
Epstein stuff going on and you know politics right now. And that's always a dark
dark place to be. And then the another interview that we had last week was Elizabeth Phillips
whose brother was molested in a camp cannicook, one of the biggest Christian camps in the world.
And after she dug in, allegedly there's been thousands of kids abused. And I will go I just
whenever I do these uncover some this kind of stuff that's going on with kids Epstein
that camp. I mean, we've done a lot of them. It just it it it um it really throws me into a thing
you know that um why is this happening. And it just man it just it like reopens all the questions
that I used to have before I really came to Christ about three years ago. And you know and
I don't even know how to organize all my thoughts. I thought I had them all organized before we
started this. But I don't but it basically where the conversation ended is what what is what you know
if what is the point of living like a Christian. If you know the the common thing that I find in
Christian is really all you have to do is believe to go to heaven. And so you know
I grew up Catholic joined the civil teams pretty much lost my faith for about 14 and 50 maybe
20 years. And then came back about three years ago out of a very profound experience in Sedona.
But you know and so through my journey you know I've been talking to people like you and Lee
Strobel and John Burke and and and priests and um Father Rehill that lives down in clump just
just 45 minutes away. And and I'm I'm learning from all of you guys a tremendous amount. But
you know I'll bring up John Burke for example John is researched I think around 1500 near death
experiences all throughout the world different religions different countries different
ethnicities different everything and what he does is he finds all the commonalities of these
near death experiences and relates them all to Christ. Now in his studies sometimes he talks about
people go to hell and they'll have a hellish near death experience where they were they where
they die on the operating table or or wherever and then they wind up and hell and Jesus is there
basically saying you know do you accept me as Lord Saviour yes boom out of hell and to heaven you know
in in those a lot more upset this morning so it would float a lot better but kind of the point
being is it's it's hard to live as a Christian it's hard to do the right thing it's hard to admit
you're wrong it's hard to say I'm sorry it's hard to not lie cheat steal screw people over to
get what you want it would probably be a lot easier to get what you want get to your goals in
if you didn't live as a Christian and so you know kind of my point here is is if you can go
through life a shit bag not being a Christian lie cheat steal kill adultery wouldn't break every one
of the ten commandments all of the time and then you die and you are in hell but you still have
that one last chance it says hey do you accept me as Lord and Savior yes then what what is the point
of playing it out every day and is a Christian yeah I mean I think there's probably two
components to that question one is a very you know I think honest assessment of what's typically
called the problem of evil and I think that totally makes sense and I think if you don't feel
those things you're probably not living your life in the real world in that we see that this world
is beautiful yet it's profoundly broken and that's that that's the testimony of scripture
ultimately is that God created the world to be good but something took place we know deep down
that the world is not meant to be like this people aren't meant to die prematurely
be children aren't meant to be abused people aren't meant to get cancer and we know that there's
something wrong and there's there's this this you know got feeling that we get and ultimately I
think it's Jesus who puts that gut feeling there I think the fact that we understand that evil
is something speaks to the fact that there is an objective evil to be outbalanced by an objective
good because in one sense there's this understanding that if you subjectivise evil then we can say we
don't like those things that that they they really you know shouldn't happen but to say that that
we need to stop them that these are objectively evil is actually admitting that there's some sort
of moral law and a moral law needs a moral law giver and so ultimately I talked a lot of people
who almost assume that taking God out of the picture solves the problem I think it actually makes
it more complicated it makes it more complicated because now you're you've removed the objective
standard by which to actually say something is truly objectively evil and there's there's
something that's unique about the Christian worldview in the question of pain and suffering and
evil in that the God of the Bible describes himself there's this really great instance in Exodus
where Moses he's up on Mount Sinai and he says you know I I want to see you God but God says you
know I'm too great I'm going to put you in the cleft of a rock I'm going to pass by and you're
just going to kind of see a snippet of me by God describes himself as a God who is as this
Exodus 346 he's compassionate he's gracious he's merciful and he's over abouting instead fast
love and kindness and there are different iterations of that particular description of who God is
throughout the Bible throughout the Psalms or the prophets in fact if you read the book of Jonah
it's actually Jonah's beef with God he doesn't want to go to Nineveh and preach repentance and at the
very end he says I didn't want to come here because I hate them and invites and I knew that you
are a God who is compassionate that you're over abouting instead fast love and kindness and that
you're true to your word and if they repented you would forgive them I didn't want that to happen
right his beef is that actually God is too good but I think what's interesting about all of the
common denominators within that sort of description of who God is despite the differences
is that it all includes some version of what we would translate as the English word compassion
and compassion in English comes from two Latin words calm meaning with and passion meaning
suffering and I think one of the things that's unique about the Christian worldview is that the
God of the Bible actually steps off his throne in eternity and into humanity and experiences
brokenness he experiences abandonment he experiences pain and suffering ultimately he experiences
being murdered and in that way the God of the Bible is not distanced or aloof to the pain and
suffering that we actually experience because he can actually relate to it that as the second
person of the Trinity entering into humanity he understands what depravity actually is because
he can relate to the pain suffering abandonment hurt turmoil that we experience in this world I
think that actually changes the dynamic when we understand the different worldview perspectives
and how they describe God yes God is transcendent yes God is holy yes God is above anything we could
fully comprehend but God actually experienced what we experience in that brokenness in the world
and that he conquered that I think the second part of your question
what why do you say he conquered that because it's still here yeah it's a very good point so
it's it's what theologians sometimes refer to as a now but not yet reality in that
the when Jesus rose from the dead what he did ultimately is he said that death has no hold anymore
you know the wages of sin is death Paul says but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus
and so the the punishment that was given to our first parents Adam and Eve when they ate of the
fruit of the the tree of knowledge of good to be evil good and evil and God said if you eat from
this you're going to die was that they did die they didn't die right then and there but there was
a spiritual brokenness let me put it this way so when you read Genesis chapter one you see all
these iterations you know God makes the sea and the fish and the land and and the animals and
and the trees and the plants and if you separate the fish from the water right it dies God
speaks to the water and it teams with life but if you separate the fish from the water it's going to
die God speaks to the land and it brings forth vegetation and greenery but if you remove the plant
from the soil it's going to die who does God speak to when he creates humans he speaks to himself
what happens when we remove ourselves from our creator we die there's a relational component to it
that I think is very profound no matter how you want to read the literalism or the figurative aspects
of Genesis chapter one and two I think the point there being is that we were created for
relationship with God and that's been affected that's been broken that's why we have
covenants that God makes with his people those are promises they're relational in their ultimate
articulation and their practicality and so when Jesus comes and he dies a death that we deserve
because of the cosmic rebellion the evil that we commit the sin then is in the grave but then
rises from the dead what that is symbolic of is that the grave death has no hold on those who are
found in Jesus Christ anymore so though we still live in this beautifully broken world all things
will be made new and that's the promise and that and this kind of leads into the other part of
your question you know why do we bother living our lives if it's just full of pain and suffering
I think when Jesus teaches his disciples to pray he says your kingdom come your will be done
on earth as it isn't heaven you know this this life matters and it can be profoundly beautiful
and just as you know we bring children into the world and there's a lot of potential for hurt
and pain and suffering but we still see that as a good thing we still see the beauty and the
amazingness of new life when I saw my children come into this world there's it was incredible
it's a miracle right how how did this come to be and yet we understand that there's there's so
much opportunity for hurt and pain and suffering and getting messed up there and yet
the potential for goodness and beauty and to be poured into in that little child to grow up
as a virtuous individual of characters a good citizen and a person who can understand
what is truly meaningful in this life that's worth doing absolutely and I think that's part of
you know the surrendering of making it's not just about dying and going going to heaven
if it was you know the gospel authors could have just solved the whole problem by just having
Jesus' passion narrative but a lot of the gospel is about his life it's about just the daily
struggle and the beauty and the amazingness of friends you know it's interesting in in scripture
and in John's gospel he records this event of Jesus' friend Lazarus dying and Lazarus goes to the tomb
and Lazarus' sister is Mary and Martha basically think that Jesus is procrastinated and he's got
there too late like if you were only here our brother would still be alive and it's interesting
because Jesus fully knows what he's going to do he's going to speak into that tomb and tell Lazarus to
get out and yet John records it and says that Jesus stood there and he wept he wept because his
friend had died and that feeling of that wrong motion that's not wrong Jesus knew he was going to
raise him from the dead but he's also weeping I think because Jesus understands more than anybody
else what the true significance of the brokenness of this world can be in the physical death
but that we look forward to something amazing in the resurrection of life eternal but that
doesn't mean that this life is a throwaway by any means we've all seen it the department of
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I mean I have another interesting conversation with why he met earlier and we were just chatting
upstairs right before I came down and talking about the same kind of thing and I can't remember
how he worded it but he'd he had asked I have a whole another life where I was
addicted to cocaine and party and and doing pretty much anything living the non-Christian life
right it was a lot of fun it was maybe the most fun I've ever had I'm just being honest I did I
wasn't I wasn't riddled with anxiety I didn't have to worry about shit because I had no
responsibilities I didn't have a son I didn't have a daughter I didn't have a wife but
so there were no worries there were no anxieties there was I don't know I have to get this stuff
done I mean yes I had a job but it was it was do you understand what I'm saying and so in the back
then I didn't I wouldn't say I was an atheist it's not that I didn't believe in God I just
didn't give a shit and I was a sideline person and with no fear of death it actually went
went a lived in Columbia I went down there with full intention of dying down there it's been
OD on drugs and when life gets boring I'm check it out right well that didn't happen right let's
fast forward you know and in in now I've I've come to Christ I believe in Christ I'm a Christian
I'm scared to death of death I'm scared to leave my kid behind my kids my wife because I know
how fucked up this world is I have more I have a team I'm responsible for a business I'm
responsible for I have anxieties I have worries I have it seems like you would be not worried
about death after you believe in Christ after you come to Christ yeah yeah well I think seems like
life would be I don't know of easier but less anxious less worries less I mean but it's actually
I'm just being honest it's not a sit for me yeah definitely I mean I think I think when we're young
we're we're kind of naive in thinking that the the indulgences are just what matters
and as we mature we realize that there's so much more than just pleasure and you know pouring
our lives into temporality and I totally get what you're saying in terms of there being no outward
effect on you don't have a family you don't have friends necessarily I bet though if you had
died it would have affected somebody and there's a ripple effect that we often don't realize to how
our lives actually impact others I mean this is a lie that a lot of people who commit suicide
often just assume they're better off gone right everyone's going to be better off without them
and the just the the ripple effect outwards of how much pain that causes I also think
you know see us Lewis the famous theologian writer he wrote a book called Surprise by Joy
in that when he writes he said you know if I was looking for happiness a good cigar and a
bottle of scotch could have suffice that that would have got me there and in his own autobiography
he talks about the fact that he was actually surprised at the fulfillment that was brought
and the realization and the maturity that came with it of how much his life affected the people
around him and how much more meaningful it could be realizing what his purpose and identity actually
was in Christ that he actually was surprised by joy and that he thought his life is basically
going to be over he couldn't do all the fun things he couldn't jump into those vices and indulgences
and but that he felt to realize that the temporal that ecstasees those were ultimately fleeting
that they wouldn't fulfill him in the way that he was actually looking for there what I was
referring to earlier when you know G.K. Chesterton says that the man is walking to the brothel
is searching for God he's looking to worship something and I think maybe the the anxiety and the stress
of what you're feeling because I feel that too in that one of my biggest fears is is dying and
leaving my family and not being able to see my children grow up and not being able and then
thinking you know I don't want my children to grow up without a father and and that that weighs on
me not because I'm necessarily afraid of death because I truly believe that I will be united with
my Lord and Savior but it's a grieving of the reality of what could be left behind but I think
that's a that's a realization of a maturity that as we grow older he relies the responsibilities
that come with the things that we do and the people that were connected to
and that though we might feel like the drugs and the sex and the the physical things and
that those are going to give us meaning and purpose when we're younger it's largely because
we we have a mentality that fails to realize our mortality more broadly that that this world has
a lot more to offer than fleeting pledders and that you know when you pour into your kids
when you're building the train sets with your son like the joy that that can bring
and just seeing a child light up and and seeing your child being born and the love that you
share with your wife that's that's something that I think goes beyond a high right which is a very
in one sense a very selfish thing right I'm experiencing this but
when we get to do something like raise children as virtuous citizens when we instill character in them
that that's a legacy that goes beyond the simple you know I'm feeling this right now and that
feels great but the thing that lasts are the things that are truly going to give meaning and
purpose in the world around us and is ultimately going to change the world we have that potential
so maybe we should be looking for fulfillment instead of happiness I think I think sometimes I
wonder you know we tease out the differences between joy and happiness and in some ways those
are synonymous I don't think that but yeah fulfillment fulfillment goes beyond simple happiness in
the same way that love is far more than an emotional feeling right there days that I wake up and I
don't necessarily feel like I'm loving my wife like I did on our wedding day or on our honeymoon or
whatever and that love transcends that because love is actually about sacrifice to a certain degree
and that's what we see I mean if God's character is love John the Apostle and his epistle says God
is love and love is the greatest ethic so if the greatest God is going to find going to
encompass himself his identity in the greatest ethic well the greatest example of that ethic is
actually self-sacrifice which is what we see in the person of Jesus Christ you know no greater
love has this than a man lays his life down for his friend it says in scripture and so whether
we're talking about happiness or whether we're talking about love or whether I think we need to
calibrate these within a framework that actually puts them into an understanding that goes beyond
a simple feeling because if love is a simple feeling if happiness is a simple feeling if meaning
and purpose and identity are simple feelings well then those are those are going to change with
my mood it's going to change with my diet right and so these concepts go beyond maybe the
simplicity that we often describe the mass because I love my wife even when I'm not necessarily
feeling as in love with her as I could possibly be and I can actually live that out in a self-sacrificial
way that will truly be loving to her even if I'm not feeling the warm fuzzies all the time
makes sense makes sense
I'm trying to think how to ask is it would what do you think happens when we die when when you
think of heaven what is your imagination what is your faith tell you where is it what do we see
what where are we going well Paul says it is appointed people wants to die and then the judgment
so I think you know what what's going to happen is we're we're going to be judged what we're
going to stand before our creator and there's going to be an instance of we are either the
ologians sometimes describe it as being found in the first Adam or the second Adam so Jesus is
described as the second Adam in scripture and the idea is you're they're going to be found in
your sin and you're going to take the brunt of that or you're going to be found in the covering of
Christ and he's taken the brunt of that so what we do in this life it's not that you know we just
we punch our ticket we say you know Jesus I believe in you and then whatever we do after that
doesn't matter you know what we do actually does matter we're not saved by our works but we're saved
for works and those works can actually be an example and an outworking what do you mean by that
we're not saved by our works we're saved for our works yeah so yeah so in in the book of Ephesians
Paul writes and he says that in chapter two he says and you were dead in your transgressions
and sins in which you formally walked according to the course of this world according to
the ruler and the power of the air and the spirit is now working in the sons of disobedience among
whom we all also formally conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh doing the desires of our flesh
and the mind and we're by nature children of wrath even even as the rest but God being rich
in mercy because of his great love which has which he loves us even when we were dead in our transgressions
made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated
he has seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ and he says that you are saved
so for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of yourselves it is not the gift
of God not of work so that no one may boast for we are his workmanship creating Christ Jesus for
good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them so in other words there's
nothing you can do or I can do that is going to placate God we're not going to be able to
earn our salvation because compared to the standard of the holiness of God it's always going to fall
short we're broken whether we realize it or not and we're often I sometimes say you know
worried about the evil out there when there's a lot of evil in here and so what God has done in our
behalf is through Christ Jesus he has saved us like Paul says that we are saved by faith in grace
and it's not works so in one sense you know the the law is like a mirror so when we see God's law
and his holiness displayed in his character that calls us to righteousness to call the stupid things
that's like a mirror showing us how dirty we are but we make a mistake when we think that we need
to grab the mirror and wash ourselves with it right that's not going to clean us we need something
external we need we need to jump in the shower that's what's truly going to clean us the law has a
purpose and a good purpose and that's to show us that we're dirty but it's through faith alone
in Christ alone to the glory of God alone that we're saved that that's something that he has done
we're saved by works just not ours Christ who has done them perfectly and the works that we do
when I say we're not saved by our works but we're saved for our works but I mean that by that is
that the works are actually the evidence to show that God has truly done something in our life
and now we see that movement in our heart so I talked to I was talking to someone recently who
was saying you know I have a friend who he claims to be a Christian and but he's he's really not
living a life that I would say is overly overly a good example of what a Christian should be living
he said like west do you think he's a do you think he's a believer do you think he has a genuine
faith in God and what I said to him was you know ultimately that's between him and God but I think
it's perfectly reasonable to look at that person and say listen your salvation is between you and God
but I have no reason to believe that I have no reason to believe that you're saved and I think
that should worry you I think you should worry you that when I look at the world and I look at you
I really don't see that much of a difference and that either means that you're you're not living
the life that God has called you to or you're in real danger that you don't actually understand
who Jesus is and what he's done for you on your behalf and so I think the mistake we can make
is thinking that God is like the gods of the Old Testament that the nation surrounding is real
we're trying to offer up sacrifices to the agricultural gods so that you know if I sacrifice my son
on the altar of of bail maybe he'll grow good crops for me and and God says I hate that I hate that
because that's and it's it's it's making the thing and it means to an ends I don't want you to
sacrifice to get I want you to love I want you to love me and I want this to be an act of devotion
which is why eventually God through the prophets starts to condemn the sacrifices which he commands
these relates to do not because the sacrifices are bad but because he says you know you've just made
this you've made it a meaningless act you've made it something that just becomes wrote it's it's
just a ritual God says I don't want ritual I'm not interested in that all those other gods they
can get the rituals right it's fake it's meaningless it's purposeless but I love you and I want you
to do this because I want you to understand the relationship that I've called you to be in
and so those works those works are an outpouring of the love right if I were to ask you Sean what's the
opposite of love what would you say hey hate that's a common answer and I think that's a good answer
but if you think about it to hate something is actually to to invest emotional energy in it
apathy apathy is actually the opposite of love because apathy just doesn't care when we see people
who abandon children who you know evil is being done around them and they're just indifferent
that that stirs us as it should and it's because apathy is the opposite of love
and what God is calling us to is you know the way that we live out that love is by
showing that that is actually not because it saves us because it can't there's nothing that we can
do that God you know God doesn't need us to love him in one sense God doesn't need us to do
anything but it's kind of amazing that he he wants us to God is no better off or worse off
if I don't love him if I don't worship him God exists perfectly in a set of living loving
relationships and did eternally and yes out of an outpouring of his love he decides to create
he doesn't need to do that he existed in a set of living and living relationships in the Father
the Son and the Holy Spirit and yet he creates and even he creates knowing that his creation is
going to rebel that's going to cause pain and that he himself and the second person as the
Son is going to enter into that pain and yet it's to his glory in the the book of Revelation
the last book of the Bible it says that before the foundations of the world were laying the lamb
was slain and so the cross wasn't a contingency plan it wasn't an oops I better fix things it was
all for the glory of God because he loves us and he wants right relationship with us so you're
saying it's not the works it's grace and faith so the way I understand what you're saying is
if you have faith then you wouldn't do the latter anyways you wouldn't act like that anyways
am I correct in the wrong things okay when we're talking about it's not for your deeds or your
works correct that's it's for your grace and faith yeah it gets you to have it is that's what
you said correct yep so if you had faith and grace then maybe you wouldn't have done the works
but you wouldn't have lied she'd steal murder done any of that shit does that make sense yeah
I mean I think so but by by having faith alone you would not partake and
breaking the 10 commandments or at least there's an understanding that this is not what I
should be doing right there's that there's a changing of of mind in in the mindset of
when I think of my life before really understanding what Jesus had done on my behalf
I could easily explain away bad things right because the significance of them
it was different Martin Luther the the German reformer he talks about the difference between
you know falling in a hole and making a bed in a hole or if you fall you're tripping the hole
and then you get out of the hole but that's a mistake and you understand that's a mistake you
don't then set up camp in the hole or a bird flying over your head and a bird making an est in your
hair like when we when we truly understand the significance of the weight of the wrong doing
that we participate in it it grieves us and we want to change and maturity is realizing that
we shouldn't be doing these things though we do them because we're still in on this side of
eternity we're still in a broken world but we have an understanding and we have that conviction
of the Holy Spirit that we shouldn't do them and we don't want to do them when I sin when I
when I sin against my wife when I sin against my family my friends anybody I I feel convicted of
that because I know I shouldn't be doing that but and that's not to say that um you know if you
aren't a Christian that you don't feel guilt or conviction or I think we all do by nature of the
fact that we're created in God's image there's an aspect of that that's still it's crying out to
us in our identity we know we're not meant to be doing these things but in the book of James
there's this this really great passage where James um he talks about the fact that if you break
one commandment of the law uh you've you've broken all the law um
um and what he says there uh is he says what use is it my brothers if someone says he has faith
but he has no works can that faith save him if a brother or sister is without clothing in the
need of daily food and one of you says to him go in peace be warmed and be filled and yet you
do not give him what is necessary for their body what is the use even so faith if it has no
works is dead by itself now you could read that and think we're saying it's its faith and works
right because he says you know show me your your faith and I'll show you my works but what he's
getting there is not that it's both faith and works it's that the works are going to be an outpouring
of the faith that you have he says um now uh let me see if I can find it um that if you
if you now if you commit if you break one aspect of the law you are held accountable for all of it
and it's kind of like this Sean if you're hanging off this edge of a cliff and you're hanging on to
uh like a chain if one of those links in the chain is cut you're going to fall as if none of those
links are holding you up right and it that's kind of what James is getting out there if you if
you break one of the commandments you break broken all of them it's not that if you lie you're
now held accountable for murder but it's that I'm hanging on to that chain and if one of those links
is severed I'm going to plummet to my death because there's no small sin because there's no small
God that doesn't mean all sin is created equal we know that murder is worse than sin and we even see
when Jesus is handed over to Pilate just before his crucifixion he says the one who's given
given me over to you has committed the greater sin the law has more severe penalties for
some sins and less of your penalties for others and the Old Testament it's not that this is all
you know flattened out there are gradations of sin and we even understand that in our own civil
law but it's it's cosmic treason against a holy God and so in that sense it's always going to be
significant because of who it's against you know I read this if you heard of the Jesus calling
I read this every morning I read it more than my Bible because I actually understand that
and I know it's funny but it's true but you know this morning I was reading it you know
it's a couple days behind so I've caught up but you know we're talking about a common thing in
there is it's so it's always talking about hand over your problems to me hand them over to me
hold the shit you're worried about hand it over to me I'll take care of it and I was I just I don't
understand what that means and I mean I've got all kinds of fucking problems I pray for them all
the time years some of these problems and I'm not saying I have more problems or less problems than
anybody else they're just problems you know and I pray about them a lot of them don't get answered
and then I think about it I'm like what is that mean like it's Monday morning I'm anxious I'm
a business owner I got I'm a family guy I got I got all kinds of problems in anxieties and good
and so what is it when it says don't worry about your problems hand them over to me I'll take
care of them like I've been praying for years for you to take care of some of these problems and
they're all not all of them but a lot of them are still here so what does that mean like I can't
just go hey I got all this shit coming up and there are problems and things that I'm stressed about
but I'm just not gonna fucking do any of it because you said you're gonna handle it right that's
not gonna work out well for me right now and and so I don't even know what that means just hand
over your problems here you go I think they are yeah exactly I think one way that that it could
be looked at and maybe this is a different like a unique way of framing it but I think part of that
calling that God says you know come to me because my yoke is easy and my burden is light is an
invitation to be transparent with God in those things a song 23 pretty famous song the Lord
is my shepherd Yahweh is my shepherd I shall not want he makes me lie down in green pastors he
leaves me beside quiet waters he restores my soul he guides me in the paths of righteousness for
his name's sake one chapter over song 22 starts very different my God my God why have you forsaken
why are you so far from me from this my salvation and the words of my groaning oh my God I call
by day but you do not answer and by night and I have no rest you know what I find really interesting
about the God of the Bible is the God of the Bible who calls us to come to him sees both the person
who says Yahweh is my shepherd I shall not want and the person who says my God my God why
you forsaken me as equally valid forms of worship in that one third of the book of Psalms is what
is sometimes referred to as the lament or the complaint Psalms and that God wants us to come to him
he wants us to be transparent with him he wants us to be like David who says I don't get it
I'm struggling I'm lost I don't feel you I feel like you're far away I feel like I'm forsaken
and that aspect I think of God calling us to cast our burdens on him part of that is
an acknowledgement of God realizing that this world is hard that that that our burdens aren't
meaningless you know as a meastron philosophies like Buddhism and Taoism and Chintuism
you read some of these writings and the the way that they talk about struggle and pain and suffering
is sometimes very dismissive and that it's like well just stop desiring things just stop you know
that you're two you're you're attached to this world because you have this desire so cast off
all desires you know easier said than done right you know ironically they desire to do that
to cast off all the desires but the I think what we see within the just honesty of the text of the
Bible is that you see that God that God who's compassionate that God who understands that God who
says you know you can come to me and you can be honest with me about what's going on you don't
have to sugarcoat your problems you don't have to pretend that you're holier than you really are
you don't have to pretend that things are going well or that things are easy or because listen
I I get it you know I walked the dusty streets of 1st century Galilee and my my my my feet ached
and I my friends abandoned me my family members died and I was betrayed and I was murdered
and I think part of God calling us to come to him is less of a cure all you know all of a sudden
all your problems are going to be fixed that's not realistic we know we know that's not going to happen
there's a future tense of the fact that God says you know
well I'm going to make all things new but he also says this world is going to be hard and this
world is going to be full of pain and struggle but I've overcome the world and so all authority
and heaven on earth has been given to me Jesus says and as part of that I think the calling
is less of Jesus is just a fixer who's going to solve all our problems Jesus isn't a genie
but the relational component is that God wants us to come to him he wants us to be honest he wants us
to be transparent because he can understand those things and the reassurance in that is that
it's not a God that just creates and sets the dials in motion and then steps back and says well
I hope everything works out you know let's see how all these little people can figure themselves out
and I hope it I hope it works out no God desires are good but that good doesn't necessarily mean
that everything is going to work perfectly in this world look at the apostles look at Jesus
himself you know all of the apostles after coming to the realization that their their Rabbi rose
from the dead and that the claims that he made about himself were true saw that proclamation and
the new life that was a possibility for others as something worth suffering and dying for and although
we can't be sure of all the martyrdom stories that they're rock solid about all the apostles we
know that they had minimum suffered pain and persecution for that and they desired that not
that they were going out to get hurt but they understood that you know the the God who loves us
is worth knowing personally because the God who loves us cares about us when we are in those
seasons of my God my God why have you forsaken me and in the seasons of the Lord is my shepherd I
shall not want all right all right where do you think we were before we were born I I don't think we
existed before we were born do you think that it's just you don't think I mean when you hear the
term old soul does that mean anything to you no I think it's a turn of phrase you know it is
interesting the I thought about this with every kid that's been born of of mine you know it's so
crazy that a new life just pops into existence and that that is something like the I can see the
personality of the baby and I can see how my wife's personality and my personality are articulated
in my sons and my daughters and how amazing that is and that that fact is a little bit
incomprehensible but I don't believe in the pre existence of souls I don't think that that's
something that that scripture articulates in in a way this concrete but I think there's a divine
mystery to the act of life how does non-life produce life I we don't we don't really have an
answer to that question in terms of a scientific pursuit and even the fact that you know this how
many pounds of gray matter in my brain is able to ponder those questions is pretty crazy in and
of itself yeah if we really think about it why why can I trust this if this is a product of time
plus matter plus chance what what is really grounding my ability to trust my reasoning faculties
well I think it's because I am endowed with the image of my creator which
gives meaning and purpose to that but man there's something crazy about you know seeing
a new life coming to existence and watching that person grow up and oh yeah
man it truly is miraculous yeah but there's no doubt
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all right west we're back from the break so all that wasn't on the outline before this but
so now I want to get into your story born in Pakistan hmm what were you doing over there
well what were your parents doing yeah that's right usually when I cross the border and people look
at my passport they ask military or missionary because why why else would a guy that looks like me
be born in Pakistan yeah and it is it's missionary so my parents were missionaries in the
early 90s in in Pakistan so I was born there but we weren't there for very long because the
Gulf War broke out and Pakistan sided with Saddam Hussein so it wasn't safe to be in in Pakistan
anymore and so we eventually came back to Canada and then we my parents went back to the missions
field where my my dad worked in Amon Jordan where for a short time he was the chaplain at the
British Embassy so very short-standing to my child so I actually went back after I graduated high
school I went back to Jordan but it was it was very different because when I was there as a child
we were in Amon and we it was very rural and urban and then when I went back it was very rural we
were I was working with Bedouin with a tuberculosis clinic oh wow and so it's a very different
experience even the language the Arabic that the the Bedouin spoke the locals said like don't worry
we can't understand them either so it was uh but it was it was it was it was great and I think
I think formed a lot of my desires and interests in even something like inquiry into Islam
having understood what a majority Muslim perspective was and some of the things that might
like not totally compute if you were just learning about something like a worldly like Islam from
a book did you how far into Islam did you get um why research it pretty heavily like I read I read
the Quran covered a cover a few times and um connected with some people who were doing academic
work on the Quran there was a period when I was in university where there were other Muslim
students who during Ramadan they would read the Quran for beginning to end and I would do it
with them almost as a way to establish relationships but also to talk through some of these things
and then I would also share some of what I was reading in the Bible as well but uh in my
four-year undergraduate degree I probably read the Quran five or six times well and in English
mind you never in Arabic which my Muslim friends would say you haven't read the Quran because it
only exists in Arabic right and English translation they wouldn't consider properly being a Quran
but um I read I read quite a bit of the adjacent stuff the Hadith and the Sunnah and then the
Sarat Rasulullah the biography of the prophet Muhammad um it been a shock so I was I was genuinely
interested in it because of the interplay historically with Christianity in Islam and also just
trying to figure out you know okay well well what are the claims of this worldview could they
actually be legitimate compared to something that I was raised to believe and ultimately I found
them very wanting really what what what I mean what would you say what are some of the main
teachings in the Quran well I think Islam has an issue in that there are historical articulations of
what's going on in the biblical stories that are just false so the main one would be in
uh uh in the Quran uh surah 147 um it denies the crucifixion uh so it it says that uh it has the
Jews speaking and say we crucified Jesus the son of Mary which is kind of an odd thing if the Jews
believed he was the Messiah that they were crucifying him and then it says that uh that he he was not
crucified nor was he killed but it was made to appear to them and so there's a face value denial
of the crucifixion now they say that he was real yes so Muslims believe in Jesus in fact Jesus
had mentioned 25 times in the Quran uh far more than even Muhammad is mentioned in the Quran
and the the if you think of the traditional Islamic narrative of
Muhammad being a seven century caravanar I think it makes sense for some of the stories that you
find of whether that's Abraham or Noah or Jesus John the Baptist Mary who were in the Quran
because I think what's probably going on is that you have an individual if we're accepting the
traditional narrative that there was a historical Muhammad that he's a caravanar that he's
he's traveling in and around the Arabian peninsula up into areas like Syria and Jordan he's being
exposed to Christians and Jews and I mean the traditional narrative is that he was a literate
so he's not reading these stories he's hearing them orally but because there's really no exposure to
what we call the old and the new testaments and even then it's it's up for debate whether they
existed in Arabic as Arabic existed in like seven century hegeese script at that point in time
anyways but he would have been hearing these stories with no kind of discerning ability to
differentiate between fables and campfire stories about these characters and what were the actual
historically reliable non apocryphal documents so the earliest source material for Jesus are
the 27 books that we call the New Testament primarily the biographies of Matthew, Mark,
and John but there are other stories that are apocryphal in nature that talk about say Jesus what
Jesus was like as a child so there's one called the Arab Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Arab
Infancy Gospel of Thomas has a story about child Jesus now this is coming a long time after Jesus
everyone in New Jesus was dead by the time these stories were developing but the biblical
gospels are very sparse on what Jesus was like as a child the gospel of Luke has a very brief story
of Jesus when he's 12 going to the temple with his family and then teaching in the temple and
Mary and Joseph forget him in Jerusalem and then have to go back but so there's a body of literature
that pops up that's basically talking about well what was Jesus like as a child and so
infancy narratives become kind of this very popular if we want to call them fanfiction it's not
really like a proper historical designation but kind of like that and one of these is the Arab
Infancy Gospel of Thomas which has a story about Jesus making clay birds by a riverbank and then
some of the Jews get mad at him because it happens to be the Sabbath and he's working on the
Sabbath and so the story goes that he breathes on the birds they turn into real birds and the evidence
flies away this story ends up in the Quran and we know that this is an apocryphal story we know
that it has no historical designation of actually being tied to the first century
itinerant Jewish Rabbi Jesus Nazareth but it is something that would have been available potentially
in oral form in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and so you have these things
that get smuggled into the text of the Quran but they're jumbled and they have so there's
their characters that are in some places that shouldn't be in others Hayman who is from the book of
Esther ends up in the Exodus story is the right-hand man to Pharaoh well there are hundreds of
years between the Persian story of Esther and the Egyptian story of Moses and Pharaoh
so there's confusion and conflation that's going on and I was at least when I was reading
the Quran early on aware of the biblical narratives and so when I'm reading the Quran and I'm reading
some of the Quran's versions of these stories it's not hard to pick up on where they're just not
right and ultimately surfer verse 157 that denies the crucifixion that's a pretty serious one what
I mean what does it say what does it say I mean it denies the crucifixion yeah it says that he
was neither killed nor was he crucified but it was made to appear to them and it says that even
those who proclaim it are in doubt about it so part of the problem is that there's a little bit of
ambiguity in the wording of the Arabic so some Islamic exegetes and interpreters have
interpreted this as he wasn't he wasn't killed but he was put on the cross and crucified others
take that but it was made to appear to them and take that as what's sometimes called the
substitution theory where someone else was made to look like Jesus and put in his place
and that's a minority view but it is a view that some scholars like Shabir Ali has articulated in
the past the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam that this is the perspective they hold and they actually
believe that well they believe actually so so our backup that was a mistake they don't believe
that they believe that Jesus was on the cross but he survived which is called the Sunn theory that in
in the crucifixion when it says that he he did not die nor was he crucified it's that he wasn't
crucified all the way because he didn't die but that actually he recovered afterwards and they have
a story about him going to India and living to over a hundred years and having a family and that
kind of thing but there is some ambiguity in the historical commentaries the tough seer on this
particular passage to where there's debate even amongst Muslims as is this a full outright denial
of the crucifixion that's what the kind of mainstream zuni orthodox perspective would be
but some believe that maybe Judas was dressed up like Jesus and he was put on the cross and Jesus
is placed or that Jesus recovered or that it never happened it was all an illusion to begin with
but no matter which way you swing it it's still a denial of one of the most established facts
of all of history yeah even like the most skeptical of biblical scholars if they can say we can
basically know nothing about the details of Jesus's life we can say that he was crucified under
Pontius Pilate because we have so many intersecting sources Christian and non-Christian like
wow that's I mean so are they bringing up is the only point of bringing up Christianity the
crucifixion Jesus Moses everybody you know the the plays role in the book is it to discredit Christianity
in the Quran I mean I think the answer to that would be yes and no there's a clear line of
succession within the Quran and I think part of this is the confusion on the author of the
Quran's part that they thought they knew what the Torah and the gospel were so the Torah
and the angel the Torah and the gospel are referred to multiple times within the Quran itself and
you have a kind of a you have succession language that the Torah was given to Moses and it was
full of guidance and light and the gospel was given to Jesus and it was full of guidance and light
and then the final revelation is the Quran but there's almost a tacit implication that they're
all saying basically the same thing and that God's message is unified across all of them the problem
with that is that we know what the Torah and the gospel looked like in the 7th century in Muhammad's
day and doesn't look any different than what we have now but I don't think that the I don't see any
evidence that the author of the Quran knew what the Torah of the gospel Torah or the gospel were
so you have 900 approximately either direct quotations or illusions of the Old Testament in the New
Testament. In the Quran you only have one in quotation of either the Old or the New Testament,
the lexatallionus, an I for an I and a tooth for a tooth. So in terms of the synchronicity of the
Quran to these previous books it's lacking to say the least. It's not an organic cultural document
like the New Testament is. The New Testament was predominantly written by Jews for Jews
and is saturated in hebraic and Jewish and Old Testament understandings. If you don't understand
something about what's going on in the New Testament going back and reading the Old Testament
might actually help you because there's just so much symbolism and calling back to and the gospel
authors, Jesus' parallel with Moses and David and you know they're all these things but the author
of the Quran I think is aware of some of these Jewish Christian and Zorastrian fables is assuming
that those are what's going on and so he's baking those into the text maybe with the implication to
kind of woo the Christians and the Jews to come over to a side but you see so I think there's one
passage in the Quran that says it has this kind of succession narrative right it talks about
the gospel or the Torah being full of guidance and light and being given to Moses and then the
gospel being full of guidance and light giving to Jesus and then it says that the people of the gospel
judge by what they have therein. It's talking to Christians right those are the people of the gospel
they al-Alangil but if they do not judge by what they have therein they are the defiantly disobedient.
Now in the grammatical context what they have therein for the people of the gospel is the gospel
so when I'm talking to my Muslim friends sometimes I open to this passage and I say like
hey I don't want to be one of the defiantly disobedient I want to stand before God and not
have that on my shoulders however in order to be obedient to this passage and I judge
using the gospel which it's telling me to do and I judge the Quran by the gospel I find the Quran
doesn't understand the gospel has no earthly understanding of what I believe and actually
denies central points of it the divinity of Christ the crucifixion and so if the Quran is true
and it's telling me to do this then I have to conclude that the Quran is false because it
tells me to do something that's an impossibility I cannot judge the Quran by the gospel and find
that the Quran actually understands what the gospel is saying and so this kind of my Muslim
friends often have large articulations but you have in the gospel isn't what they had in the gospel
I think that's highly problematic I don't see any reason why in the seventh century a gospel
would be any different than it is to what it is now especially when I mean in my own study
in manuscript studies I can find copies of the gospel in Syriac from Syria in the six and seven
centuries it reads exactly like what my gospel reads today so it's not that there's no evidence
for that or if that is the case and the Quran says that nobody can change God's words and the
gospel is God's word who changed it who was able to kind of thwart the God of Islam's ability to
preserve his word in that endeavor he's either he was either unable to do it or he didn't
do that and when he says no one can change my words in the Quran it's not true
and so ultimately I think Muslims have a problem they're painted into these corners
they have these passages about the Torah and the gospel and yet the Quran doesn't seem to understand
what those are or just flat out contradicted the Quran denies the crucifixion when we know
that the crucifixion happened and so they're kind of painted themselves into these corners
corners in defending these particular positions and I just I don't I don't think that they can
stand up to scrutiny that is I mean I'm now I've never studied I don't remember read it I thought
I find it very interesting how much of the Bible is in there that's
yeah I mean Jesus is a central figure he's even referred to as the Messiah although it's ambiguous
and Islamic like understanding what that means um he's he's said to be sinless he's said to be
virgin born he's said to be the one who's going to come back at the end of time so there are all
of these things like Jesus is a prominent character like I said before I mentioned 25 times far
more than Muhammad has mentioned in fact the only woman named in the entire Quran is Mary the mother
of Jesus and so these figures have prominence within the Islamic holy book but ultimately they have
no full historical understanding of who they are wow very interesting well I want to talk about
this miracle about you walking mm-hmm I didn't you we kind of talked about a little bit of the
hawk question could we go under that a little bit sure yeah let's do it yeah so I was just before
my 12th birthday I was diagnosed with a condition called acute transverse myelitis and so I had the
flu and my body's immune system in sort of a freak accident response attack the nerve endings
that the base my spinal cord the myelons sheath instead of attacking the flu and so what that
causes inflammation on the base of my spinal cord which severed the communication between my legs
and my brain and so the diagnosis um I literally woke up from a nap and couldn't feel my legs
and so oh you remember this oh yeah very vividly yeah yeah um the diagnosis was that I would most
likely be a paraplegic for the rest of my life so recovery wasn't impossible but it was you know
you're going to dig in for the long haul kind of deal um especially because transverse myelitis
as a condition how it's been described to me by medical professionals is that the recovery rate
has a correlation to the quickness of the actual paralysis so because mine was instant the conclusion was
that the recovery was going to be long and it was going to be hard and um the short story is that
one month from the day that I woke up and couldn't feel my legs on February 8th I woke up
got out of my bed and walked over to my wheelchair
how did you know to get up so it was kind of instinctual um it's a yeah how did I know to get up
I mean so for one month you were paralyzed for one month I was completely paralyzed no feeling
from the waist down yeah and um I don't know how long it was that I sat in my wheelchair
until I realized that I I'd what I'd done but I knew something was different
and I could have been five minutes could have been 45 minutes and I couldn't actually tell you how
long it was but eventually I looked down and I wiggled my toe and that kind of broke me out of
the spell and I ran upstairs and got my parents you ran upstairs yeah holy which was
proceeded by my mom telling me to run up and down the stairs and weeping yeah
now you were in bed and you're just like I'm gonna get up and walk over to my wheelchair
do I mean did you I mean did you prepare yourself was there any or you just did it
that he did realizing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah what I typically do is I would like kind of fall
out of bed and crawl over um so wheelchair wasn't far from my bed obviously it needed to be in
close proximity but uh at that at that point that's basically what I had done I pulled myself up
to my wheelchair but um and it was the doctors that first used the word miracle I think my parents
are very hesitant to use that word but the medical professionals when they were the ones who said
we really don't have an explanation because the the inflammation was gone there's no evidence of it
what happened when you sat in the wheelchair well I just kind of was try to figure out what happened
like because you know something is different but you don't know what it is it's kind of like what do
you mean you don't know what it is you've just got out of bed and walked to the wheelchair because
it's so passive that you don't it it's like the the reality of the situation it it it precedes
like the what is actually taking place so so I couldn't figure out exactly what had happened
but I knew something different had happened and then it was the process of looking down and
wiggling my toe that made me realize like I can move
and you you then run upstairs mm-hmm yeah I got my parents
what did your dad say you know what I can't remember what my dad that's probably a good question
ask him I remember my mom because she's very emotional but I mean it was pretty surreal I think a
lot of us were in shock I was I think after the whole paralysis incident I was in shock for a long
time because I remember feeling oddly normal I mean there are obvious times there were there were
definitely times during that 30 days where I cried myself to sleep but it also was just kind of
strangely you're kind of strangely numb because it's such a drastic change to be told you know
you're a healthy child you're 11 year old playing sports going to school hanging out with your
friends okay now you're you're disabled you're you're not gonna things are gonna look very different
you got to put a ramp on your house you know you can't get up and down the stairs with like
regularity kind of thing so it was a big change and um and I think my parents and my family
general they were largely they were they were kind of you know accepted of the fact okay this is
our reality now we're gonna do everything we can for this to go well we're gonna we're gonna do
we're gonna put the ramp on the house we're gone we moved my bedroom to the living room
um because I was upstairs I couldn't get down up and down the stairs very easily and so we were
kind of at this temporary room downstairs and uh but there was an acceptance that this was
probably my reality and I was doing uh physiotherapy but it was kind of joke um you know what do you
do for a paraplegic you know yeah so so we uh and me I was ready to be a paraplegic for the rest
my life and I think my my parents prayer at the time was always that God would be glorified in the
situation not necessarily that I would be healed not that they were against something miraculous
happening but I think they their perspective was you know we we God is in control and we could
trust him even when things aren't going the way we planned or even the way we understand
gee man wow it nothing I mean nothing nothing morack nothing crazy before you want to bed the
night before no wow wow yeah and I think that did mark a very powerful what I would describe
as a supernatural experience in my life when the medical professionals said and this is your
lot you're gonna be a paraplegic too now I guess you're walking again so that that's it's in some
ways it's disorienting in other ways I did have a framework for the transcendent for things that
are out of the ordinary happening but it was it was actually connecting those those the dots
between my heart and my head later on that really made that more tangible in the intellectual
questions that I was wrestling with later in my teens to going back and thinking you know I
I can't describe this kind of crazy thing that happened to me as a child to something tangible
it's not just a random fluke it's not just you know strange things happen no explanation
I I I can assign it to an actual individual in this case right God who operates in time and space
in history and does things out of the ordinary man that is amazing wow would I mean do you remember
meeting the doctor yeah what I mean you did you walk into his office yeah we did a schedule
deployment I believe it was scheduled like like regular schedule deployment shortly after I could walk
and I yeah I walked in I was wearing these really big rain boots I don't know why I was wearing them
I don't think it was raining and they got me to run up and down the hall and I remember because
the rain boots were like a little bit too big and they were like not just awkward but running
up and down the hallway for the doctor that's amazing what did I mean what did he what did he say
this is a miracle we have no medical explanation I believe I'd have to double check I have my mom's
journal entries from that time she photocopy them all for me but they definitely the doctor was
the first one to drop the word miracle and I could I could I think I'm remembering this correctly
the dog one of the doctors because there were number of specialists that were signed in my
particular case said what did you do and my mom said we prayed and I can't remember if the story
is that they went off and printed a list of the other kids in the intensive care unit said can you
pray for these or just said like you should pray for the other kids in here say it was something like
that in her journal entry because they were like something happened that is wild that just I mean
did you were you at full faith back then at 11 as much as an 11 year old can be it's kind of
what I'm getting at yeah I mean I think I made like I made a conscious decision that I believe
was genuine when I was six as much as a six year old can like in my limited understanding of
reality and the world and I think I did I remember sitting on my bedroom floor and feeling like
I need God I need God to to rescue me to to lead me in this life and age six age six yeah yeah
and and that being real and I mean that doesn't mean that I wasn't like when I was a teenager I
did go through a period of if you want to call it deconstruction or whatever I wasn't an abandonment
into my faith it wasn't a crisis of faith I think those are too strong for what was actually I was
experiencing but I was I was investigating I figured you know okay my parents raised me to believe
something do I believe it based on the fact that they told me to now I don't think that's a bad
reason I want my kids to believe what I tell them right but I think everybody at some point goes
through a period of time where they kind of have to figure out where the dividing lines are
between the parents and them and part of that for me was an investigation of okay what does the
Quran say what does the Bhagavad Gita say what does the Book of Mormon say what does what are
what are atheists writing about that maybe has some credibility and I did you know dig into those
because I wanted to be honest with the fact that believing alive even if it's a convenient lie
still not worth believing and I wanted to follow what was true and so if I was living a delusion
to some degree I didn't think I was but if I was I wanted to at least be aware of what that delusion
was and what maybe was a better explanation for the world around me right so you'd think that
that powerful supernatural experiences a child would have solidified something and it definitely
was a piece of the puzzle but I think I still needed to remedy the intellectual questions that I
had there were different than the ones I was asking as an 11 year old when I was 11 I was
up at night with the whiny questions you know I'm a good kid my parents are good people why is
this happening to me well when I was a teenager it was more did Jesus actually exist like what's
what's this thing can I believe this like 2000 years old and I'm trying to live my life by it
what what what are the what are the evidences what are the reasons what are what are the data points
the point that to me because ultimately I think the world view and the Christian worldview
it's essentially satisfying but it's also intellectually robust and that there's a cumulative
case of all sorts of things whether that's historical or philosophical or sociological
that contribute to the truth claims that it's ultimately making about who we are why we're here
where are we going questions that all humanity has always asked themselves but it's because I think
those are imprinted on our are being on our soul as image bears of God but it was exploring those
in the capacity that I I as a teenager could explore in the same way that you know the commitment
that I made at six years old I believe was genuine and the investigation that I did when I was
17 or 18 years old was genuine and that that's just grown right as I've been exposed to more
been given the opportunity to research to investigate to learn to grow I think that's only
operated to bolster my belief doesn't mean that there haven't been times where I've questioned
things or thought you know is this is this really all true but what are some of the things
and though that you thought were hard to find true hard to find true you struggled with personal yeah
I mean I think what we were talking about before the the the problem in pain and suffering I think
is a genuinely good objection to Christianity because it's far it's it's goes beyond an intellectual
question it's a it's a personal question it it it it it speaks to us in a way that
a very tidy theological or philosophical answer might not actually suffice you know if I'm
hurting if I have a child or a family member or someone who's close to me if they're sick if they're
dying if something is a tragic accident happens it's hard to to to really wrestle with that and
that's why I think you know what we're talking about before the Psalm 22 my god my god why have
you forsaken me in one way I think the transparency and the honesty of scripture is something that I
want to line myself with because it speaks to the reality of when I hurt there's something there
that I can that I can reach out to God is not afraid of our objections of our doubts of our
insecurities and that's been very comforting to me especially this previous year my my my
my two-year-old daughter was having seizures we almost lost her at one point this last fall she
was hit by a distracted driver while we were crossing the road and nightmare situations for me
as a father like to sit in a hospital room with my wife thinking we're going to lose our daughter
and yet to still believe that God is in control that God is good that you know we're going to get
through this because God is with us in the midst of that I think that goes beyond any
like the the the personal existential struggle is hard but the personal existential comfort is also
very very comforting in in a lot of those moments you know to to give up my desire for control and say
listen there's nothing I could do the doctors are running around they're intubating her they're
you know she's a you can see her heartbeat being a regular and and saying like God I don't know
I don't know what's going to happen here and yet there can still be peace in that despite that
and if that had gone south I could rest in that God is good and that he has a perfect plan even
if I don't understand it but it's those questions that sometimes genuinely make me feel like
man I wish I understood what's going on here I wish I wish I could figure out why God allows
these things to happen because I don't know I give you another example after I experienced my my
healing I encountered people who were sick and who were say themselves like quadriplegic and to
wrestle with okay I believe you healed me but what about that guy like why why did you choose it's
almost like a survivor's guilt what about them well why are they still in in their particular
predicament I don't I don't have an answer to that and and that's that's a hard one to reconcile
but I have enough to rest on that I know that God is good I know that the Christian world view is true
and I know that despite what my maybe fleeting or subjective insecurities are about those things
and there's a comfort in that as well
did you struggle a lot when you were dealing with your daughter with your faith or always rock solid
by then I mean I think I think we all struggle in different capacities right like
you still struggle with all the research you've done that sees squirrels everything you still
struggle well I think you know the the human condition is that we're fickle and nobody is
bulletproof and the like I said before like this world is beautiful but it's also profoundly broken
and I think we're supposed to feel that broken like that lump that's in my throat I believe
God put that there because I think a God who is himself worried about things like hope and justice
he's instilled us with a desire to also be concerned with justice be concerned with injustice be
concerned with hurt and the brokenness and like we can say all day long God why don't you do
something but I think God could equally say you can do something too you know I've given you
faculties and abilities and this this world is not moving without your contribution to it
and that's why we're we're called to go out into the world to make disciples of all nations
because our actions mean something and does that mean that you know I don't wake up in the morning
and really struggle with this thing or that thing no I they're there periods of my life periods of
time where I just sit down and think like man I don't know I don't know what's going on here
but when I have those moments I think falling back onto the foundation of the investigation
that I have done you know I think that the publicly available evidence points to the truthfulness
of the Christian worldview to the degree that you would have to move so much evidence out of the
way to make me not believe it at this point that even when I don't understand something I can trust
that maybe God knows something I don't and there's there's a level of giving up control in those
moments that I think is appropriate not giving up control in that you know I'm just turning my brain off
and I'm you know I'm gonna I'm just a robot at that point but that God calls me personally
and understands me personally because he knit me together and my mother's a womb and
there's there's a an intimacy there that exists the God of the Bible is you know sometimes say you
know when God revealed himself to the patriarchs the Abraham Isaac and Jacob to Moses he didn't say
you know I'm the all-knowing all-powerful all-everywhere God he said I'm the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob
I'm the God relationally I'm making a covenant I'm making an agreement I'm making a promise with my
people and then that all ultimately culminates in him stepping into time and reality in Jesus and
having friends having colleagues and laughing and traveling and crying and experiencing all of those
things I think that there's there's there's something that sets apart the Christian worldview with
Jesus that he's a real person that really lived that we can point to you know in one sense if the
Buddha didn't exist you could still technically have Buddhism you could have the philosophies you
could have the noble truths and you know the path and all of those things it didn't have to be
Guitama Sardartha who who came up with those things could have been anybody and likewise in
Islam it could have been anybody it didn't have to be Muhammad the God of Islam could have chosen
any person to be the prophet that he revealed his truth to but it does have to be Jesus
it cannot be anybody else and there is a historical grounding of the Christian faith that the
tomb is either empty or it's not and with empty now see us Lewis who I referenced before he said
Christianity of true is of infinitely importance if it's not true is of no importance the only thing
it cannot be is moderately important and he's famous for the whole liar lunatic or Lord
kind of Trilama if you look at what Jesus did and what he said about himself he's either a liar
in a con man he's either a lunatic and he's crazy or he's the creator of the universe and he's Lord
now we could also add one more legend we could say well he's just you know he's just a good figure
he's just a good person to pattern our lives after I don't actually think Jesus gives you the room
to to to look at him like that because Jesus didn't just say here's a philosophy to live by
he said I'm the way the truth in the life no one comes the father but through me and if you don't
believe that I am invoking the divine name from the Old Testament then he will die in your sins
you know he doesn't give us the room to just say you're a good example you know I said this
on Rogan where I said you know if Jesus is just a pattern then you don't need a savior
because you can do it yourself you just need an example if it's if Jesus is only an example to
live by then all you need to do is you know type your boots a little tighter and do better but
but the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross wasn't because Jesus came to show us how to live it was to
live the life we couldn't live and on that basis like I said before you're saved by works but it's
Jesus's work it's not yours I want to talk about I don't know what you call it but you know I wanted
to bring this up earlier when we were talking about all the other stuff from all the reform reform
is it Christian Christian Jeremy told me about this there are formerers the reformation
you you have some kind of reform am I wrong yeah so I'm I'm part of kind of a tradition of
Protestant Christianity that would typically be referred to as reformed their capital are reformed
and so what that is is it's going back to the Protestant Reformation so individuals like
Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Malanthan who were there were there were proto reformers there
were individuals prior to that a John Huss and John Wycliffe and what that period of time is in
the Protestant Reformation was it was a number of individuals who were looking at the church around
them and they were saying you know there have been these traditions that have developed these
accretions over time and we need to get back to the gospel we need to get back to primitive Christianity
there was a lot of things that were had taken place in the middle ages a lot of corruption within
the church hierarchy there were a number of popes who basically bought themselves into the position
of the papacy and it had children out of wet log and all these sorts of things it was a little bit
of a of a crazy time and there was what kind of spawned that with the the in in the what we typically
mark as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation is 1517 when Martin Luther nails his 95
these these to the door the chapel door of the castle church in Vittenburg Germany so that's kind
of this placeholder marker as the beginning of the Reformation in in in a historical sense what
Luther did wasn't actually all that odd you know now it is the equivalent of going to a football
game now in Vittenburg Germany in the 16th century was that one theologian would put up their debate
challenge on the door and another theologian would take it up and they'd go to the pub and they
would debate they'd go back and forth and so in a very practical sense Luther wasn't doing like
this wasn't an act of vandalism by nailing something to do a door and he actually could have very
well pasted it but the nailing in the hammer makes a good image but what he was doing was he was
challenging the church and particularly the Pope's authority to forgive sins in what are
referred to as indulgences so there's this idea now I'll try not to go into too much detail
about like the treasury of merit but the idea is that you can by giving money to the church
by forgiveness of sins to get yourself so many years off of purgatory so in this particular time
there was a lot of corruption in that they were trying to rebuild St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome
and one of the ways they did this was that they sent these individuals out who were basically
salesmen and there was a saying when a when a coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs
and the idea was that you know you give your money and you can get either your family members
who have passed away or maybe you in the future time off of purgatory and so Luther is looking at
this and he's seeing people being taken advantage of at this point he is he's a professor he's
teaching of the seminary but he's also a minister he's a priest in the church in infantburg
and he sees this and he's seeing this as people who don't really have the means to give
being taken advantage of for the purpose of rebuilding the St. Peter's in Rome and so he writes up
these these and part and parcel to it is that he's saying if the Pope has the authority to forgive
sins why doesn't he just do it if he can pull people out of purgatory by the grace and loving
kindness that he possesses why doesn't he just do it why do you have to pay him now that's a
kind of an oversimplification of the 95 articulations of what he puts but that's a big part of it
and this gets him in trouble it gets him in trouble because he's really pushing against
making sense I think that's part of it and also he was at a very advantageous time the printing
press had just taken on so it's not that there were other there weren't other people who were
challenging the Pope's authority or the Magisterium's ability but because people then take his writings
and they print them and through technology are able to get this out and it's just you know it
catches wildfire now all of a sudden Luther's teachings are all over Europe and so the availability
of the technological advancement aids the the change and the questioning and all of these things
while so Luther is kind of championed with starting some of this and then that that proceeds into
more and more and even the questioning of okay at the time the Bible is primarily read in Latin
it's not widely available in their vernacular of the people and so Luther endeavors to translate
the Bible into German into the language that people can read and this is also seen as controversial
because the lady are not seen as being able to properly interpret the word of God you need kind
of the intermediaries of the priests and and that the powers that be to tell you exactly what's going
on and so these individuals are called the reformers they're reforming the church to go back
so there are these things it's like a tree and moss has grown all over it and Luther is looking
at this and he's saying there's a tree in there and it's a good tree and it's a healthy tree
and it's a beautiful tree let's just shave all that moss off all of these traditions that we've
developed and so the kind of cries of the reformation are scripture alone faith alone by grace
alone to the glory of God alone I actually had it inscribed on the side of my Bible right here
solar scripture a solar gracia solar feed a solar christus solar day of glory right scripture alone
grace alone faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone wow and that that was the cry of
the reformation is that they were saying I mean those ideas kind of got articulated in those Latin
phrases a little bit later on but the idea is that scripture is unique in that it is the voice of
God it's unique in what it is and what it does and that that doesn't mean the tradition is not
important that doesn't mean that the church is not important but it means that scripture is
our only soul and fallible rule of faith and practice for the church that if you have a tradition
but the tradition contradicts or contravene scripture then you go to scripture you don't the
tradition is not on the same par whereas in the Catholic church then and now you do have the
understanding of an infallible church an infallible magisterium and an infallible scripture but
they're on more of an even playing field and so the the Protestant reformation said no no no
counsels air popes air people air God doesn't air and so let's go to scripture let's go to that
which is infallible let's make sure we're doing our due diligence you know this didn't make
everyone a pope to themselves we we still you have to read it within a proper understanding
of the context and the history there's a meaning to the text and you have to do your due diligence
to get to that meaning but ultimately in what this is and what it does it's unique it has
an ontological status of of of what it is in its being that is as as Peter says this all scripture
is this there's this Greek word that uses the upnostas god breathed and so that's that's different
and I had a systematic theology professor when I was in grad school who I always said a tradition has
a voice an emotion has a voice they have a voice and they have a vote but scripture has the
veto because scripture is the one that comes its origination is god alone and so in that sense
the reformed tradition following guys like Luther and Calvin and others
is the tradition within historical Protestantism that tries to focus on that those are the ideals
of you know this is this is our plumbline everything else is measured against this
and people can get it wrong church leaders can get it wrong popes can get it wrong and they do
they will but if this properly understood within its historical context within digging into
what it's actually intending to say the author had an intention there are many applications
but there's only one intention of the text in so far as it is communicated by the author the
human author inspired by god but that's kind of a brief overview maybe insufficient
of kind of the tradition that I I find myself in I am a Baptist and I'm reformed
you try to go all the way back to what I was written yeah I mean ultimately the thing that's
different about say the Protestant tradition that's different from maybe the Greek Orthodox
tradition of the Roman Catholic tradition is that Protestants aren't attempting to look at the
church within say the first hundred years and say they need to look exactly like me right like
my church needs to look like a first century Galilean church I don't that's not the claim and
it is in one sense the claim of Roman Catholicism in Eastern Orthodoxy and often kind of the
accusation is you're not going to find any one who looks like a Protestant within the early church
I know I think that's an over generalization but the claim is not do the traditions that the
Protestants adhere to within their church practice mere exactly what the like a church in the first
second third century look like as much as it is our beliefs at their central points of
understanding and articulation that which the early church articulated primarily from here right
because even you know even Paul writes to the churches in they're included in scripture he
writes the church in Corinth and says listen you're getting stuff wrong stop it right so it's not
if it's earlier it's better necessarily okay we're still going to get wrong things wrong right Paul
writes and he says the guy in your congregation he's sleeping with his he's sleeping with his
you know mother-in-law stop it that's that's gross it's evil and so it's it's that there's a constant
needing to be shaped by the word of God and let the central teachings of what God has inspired
be that thing which which draws us together okay wow
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all right west we're back from the break getting ready to dive into the dead sea scrolls but we
had we had a another offline conversation I love these turns into rabbit holes but we had
an offline conversation about in vitro and that kind of got mind mind triggered into you
know there's a lot of new things that are happening nowadays that with with advances in technology
that just weren't even a possibility or even a in anybody's mind that I would imagine
in vitro being one of them um sex changes AI like there's a whole slew of possibilities
in present day that we're not there back then and so I'm just I'm just curious I mean
within vitro thing you know we just had that discussion we don't have to get into it if you don't
want to or we can but but point being with all these new advances in technology and it's it's
it is I mean shit I don't know what you would call it other than creation but
it where do you send people to for guidance for moral guidance on on any one of these subjects
yeah and there's a lot more that I that I didn't mention that of course I mean AI alone right when
we're talking about there all sorts of questions about consciousness in regards to what we're
looking at with AI like is AI is it solving the churring test can it it recognize its own
existence and reality and it's there have been examples I think all throughout history of things
that are spoken to directly within scripture and so it's easy when we we're talking about moral
prescriptions to just go to the place where the moral prescriptions apply and do this don't do
that kind of thing but there are so many things that are in these weird gray areas that like
whether you're talking about pastors or counselors or theologians or whoever it's it's it's really
hard to try to pin down there isn't just an easy do this don't do this here's what the outline
says you know off off air I was saying you don't you don't open to second opinions chapter three
and you have that section on the exact thing you're looking for but I think what's interesting
about the Bible is that despite it being you know it's most recent book being 2000 years old
it's still informing our moral basis for so many things we're still using it in some ways as the
guiding principles because it provides an objective framework to understand you know whether that's
when life begins or things like consciousness or purpose or meaning or identity and how we
understand things so I think that though there are issues that aren't spoken to directly we can
look at examples that relate to some of the very different very not even within the consciousness
of a first century offer but and yet morality hasn't changed good is good and bad is bad
and there's still things that we need to parse through and figure out how do we figure out the
intricacies of that and I think that's where something like scripture can give us guiding
principles to the best of our ability try to speak into those situations not always straightforward
yeah I mean I don't think any of the thing I think one of them is pretty straightforward I don't
think the other ones are very straightforward I think I mean I don't think in vitro is I don't know
you know I don't know what I honestly didn't know what I thought about it until about 20 minutes
ago right you know and then I thought I was like huh that's an interesting question you know and
I mean there's actually something has come up in my own life I mean I've I've I talk a lot about
defense tech here and I've got the opportunities to invest in some major defense tech firms
and I thought or companies and I thought after the after I made the investments I was actually
there was one pending but I had already invested in in another one in an events tech in just
in company but then I then the question after I did it popped up into my head shit
should I have invested in this hmm this is I mean what do we use these things for yeah yeah
and then in the same on the other hand it's like well yeah I should have invested in this because
this might be the very same damn thing that saves my kids way of life right you know in the future
and so it's but it's a question that I don't know if I could find the answer to in there because
they didn't have defense tech firms back then and I don't know if you could even invest in I don't
know a spear maker yeah yeah well you know what it's interesting you do have similar conversations
within the early church period because you have say Roman soldiers who come to faith and you do
have in instances where say especially in the time of Augustin St. Augustin where you have the
conversations if you are a Roman soldier and you've now come to faith can you really be integrated
into the Christian community and that's where the whole concept of just war theory
particularly fleshed out by say in Augustin comes into purview where you know when is it right
to fight what what do we what do we truly understand contextually about a passage like
turn the other cheek what does that mean is it you know always be passive is is
you know complete a cessation of any type of self-defense what scripture is teaching I don't
think so I think I think I think Augustin got it right and he outlines that so there are instances
of that what did he outline well he outlined basically that you know he has these precepts and he
says it it it is right to defend the weak it is right to make sure that you know injustice is
not being done Paul says that the the government has the authority to wield the sword and so
there is there's a right that's actually given to the powers that be in order to enact justice
now we especially Christians it is likewise our duty to speak into that and make sure that
the magistrates the officials are not doing that unjustly so there's an accountability of
speaking into the laws that are are being enacted in order that God gives the authority to whether it's
the the the Pharaoh or the Caesar the emperor or the king or the governor the president of the
prime minister but that doesn't mean that everything they do is right just because God gives them that
power so we need to hold them accountable when they are not doing that justly right when the laws
because what what is a law a law is prescribed a morality when people say you can't force people
to be moral like you can't prescribe your morality what it's do not murder is the prescribed
morality so there's always going to be a level of that where as a Christian I want our society to
live by the laws that scripture actually dictates I think that's going to be better for it now a good
society is one where people's hearts are changed not just their actions and so it goes beyond simply
making people do things because if there's one thing we find out time and time again is that
you can make a law but we're really good at trying to find the loopholes we're really good at maybe
we'll obey it to not get in trouble but the good society the just society is one where you want
people to actually their hearts are changed in order that they actually want to obey because they
understand why it is good for them for society for the world to do those things but Augustan
looks at these things and he says the war is okay as long as it is done for the right reasons like
I think we would look at something like World War II and we would look at the tyranny and the
injustice of the Holocaust and we would say it was right for nations to get involved and not to
stop that from happening that doesn't mean that you know it's perfect that everything works out
in this nice tied up with the bow way but we
those kind of understandings of the the world around us and
and safeguarding the weak and looking after those who are marginalized and taking care of people
who are being abused I think that there's a place for that and we see that within the enacting
of Israel in the ancient world being under theocracy God is their leader and God is actually enacting
his justice when he tells them to go and wipe out certain nations because as the people of God being
his hand of justice in the world of that point now I do this is descriptive right is telling us
what happened it's not prescriptive it's not saying okay Sean and Wes you go and do likewise now
this is a different situation is telling us what happened but at the exact same time we do have
an example of God is judging groups of people because they are evil is using Israel to do that he's
using people to do that and a lot of the time I will have you know skeptics atheists agnostics
talk about you know if God is so good why doesn't he do anything in the world you know why
isn't he stopping evil well I think we actually have some instances of God stopping evil
and ironically those are oftentimes when people say oh look a bad goddess he's wiping out
these people in the grand scheme of things there's a context to that he was he's told Abraham I'm
going to give you I'm going to give you a lad I'm going to give you a nation but the sins of the
Amorites has not come to its full fruition so you're going to wait 400 years and anyway they wait
for 100 years for those people to repent God is being gracious as slow to his judgment there
and they don't they don't repent they get worse and so when that time comes after the exodus they're
going to the land the people are bad they're bad they're evil and so God judges them so I think
pacifism is not necessarily what my I believe got a scripture teaches but you look at what a
gustan articulates in saying you know there needs to be an even handedness in this there needs to be
carefulness to this you know even says that the defeated peoples shouldn't feel disgruntled at the
end of the battle that's really hard to do maybe that's a two ideal of a situation but unfortunately
going forward from that especially into the middle ages everybody who pointed to a gustan as
a justification for war kind of ignored all of the things that he laid out and only saw
fighting you're allowed to fight so it didn't always go the way it should have gone but
you know it's a it's a good example in in terms of you saying you know I
having reservations about contributing financially and what's what's the you know downstream
effect of something like arms you know or or anything else these aren't these aren't easy
black and white topics but I think I trust I hope that what I see in scripture is that God is not
going to judge us based on what we don't know okay I'm gonna judge us on what we do know and I think
God is going to be gracious with us in that if we are there's caveats to this obviously
but God judges those who know better worse we have a story of this I was reading this recently
um so there's uh first and second Samuel our two books which are really kind of one book
in the Old Testament and you have now closer to the beginning of first Samuel I have this story where
the Israelites are uh they're defeated in a battle and the the enemies the Philistines they take
the arc of the covenant which the Israelites have kind of prematurely brought into battle with them
because they think it's going to be some sort of magic fix all it's it's captured and the Philistines
just pick it up and they take it away and uh they put it in the temple of Deagon it causes all
sorts of problems because the island Deagon falls over in breaks and they're like we need to get
this thing out of here right the god of the Israelites is causing us to much trouble but they've
just picked it up and they leave whereas if you go to second Samuel uh there's a guy named
and the Israelites once again they're kind of playing fast and loose with God's laws they go into a
battle um and they're moving the arc of the covenant but they're not moving it how God actually
told them to move it they're they put it on a carton it's being carried with oxen whereas they're
supposed to have four priests carrying it on either side and march with it well they're they're
improperly and inappropriately carrying the arc of the covenant and the the wheel of the
the wheel of the the the wagon hits a pothole or whatever and the arc becomes unsteady
and uza who's right there puts his hand out to study the arc he touches the arc and he immediately
dies and you read that I remember reading that as a teenager and thinking we hold on
the Philistines in first Samuel they just pick the thing up they just take it and they leave
what's going on here mm-hmm I think this is a good example of you know uza was part of a nation
that said I'm gonna obey laws I'm gonna obey the good laws that God has given us as a chosen people
as an example to the surrounding nations and there's a responsibility there of what I'm supposed
to do and how I'm supposed to the standard that I'm supposed to be held by and so uza knew better
the group that he was with knew better then to move the arc in the way that they were doing
that was inappropriate of them to do that so because they knew better God judged them based on that
accountability accountability was higher and so when he touches the arc he dies because the
arc is a dangerous thing but he knows it's a dangerous thing and he should know better than to
just kind of very glibly retreating the presence of God on the mercy see like he is whereas the
Philistines don't know any better now it still causes them lots of trouble they need to get it out
of their camp eventually mm-hmm but I think in like telling that story what I'm communicating there
is that there's a level of accountability not that God is is arbitrary and subjective in the way
that he treats us but I think that we are going to be judged on the basis of what we do know not on
what we don't know and that doesn't mean that our sin is insufficient that doesn't mean that our
sin is winked at but these at the same time I think there are certain things that we we need to
weigh based on our conscience and on the level of accountability and understanding that we are given
and do our best to operate on that knowledge and sometimes that's not easy sometimes it is
I think this is why we should seek the wisdom and the understanding of people who know a lot
more than we do who are wise who have walked through these things who are you know elders in our
you know whether that's why I'm here I'm going to learn from you but so I think we should continually
be trying to mature and trying to learn but at the exact same time you know there's going to be
things that I do that I'm going to realize in retrospect maybe oh I should have done that very
differently and that's okay but we we should be trying to do our due diligence to try to the best
of our ability to conform that to scripture and the right teaching that God reveals to us
makes sense a little bit ago when I when I had mentioned when I called called a creation I thought
I noticed your face kind of changed there all of a sudden I did what would you what is your
definition of creation did I strike a chord there accidentally uh not that I am aware of maybe
that's an involuntary face twitch okay but uh maybe I need to see my doctor get that looked after
there's um yeah I mean I think it's really interesting the topic of creation I mean when I
when I brought it up we were talking about in vitro mm-hmm but then I think about what else are we
doing we can we now have the ability to clone mm-hmm clone in their animals we can clone humans
we have organs yeah we're growing organs you can grow organs in a basically a plastic bag now
or if you're trying to or yeah a bad guy you can just harvest them but you know what I mean so all
these things in I I get I don't know what else to call it other than creation but um
but you know like what I'm just what are your thoughts on all of that I think because it's not
it's different yeah I you know I've heard some people you're a link yeah putting a chip in your head
exactly I I've heard some people argue that this is evidence that we don't need God right like we
can create we can make a life what I always think is interesting about that's interesting is
that what this is all about is this I mean in the grand scheme of things and the battle of good
and evil is this is that all of that going to create a godless society well I think if anything
what it points to is that all of these things need an originator they need a creator right like
and we are created in the image of God who is himself the author of creation and so I think it's
just part and parcel it makes sense that we would then try to create something in our image right
whether you're talking about AI or whether you're talking about like computer models or whatever
all of that just in my mind points to the fact that we're we're just patterning ourselves
after our own creator and all of these things whether it's a beautiful painting or like a work of art
or um you know how an artist puts together visually or you know they're all different ways
that that can manifest these are testimonies to our ability to exemplify what God has instilled
in us as humanity there's something unique about humanity that other living things on this planet
just does it we they don't do it in the same way you can get an elephant to paint a picture with
trunk but is it really meditating on the beauty and the aspects and the angles and the if if if a
monkey painted the Mona Lisa would it be really thinking about you know the expression on the
individual's face and how that might be understood by the view all of these things I think are unique
to humanity there's something about us something about this species on this planet
that is just completely different than every other species and I think as technology
advanced and you get to something like AI or neural link or in my mind these are just testimonies to
we are in doubt with an ability to create I mean that's the whole the concept of the Sabbath
um within the old covenant system you work six days uh but the seventh day you rest
and it's not resting you know God doesn't rest on the seventh day because God is tired God
rests because he is viewing his creation and he's he's just looking over it and so there's an
understanding within I think you see how ancient Jewish writings talk about okay why do we rest on
the Sabbath what is the purpose of this there's all sorts of reasons why one of them is that there's a
there's an understanding that the only being in this universe that has the authority to create
is God and we create six days a week and we stop to acknowledge that God is the author of creation
not us so all of our creative acts are going to be an expression of that not everything from
nothing act of God right Xni hello but we pause to reflect on the fact that that doesn't come from
me that comes from the image that I bear and this is why it's so significant when Jesus calls
himself the Lord of the Sabbath when he's accused of working on the Sabbath it's in all four
gospels and in John is a little bit different he says my father is working until now and I'm also
working but if you kind of put that in the framework of Jesus's historical context and you look at
some of the articulations of ancient Jewish understanding of what the Sabbath is when Jesus says
I'm the Lord of the Sabbath there's an aspect of what he's saying that is I'm the only one who's
allowed to work on this day and and he's what he's really claiming even the Jews get very mad at him
for it is you saw that sunrise in the morning that was me I did that I'm the Lord of the Sabbath
so you know being accused of picking some heads of grain uh with his disciples and eating on
on on Saturday you know he's like listen I'm in control of all of this because that goes over
ahead because we don't have a framework for it Jesus claims to be God or not him saying I am
God worship me it's said in a much more Jewish accent than that but they are no no less a claim
of divinity and so that's when you when you look at these understandings of what the Sabbath is
of who God is and how he's the one who is the author of creation which by the way is the title is
given to Jesus he's also said to be the author of creation the alpha and the omega the beginning
in the end that in John chapter one in Colossians chapter one in Hebrews chapter one all three of those
authors give this exhaustive list that nothing was made without Jesus that everything was made for him
and by him Paul exhaust the prepositions you know that the author of Hebrews you know calls him the
progenitor of all things the in the exact image and likeness of God and it's a reflection of our
character that we also then create because we're made in the image of a God who is an artist who
who paints a picture of the universe with his words wow you brought up the ark of the covenant
mm-hmm who's that the ark of the covenant was the presence of God on earth in the Old Testament so
you have eventually the temple being made or prior to that is the tabernacle and then you have
this really interesting box that God tells the Israelites to make and he says I'm going to dwell
with you with the presence like the presence in the garden so you go all the way back to Genesis
chapter one and Adam and Eve are have this community communicative relationship with God in a very
unique way in fact when they eat of the fruit and they realize they're shaming their nakedness and
they hide it says that they heard the Lord God walking in the cool of the day and so there's a
presence there that's tangible and real but that like I was talking about before that separation from
God it's created a rift in that relationship and so there's there's the the rift has made the
proximity to God dangerous and eventually what you get in God's chosen people the Israelites
having that the presence in God in the tabernacle and then the temple God says I'm going to do
all with you but you need to be careful we need to be careful with this so there's a particular
way that you're going to build this and I'm going to my presence my glory is going to exist on
the top of this box and that's the arc of the covenant now interestingly enough when Jesus
comes around John's gospel starts out right in the beginning was the word in the word is with God
and the word was God but then in John 114 it says and the word became flesh and made his dwelling
among us and that word that we translate as made his dwelling is actually the same word that is
used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament translated prior to Jesus for tabernacled so
referring to the tent that the arc of the covenant which held the presence of God had so I think
it's very overt it would have been far more overt to the Jewish reader so some translations just
say made his presence made his dwelling there are some translations that say tabernacled among us
but I think the Jewish reader who's reading the Greek there if they were aware of the Greek
translation of the Old Testament would have immediately thought he's talking about God's presence
he's talking about what was dwelling over the arc of the covenant and guess what God is with us
again but it's in Jesus Jesus is that presence he's dwelling with us he's walking with us he's
in the midst of his people and that's what ultimately you know in Revelation in the last book of the
Bible it says that that's going to be there that presence is going to be there in the new heavens
in the new earth and so the arc of the covenant was part of this old covenantal system which is always
meant to point to something and this is if people are interested in this reading the book of Hebrews
in the New Testament the whole theme is how all of these things in the old covenant were shadows cast
by Jesus all of these things are fulfilled you like Moses Jesus the new Moses you like the
priest system Jesus is the priest who's never going to die he's always going to intercede on your
behalf you like the angels Jesus is greater than the angels you like the temple Jesus has
fulfilled the temple you are now the presence of the Holy Spirit you are now the temple so it's all
of these things it's an amazing book in that way and that it's talking to Jews who are tempted to go
back to go by they've been ostracized from the pagan recommend culture their day and now they're
proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah and they're being ostracized by their Jewish communities as well
the author of Hebrews says there's nothing to go back to don't be tempted Jesus is the fulfillment
of all these things don't go back to the shadows when you know what cast said it's this foolish
and ultimately part of that is that you know that presence of God in the tabernacle that
so there was a there was a curtain in front of the holy of holies where the arc of the covenant was
in the temple and in the gospels it says that when Jesus died the the the the curtain was actually
ripped into and there's a symbolic meaning in there in that the divide between the priests who get
to go into the holy of holies once a year on yomka pour on the day of atonement well now
you that that that's been that divide that's been eradicated because the author of Hebrews says
you have a priest who now intercedes on your behalf where you can go into the holy of holies
into the presence of God you can talk to God directly so that was a long-winded answer wow
what the arc of the covenant is that all right the dead squeeze the Dead Sea Scrolls yeah what are
the so the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish writings they were discovered
between 1947 and 1956 we have discovered some since then just fragments but the story is that
there were some Bedouin on the northwest side of the Dead Sea between the border of Israel and
Jordan and they were hurting some sheep and they discovered these jars full of documents so in
the Roman Jewish wars which happened kind of into the mid late first century but after Jesus
which ultimately culminated in 70 AD when Rome they marched into Jerusalem and they
sacked Jerusalem and they destroyed the temple um these Jews went and they hid kind of maybe
knowing that danger was coming they hid these documents in these caves in the the hills along the
coast of the northwest side of the Dead Sea that's why they call the Dead Sea Scrolls because that's
the location 11 caves altogether that that they were discovered in uh probably with the intention
to come back and get them when things were a little bit like had simmered down but they got wiped
out and so they never had the chance to go back and get them so ironically the arid environment
of the the region there preserved these things for close to 2000 years and we discovered them in
like I said the late 1940s I mean to the 1950s and they revealed a ton of uh
around 970 documents in um between 10,000 and 11,000 fragments so some of them are you know
entire books uh others of them are very very fragmentary they need to be pieced together
now interestingly enough the Dead Sea Scrolls are on exhibition at the Museum of the Bible in
Washington DC oh right now wow and I will actually be given be giving a tour on March 28th
of the Dead Sea Scrolls so if people are listening and this goes out in time um you can actually have
a tour of the Dead Sea Scrolls with me and my partnership with the Museum of the Bible but otherwise
I think it's worth seeing I think these are probably the most important archaeological discovery
of the 20th century wow and they shed so much light on ancient Judaism leading up to the time
of Jesus in understandings of different Jewish thought and practice but also every book of the
Bible apart from two of the Old Testament was discovered in in these and some of them were so
well preserved that what they did is they pushed back our understanding of the text of the Bible
close to a thousand years sometimes even further than that because for a long time our
copies of particularly the Hebrew Old Testament so we had translations like I've
referred to the Greek translation of the Old Testament those those have existed for a long time
um it's called the Septuagint is one of the main streams of the Greek translation of the Old
Testament most people in the time of Jesus were speaking and reading Greek if they were able to
read because that was the lingua franca the language of the day and so about 200 years prior to
Jesus a bunch of the books particularly the Torah the first five books the Bible were translated
from the Hebrew into the Greek and then as time went on more and more books were translated
of the Old Testament into Greek um so that started about the third century BC it didn't really
finish until the first century AD but our Hebrew copies of most of the Old Testament were from
the middle ages for a long long time wow and what the Dead Sea Scrolls did is all of a sudden we have
pre-first century copies of some of these books and we're able to compare them to compare something
like the great great song scroll or the great Isaiah scroll with copies of what's called the
masoretic text which is the text of the Hebrew Bible from the middle ages copied by the scroll
of these scribes the maserites and they're surprisingly similar shockingly similar some of them are
exact not all of them are but it the testimony of the fidelity between the time when we get something
like the Lenin Greg codex in the middle ages to something like the Dead Sea Scrolls
isn't huge gap and yet you you have now evidence of this faithful copying process over the centuries
of scribes to the point where you can follow them you know to the letter and see the fidelity
of of these texts is there any new testament in there no so it's all Old Testament so the thing
with the Dead Sea Scrolls is that most of them predate Jesus some of them are written in around
the time when Jesus was was living but they're mostly the writings we think of a group called the
Essenes who were a sectarian group of Jews who had removed themselves from the Jerusalem community
and gone out into the desert in this area called Kumron so they were a if you read the New Testament
you're going to hear about groups like the Sadducees and the Pharisees the Essenes were a group
aside from that and they had gone out of the desert and they had kind of their own rules and regulations
but they also copied a lot of these books and so along with a lot of other books they had
uh like rules and and wrote about what their their religious practices were and then had some other
theological writings that they deemed valuable but they clearly viewed what we call the Old
Testament the Hebrew Bible of scriptures is is incredibly important as scriptural as their guiding
principles but they often viewed the propheticness of those as applying to their day right then
and there like they thought kind of apocalypticly that they were going to be the reason why you know
everything was solved because of their they're very faithful practice okay and Jerusalem they'd
capitulated they were you know in in bed with Rome and they'd removed themselves they were pure
they were holy and they had some other you know practices that were a little bit more sectarian
and agmatic there so not all of the documents in the Dead Sea Scrolls are part of the Kumron community
a lot of them are but then there are other writings from groups that were hidden in the caves
that kind of and then some of them are just like very unusual there there's a treasure map
um this is a treasure map too so it's it's known as the copper scroll uh so it's the only one that's
not on either um parchment or on papyrus but it's on very thin sheeps of copper and it's rolled up
and it's a treasure map with all of these locations uh uh of of a lot of gold and silver
so some people have tried to kind of decode it and figure out where you know is this some of the
stuff uh that's the treasure from the temple is this you know some of the treasure of Solomon
from the Old Testament it's not entirely clear um but it does appear to be like the person who wrote it
does seem to think that this is where treasure is but that's kind of an outlier a lot of the
others have to do with religious practice or kind of historical scriptural things
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what percentage of this is in the bible or is a book in the bible so about uh
uh um so all of the books of the bible apart from uh one prophetic book and uh
ester were were found within in amongst the dicey scrolls um it's it's also in a number of
different languages so about 75 percent of it is written in Hebrew but some of it is written in
Greek and some in aramaic and uh a minority very small minority in nabatian so um that's where
it's like it's kind of a grouping the dead sea scrolls is an umbrella term for all of these
writings they just happen to be discovered in these 11 caves on the northwest side of the
dead sea but they're incredibly important and shed light on even things like uh there's one
particular manuscript which talks about the messiah and talks about the messiah in divine terms
and so this kind of shed light on our understanding of accusations that early christians are
imposing a foreign idea on to jesus you know that the messiah was going to be a divine figure
well we have actually some texts in the dead sea scrolls which actually do kind of indicate
that the messiah who is about to come the this anointed one he's actually going to have
a divine quality to him that exceeds just a mere man they're they're writing about this before he
came yeah yeah well that that was the expectation that the messiah was going to come so that that's
going on all throughout you know the Old Testament period but the the Essenes uh they they they
have an understanding that there's there's going to be two messiahs one from the line of
Aaron who's going to be a priestly messiah and one from the line of david who's going to be a king
messiah and that these people are going to fulfill the expectation of making all things right with
the nation of Israel particularly they're kind of sect of Israel that they see as the the pure one
and part of that was going to be they were going to drive out the Romans and make all things right
and they have a lot of um writings about them being the children of light and it's going to they're
going to defeat the children of darkness which could be assumed as you know the Greeks the Romans
or whoever but either way they're very apocalyptic in their understanding of these things
what else have we learned from them i mean they're they're very uh i mean the dead sea scrolls
are so fascinating because they shed so much understanding on like how Jews were say parsing out
some of the things within the Old Testament that maybe um we'd like to know more about so something
like the inocaine literature so there's a book of inoc so there's there's there's actually three
books of inoc for a second and thirty inoc the one that civically referred to as the book of inoc
is first inoc and some it's it's it's it's an amalgamated group of different literature
the book of the watchers the book of the giants uh the book of parables these kinds of things
that we all put into one book that we call first inoc some of it's really old uh and actually
right now on display at the Museum of the Bible you can see a fragment of astronomical inoc which
is on display i think for the first time ever i don't think it's ever been displayed this fragment
of astronomical inoc but what the documents that make up what we call first inoc are trying
to extrapolate on is what's going on before the flood so you have in Genesis chapter six there's
very you know cryptic passage of the sons of god saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and
they came and they slept with them and these women gave birth to these children that were the
Nephilim that were the heroes of old men of renown and so there's a bunch of different interpretations
in the ancient world as to what this means the um the Greek translation of the Old Testament
translates Nephilim as uh gigas which is giants and so there's a there's one particular
understanding of that uh and there's both a kind of naturalistic explanation that the sons of god
weren't necessarily angels but then there's another stream of interpretation that's fleshed out in
something like the book of inoc where it talks about okay well who are these sons of god and so
why were they um why why what were there their progeny what were the Nephilim and how did this come
into being and so uh it kind of does this through a narrative about the great grandfather of Noah
Inoc and flashes some of these things out and this goes into like a long history of leading up to
the New Testament where there's uh you know the demons kind of show up in the New Testament there
really isn't all that much said in the Old Testament about demons but in some of this
ancient Jewish literature that's incorporated and found in the Dead Sea Scrolls we have some of
these discussions of things like what are the demons well there was a pretty strong
thread of thinking within ancient Judaism that demons were disembodied spirits of the Nephilim
so the Nephilim if you're taking a supernatural understanding of who they are their fathers are
angels and their mothers are humans so they're kind of these half supernatural half carnal
things so when they die their spirits don't have anywhere to go so now they're trapped in their
wandering the earth they're aimless and they're constantly trying to get back into a physical form
and so they possess people and because they're not really meant to do that because they're
these wayward supernatural beings it never really works out and they end up making people do all
sorts of crazy things and they're they're cursed because they're unholy they're the the progeny
of fallen angels and so there's all this stuff so some of this literature is flushing that out now
is that really what's going on I don't know what do you think about that I think it's very very
interesting I think some of it makes sense I think on things that scripture whispers about I
don't want to yell too loudly I'm very conscious I'm I think it's entirely plausible given what the
what we see within scripture and the fact that it's not 100% clear exactly what demons or even
angels are but that's what something like the book of Enoch is trying to flesh out and so some
of this literature what kind of falls into the category of what's called pseudo-pographical writing
so pseudo means false right in Greek and graphene means writing so it's a false writing so it's
attributed to an author who's not really the author or about an author that's not necessarily
meant to be thought of realistically as that author so Enoch the book of Enoch almost certainly
wasn't written pre-flood in the time of Enoch and there's all sorts of ways that we can tease that
out with even the time-keeping that it it includes is very influenced by the Hellenistic time-keeping
the Greek time-keeping in the day there are illusions to the book of Daniel to the book of
Deuronomy and the book of Numbers which are in the Enochian literature which means that they're
probably being written after those and especially with the book of Daniel which is in the Persian
period that's quite late so and even some ancient Jewish writers like Josephus who comes around
at the end of the first century very beginning of the second century when he has his conversation
in in a writing of his where he's talking about scripture he specifically says that nothing
was written before Moses so he kind of disqualifies Enoch as being you know this is claiming to be
written prior to there's no scripture that's written prior to that so that's kind of his category
of articulating that but I mean these things are you look at the ancient world and how they're
trying to flesh things out and though they're some in some ways very ambiguous like scripture
tells us what we need to know not always what we want to know but I don't think that that means
that we cancel out any idea of a theory or a probability or a possibility of say you know what is a
demon I don't claim to totally know but I think it's very interesting that the Jews themselves in
the ancient world prior to leading up to and during the time of Jesus they're also discussing these
things wrestling with them and coming up with these ideas that we can read to interesting kind of
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why did why did um well how many Dead Sea Scrolls didn't make it how many of the Scrolls did not
make it into the Bible so uh yeah so i mean part of the trickiness like i said before is
that the Dead Sea Scrolls are kind of an umbrella category it's like saying library right like uh
there's a whole bunch there's a range of literature so by the time in and around Jesus
the Protestant what we have in the Protestant Old Testament was I would argue established
as the Hebrew scriptures so modern orthodox Jews today their Bible is the Tanakh the Torah
the Naviim and the Ketsavim the law of the prophets and the writings that's the same number of
books that are in a Protestant Old Testament so there are other books that are also
included in the Dead Sea Scrolls like i said some of them are apocalyptic the war scroll
is a really interesting one which is you know another apocalypse so we have an apocalyptic
book in our Bible revelation right but apocalypse is weren't that uncommon in ancient Jewish
writings in fact enoc is in many ways an apocalyptic book but the war scroll is an apocalyptic book
and uh so there's different categories that are um included within the Dead Sea Scrolls
but what do you mean different i mean it sounds like way i'm hearing that is there's different
apocalypse is is that what you're saying so apocalypse is just a category of literature it's
like saying biography or letter or so the one that ends up in the Bible is the book of revelation
and that's tied to specifically the john who's you know a traditionally associated with john
the apostle of Jesus and so when we're talking about the canon of scripture what books
are aren't included in our Bible what the early church is doing first of all they have a direct
connection in association with the early Jesus community so there's a chain of custody in that
there are individuals who are disciples of the disciples of Jesus so you have guys like
so the dagger i gave you is named after urnaus urnaus is part of a community where they're called
the apostolic fathers where their own teachers are the apostles so in one sense the earliest
Jesus community has a direct line of communication with people who knew Jesus
okay and so when they're talking about okay you were the old covenant and there were books
that were associated with the old covenant right god makes a covenant with Moses you have the
Torah you have the law god makes covenant with Israel you have prophetic writings and there is
an understanding in ancient Judaism that covenant and writings were intricately connected so Jesus
comes along he establishes the new covenant he establishes even like the signs of that in the
last supper in the the Eucharist the Lord's table and the apostles see themselves as kind of the
arbiters of the new covenant so the natural question for the earliest Christians who were Jews
who believe in Jesus as the Messiah is okay new covenant where are the books
because that understanding is carried over it's an ancient Jewish understanding god makes a promise it
makes a covenant with the people and it's followed up by books that we have the new covenant
where are the books kind of the natural organic question the follow that and so very very early on
the four biographies of Jesus Matthew Mark look and John they are being read as scripture
Justin martyr this early Christian writer refers to them as the memoirs of the apostles he says
when Christians gather together early in the morning they read the memoirs of the apostles
and and the letters of Paul are very early collected together and even in one single document so we
in the late second early third century we have two collections of manuscripts one they're
referred to as p 46 and p 45 and those are a grouping of the fourfold gospel canon and acts
and pause letters so like I said before most of these are circulating independently
okay as like you have a copy of pause letters for Romans because once again it's super expensive
right I mentioned codex about a canis earlier there's another one codex synaticus which comes from
the fourth century it would have taken 360 sheep to make so like no small commitment and effort
and financial you know contribution so you would usually just have them in single books but the
four gospels we do find collections of them all together and whenever we have conversations of
what is scripture there's very little debate about the gospels and there's knowledge of other
gospels a gospel Thomas gospel of Peter gospel of Philip but they're always mentioned in connection
of saying they have no connection to the actual apostles we know what are the documents that
have connection to the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the gospel of Thomas doesn't it's
it's a it's a forgery it's false Thomas was dead by the time it was written so we have really
Christians talking about this stuff and in going back to your original question like when we have
these conversations on canon the Christians are wrestling some books are a shoe in the gospels we
can tie directly to Matthew he was a disciple of Jesus John he was a disciple of Jesus Luke is a
traveling companion to Paul and Mark is intricately and closely tied to Peter so those are kind of a
shoe in right and then you have the letters of Paul those are kind of a shoe in but then you have
questions about some of the others and some of those questions have to do with the fact that you
have other letters floating around with apostles names so in our new testaments we have for
second and third John at the letters of John and first and second Peter those took a little bit
longer for the dust to settle on to get into what we would consider as like a closed canon
and it it was partly because the early Christians were looking and they were looking around and
they were saying okay there are other groups writing documents and they're co-opting
popular figures names like Peter and like John because those are very you know key individuals
in the early Jesus community so we need to do our due diligence because we have
we have first and second Peter we have this other writing called the gospel of Peter we have an
apocalypse of Peter we have an acts of Peter let's let's make sure we know let's make sure we're
actually reading the book that is tied to the actual Peter and so some of these books take a
little bit longer to get full wide acceptance and I think that's a good thing and in terms of like
books that are maybe found in the Dead Sea Scrolls that are like other Jewish writings the Jews
had already fleshed a lot of that out in that they saw some of these books is very valuable
very like key into the historical understandings of the Jewish nation especially during the time
of the Greek occupation and the Hasmanine revolt and like these are important writings
but the Jews didn't consider them scripture and we can look at individuals like I mentioned before
Josephus who talk about this and kind of lay out guidelines and say like here is we don't have
an innumerable books of holy scripture like the Greeks do we have a set number and here's how we
understand that set number and Paul says in the book of Romans that the Jews were entrusted with the
oracles of God and so part of the conversation of the Old Testament scripture is okay some people
like Jerome in the 4th century was responsible for putting together the Latin Vulgate which was the
Latin copy of the Bible that was the Bible of the church for a thousand years okay he goes back
and he's a he's a very competent linguist so he knows Greek and Hebrew and he's going back and
he's talking with rabbis and he's saying okay well what do you consider scripture what are these
conversations and there's kind of a disagreement between him and Augustin about some Old Testament
books but and so there are all these conversations happening but ultimately the Doss does settle
and there is an established core of books and that's the 66 the 66 that's in this Bible are the
established core and there's debate about some others even leading up to the reformation which is
why Luther says you know let's not worry about some of these other books that there's continual
debate for that you know even some popes are not are saying that's not scripture um let's let's
stick to the ones that we know the Jews themselves considered scripture and that's the central core
and that's what we will hold to as the word of God but all that to say it's the Dead Sea Scrolls that
kind of elucidate some of our understandings of that in looking at okay what were some of these
groups reading and maybe how were they treating these books in the way that they were copying them
that Shed's light on some of these conversations are they are the other books that aren't in the
Bible are they published somewhere can you get them oh yeah I mean a Roman Catholic Bible will have
what's called the Deutero canonical books so Deutero canon means second canon um so to give the
you know the Roman Catholic Church there do they would say second in reception not second in authority
so they were officially pronounced as part of the official canon at the council of Trent
in the after the reformation there's a counter reformation after the Protestant reformation
and that's when those books were officially designated as these are included in scripture so you
can get um Protestants typically typically refer to it as the apocrypha uh which is just a designation
that goes back to the ancient church for books that are not canonical or canonical or you're
apocryphal doesn't mean all apocryphal books are heretical there's not part of scripture um but you
can read them yeah first and first second and third macabees um Tobit Judith you know the bell
in the dragon there's an extra chapter of the Psalms these are I think good useful books to read
would encourage everybody to read them because I do think that they they shed light on our understanding
of ancient Jewish culture and something like the macabees tell us about the story of Hanukkah
where uh you had the Greeks they go in and they take over Jerusalem and uh the the Greek emperor
goes in and he he desecrates the temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar of God to Zeus so like
bad news bears all over the place right and uh then um Judas macabees uh Judas the hammer
he goes in and he he defeats them and he rededicates the temple to God and that's Hanukkah
this is this story that happens prior to the time of Jesus and then you get to Jesus and in the
gospel of John it talks about Jesus going to Jerusalem to the temple for the feast of dedication
that's Hanukkah so something like the macabees can they can actually shed a lot of light on
what's going on even in how we understand what Jesus is doing in his own day like why do Jews
today celebrate Hanukkah what's about this historical event that took place prior to Jesus
and we read about that in these very valuable books these these historical books but the
the differentiation is are these considered scripture and as a Protestant I would say no
and I would say that they're good historical reasons to believe that going through all of the
conversations of the the last 2000 years um but I think people should read them whether they
think that their scripture or not what's in the what you call the war scroll yeah the war scroll
what's that about so that's uh that's the battle so it's either called the war scroll or the
battle of the sons of light versus the sons of darkness and it's this big cosmic battle of
uh kind of the the the Essenes the Kumaran community seeing themselves as the ones that are holding
down the fort for the people of God um so the the high priest under David in the Old Testament was
a guy named Zorak so uh there's uh uh they see themselves as kind of successors of the high priest
under David and they see themselves as the ones who are undefiled from all of the corruption that
they see going on in Jerusalem so they there's this they write this document that is this cosmic
battle between angels and demons and all these things and really it's a it's a representation
of what they see as you know the marching orders of how they need to be as holy as possible
and that there's a cosmic battle that's raging in in the background in the supernatural realm uh
that is going to influence how one day all things going to be made right God's going to win
and there are going to be the ones that are going to be kind of the the way that this comes into
fruition wow wow you know this morning uh at breakfast we we were talking about um a lot of the
people who have studied this have never been to the location where they were found um what do you
think that's important i think it should be there yeah i think it connects us to the times and
places where these things happened and so so one of the the things that we with the organization
that i have the the pleasure and opportunity to be the vice president of the paulgetics
canada we have this video series can i trust the bible and what we want to do is we want to tell
some of those stories in the places where they happen to try to make that kind of connection
so we go to naqamadi where the naqamadi library was discovered in the desert in egypt
where the gospel of thomas and the gospel of philipp were included and i we went to the naqamadi desert
i stand in an approximate location of where it could have been potentially found and i tell the story
of this bedouin shepherd who is wandering through the desert he's digging for what's arguably
fertilizer and he finds this jar and in it are these books and i think you know for me personally
there's something really amazing about kind of just standing and visualizing where this happened
and then being able to tell that story in the location so the one we recently did we were just in
turkey my colleague gandy and i and we are filming in isnec which is the modern side of the ancient
city of nicaea because the council of nicaea often becomes this uh kind of uh uh catch all for
conspiracy theories about whether that's the books the bible or the divinity of christ that's kind
of the divinci code-esque argument is that all of these things get pinned on constantine in the
council of nicaea so we went to nicaea and the the basilica the church where they think it happened
was discovered recently it's in a lake so the there's been a drought the lake's been receding
over time and when the lake receded it actually revealed the footprint of this ancient church
no way yeah it's really cool where is this this is an isnec turkey is this where you you were just
there yeah so we my colleague gandy and i we weighed out into the lake in front of the ruins
you can see them we fly a drone over top and you can see the ruins is like this this footprint of a
church um really amazing stuff and we talk about did you dive it no so at this point when it was
discovered you actually had to dive it and we planned when we like map this out we were going to
dive it um my my colleague gandy is actually a pretty experienced uh uh scuba diver and so that
was our intention but the lake has receded so much that it's basically on dry land at this point
okay so we we we were like not that far off the shore and uh uh like the waves are laughing
up on the top of of the ruins wow but um we went there to tell the story because in 2025 it was
1700 years because it was 325 is when the council of nicia happened and so we went and we're like we
don't we don't just want to clear up the details of what didn't and did happen to the council nicia
we want to do it in nicia we want to do it in front of the the ruins of the the sunken basilica
and i think that just that i hope what that does for the viewer is it connects them in a more
tangible way that these aren't just facts and these aren't just kind of data points this is real
history and when we can connect with the real history and talk about what actually happened
that that connects us to something bigger than just me as a talking head um and i think it just like
those opportunities are man that is amazing all right west we're winding down the interview
i want to ask
what is the most compelling piece of evidence for you
that proves jive that proves jesus's existence i'm always curious everybody you know
yeah you know i think i don't think it's necessarily one thing what i'm always blown away with
for the multi-valent case of the christian worldview is that when you look at the claims
of christianity and ultimately like them centering on who jesus is there are so many
cross over interlocking areas of inquiry and evidence you know now i i went to university
because i had full intention of going into the police force what yeah i wanted to be i wanted to be
serious yeah yeah i wanted to be police detective got out other plans and i kind of went off now
unbeknownst to me historiography and detective work are not all that i was just gonna say that
but in police work especially with something like uh like an investigation on a murder say
you want a number of lines of evidence that vary on how good or not good they are right because it
makes a cumulative case some evidence is a lot better than other evidence but when you put it
all together it makes that cumulative case to point to the evidence of a specific thing happening
and this is where i think people people often miss the boat in that we don't just believe the god
of the bible arbitrarily it's not like i picked Yahweh but i could have picked Zeus you know i
believe that there's evidence that ultimately points to the truthfulness of the christian worldview
so when you have someone like rickard jervais who says you there are 30,000 religions out there
you really think yours is true in my mind sometimes i think that's like standing in front of a judge
and saying there are 30,000 people in this town you really think this guy's the guy you did it
well it depends what the evidence is right it depends whether the evidence is pointing in the direction
of that person being the culprit and so it's not just arbitrary we didn't just pick a random
person and put him on trial there's evidence that actually points to whether that person is guilty
or not and actually there could be good evidence and bad evidence and the judge could throw at some
evidence as being inconsequential or weak but it's all of that evidence together and so when i'm
looking at the historical evidence and i'm looking at something like whether that's the transmission
history of the manuscripts that i see you know we can look at the Dead Sea Scrolls and we can see
their fidelity to a thousand years later and that being so close that it's staggering sometimes
or just you know a copy i have some like high grade photocopies facsimiles and manuscripts
that i do my academic work on and i have a couple of like late second early third century copies
of the gospels and i'm looking at it and i'm looking at it i'm reading the Greek and when i'm
sight translating it and i look at my english bible i'm like guess what i'm translating
like i could i might as well just open this up because the connectivity is just there now that's
not to say there aren't like differences in spelling word order or variances those do exist
but it's just like the fidelity is just so mind blowing to me personally and then you look at the
internal evidence and you look at the fact that the names the places the facts the information
all tie it to the first century in Galilee of people who either they were there themselves
and they're communicating this or like the gospel author Luke says that he's interviewing
eyewitnesses he says that at the beginning of his gospel he's very purposeful you know i'm not
i wasn't there but i'm writing these things down and making an orderly account i'm interviewing
eyewitnesses so that you may know the things you are taught and so you look at these levels of
the things that we're trying to highlight with the can I trust the bible series the internal
evidence and with the names the places the people and you see that and you go wow this this is
testifying to it being written in the place it's claiming to be written in the time frame it's
claiming to be written and when we use that exact same methodology and criteria for something like
the gospel of Judas guess what it reveals that the names the places the details outed as being
written in third century Egypt and so you're like so when you ask well what is the piece of evidence
i think i think it's a multi-valent web that all conjoins at the truthful claim of all of these
things are pointing to this guy Jesus they're all pointing all there's prophecies in the old
testament there is an expectation this guy Jesus he comes on the scene he fulfills in some instances
very specific prophecies he predicts his own death and resurrection and then he does it
and as a friend of mine likes to say people who rise from the dead have more credibility and authority
those who don't rise from the dead right and so i so i find it so fascinating that i'm i'm a
transistor and so i look at the historical data but when i talk to my my colleagues and friends
who are scientists who are philosophers who are sociologists and they also have all of these
different kind of lines of argumentation some of which you know i don't like this one i don't like
that one but it's the cumulative case the points to the truthfulness so you could eliminate one
and i don't think it would it wouldn't collapse my worldview because i genuinely believe that at
this point with my inquiry and investigation like i said before i think it's intellectually robust
but it's also exicentially satisfying it's changed my life it's changed the way that i think
you know i see it's Lewis record before he said you know i believe in Jesus like i believe in
the sun not that i see it but that by it i see everything else and so it's that's why we call it
a world of you right it's how we view the world around us and when we were talking before about
you know those those times where we struggle the those seasons of the dark nights of the soul
it's not that those aren't tangible but it's when i'm really struggling i go back to
listen i have something that points to truthfulness and despite my very subjective
feelings despite what i might be struggling with right now i i genuinely believe this is true
and the truthfulness of that changes the way that i live for the better that as echoes into
not just this life which should be lived well which should be lived with integrity but
after my mortal coil is given up and i go into eternity uh that i
more questions will be answered in a way that i never could have understood before
i'm actually i'm curious about those two what what his strength in your faith more is it through
your researchers through your personal experiences when i say personal experiences i mean
the miracle that you're not a pair of paralyzed from the waist down now
yeah i stuff like that i'm not church in either or i think it's a both and um i don't think you know
faith isn't an intellectual endeavor i don't think we're gonna stand before god and he's
gonna give us a theological test because if he did i'd fail right i think we'd all fail um
it's it's it goes beyond that you know paul i read his is in effusion chapter two earlier he says
you know faith is a gift it's a gift or saved by faith through grace and there's something about
that which has always been very tangible for me especially in my field where there are plenty of
non-believing atheist agnostic biblical scholars who know all sorts of things that um are
even like like go beyond even my level of understanding and that's been a testimony to me
that you can't you can't intellectualize yourself into the kingdom of god it's not about that
it's not about knowing the most there is something that is genuinely goes beyond the transcendent
beyond just the simple understanding right james even says you believe that god is one
says great even the demons believe that and they shudder at that fact it's not about you know who
knows god the best let's probably satan but what what is different about the understanding that
goes beyond i think the factual knowledge sits as kind of the confidence building of i i can have
hope because i truly believe that this is something that is true with the capital T
but beyond that i've actually seen Jesus change my life i've seen Jesus take my heart of stone
and give me a heart of flesh and remove desires that i had before to do things that were wrong you
had a heart of stone yeah we all have hearts of stone that's it we all have hearts of stone and
apart from the saving work of the spirit speaking to our life you know we are going to choose death a
hundred percent of the time me i west you know without god working in me i am going to fight him
with everything i have because i don't know what's good for me and so i mean that's why it's such
the invitation that christ extends is so amazing because he doesn't need to do that he doesn't need
to save us like i said before he's never he's not better or worse off if i choose to follow choose
to worship he's still god he's still ruling and raining he's still the author of creation and the
creator of the universe and yet not only does he invite me into that but he himself steps into the
conversation and he becomes a human being he comes a baby vulnerable and and and you know crying
in a manger a feeding trough in israel and in Bethlehem and how does god show he he can't he
can't become any greater right so he steps down from the highest highs into the lowest lows
to show how great he truly can be and that like i said before if god is love and love is the
greatest ethic and the greatest example of that greatest ethic is self sacrifice then the god
of the bible has truly in himself exemplified what love embodies and it's in jesus christ
wow do you think god speaks to you i think god speaks to me in so far as
he moves me i don't think i've never heard an audible you know thus say it the lord statement
but i think the ways that god communicates with us in in leading us um i think through our
conscience in in how he directs us in the ways that certain things come together i think are
tangible that are not necessarily uh like a a prophetic of us say at the lord statement the author
of hebrus who i mentioned before opens his book by saying god having spoken long ago to the
fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days spoke to us in his son
whom he appointed air of all things through whom he also made the worlds who is the radiance of his
glory in the exact representation of his nature and upholds all things by the word of his power who
having accomplished cleansing of sins sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high and i think
you know there's something beautiful about god presenting us with his word that's tangible
that we can look at and can influence us and i think in the moments where i've heard god's voice
speak to me most is in the quiet moments of reflection of reading scripture and seeing
just the profound truths through all 66 books woven together that speak to things that i didn't even
know i needed to know about who i am about the people around me about who god is and how that
just so drastically and and impactfully changes the way that i understand the world
man i love that would you uh would you mind leading us in prayer yeah i'd love to and thus
thank you i thank you for this time lord i thank you for shan and i thank you for just the
giftings and opportunities that you have given him that you have blessed him with
a lord i pray that you would continue to lead him in your understanding for your glory
lord would you shape us into the image of your son jesus christ each and every day
by the power of your word and your spirit who leads or that your word would be our rule
and your spirit our teacher and your greater glory our supreme concern for the growth of your kingdom
and the name of the one who has saved us jesus christ amen amen
bless woke up very restless this morning and um you put me at ease oh i appreciate that thank you
yeah it's been an absolute pleasure it has been i i'm so glad we met yeah very thankful god bless
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