JONI: WELL, IS IT TOO DANGEROUS FOR YOU TO KNOW CERTAIN TRUTHS? ERIC METAXAS JOINS ME
AT THE TABLE TO EXPOSE THE LIES, BY REVEALING SOME
SHOCKING REVELATIONS YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS. IF YOU'RE ENJOYING
TABLE TALK, BE SURE TO LIKE,
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they are falling behind. ♪♪♪ Joni Lamb: Well, are some
truths so dangerous and paradigm shifting that
some will abandon all reason to ignore it or even bury it
to keep you from hearing it? Well, today with the help
of our special guests, we'll look at some shocking
truths that are exposing lies that some have believed
for years, decades, or even centuries. But before we get to that,
joining me around the table is my dear friend,
Dehavilland Ford. How are you? Dehavilland Ford:
I am so excited, and I'm so excited
that we have voices that are standing for truth,
like the guests today. Joni: I love it, and I think
people really are at a point where they just wanna see
authenticity and truth. Dehavilland: Yes, there's
a cry in our culture for what's real, because they've
seen so much of what's not. Joni: Yeah, Anna Kendall,
how are you? Anna Kendall: I'm excited
to be here just like she is, and I think our guest
is awesome. Joni: And you're our voice
of wisdom. Anna: Yes, I am a voice
of wisdom. Joni: Because you are the
wisest one at the table with all of your years of experience,
and you look fabulous. Anna: Oh, thank you so much. Joni: Thank you for being here.
Rachel Lamb Brown, how are you? Rachel Lamb Brown:
I'm doing good. Joni: Yeah, you ready? Rachel: This baby is--
just pray for me that I can breathe
through this show. Joni: Cindy Johnston,
how are you? Cindy Johnston:
Hey, I'm doing wonderful. Excited to be here today
and this guest is fascinating. Joni: He really is. Cindy Murdock,
how are you doing, my friend? Cindy Murdock:
I'm doing very well, and I wanna say thank you
for this program, that there'll be a voice that
goes out to expose deception and the lies of the enemy. Joni: Well, you know, a lot
of times we get coconut coffee in the morning, so we've gotta
catch up on that. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see. Well, he is a bestselling author
and radio personality that has boldly taken on the
task of helping educate others with the truth about
relevant current events, as well as overlooked
or even forgotten history. Please welcome our dear friend,
Eric Metaxas. Anna: Yes, there he is. Eric Metaxas: This is nice. Joni: Well, we are living
in some interesting times. It seems everywhere you look,
you're confronted with narrative after narrative regarding
what you should think and how you should believe,
but is the messaging true, or could there be evidence
they just don't want you to see? Well, today we're looking at
some topics that directly affect the world around us,
and let's start with a big one. That big topic is what? Eric: Oh, let's see, how about
whether God exists, and what does science
have to say about that? Joni: You know,
a lot of people don't know and understand. We talk about it here
at the table, but the Bible is not only
the greatest history book, but it's also the greatest
science book. People have been trying
to disprove it for years, and years, and years. Eric: Well, first of all,
you know, as somebody who believes
in the God of the Bible, the God of the Bible
is the God of reality. If he invented the universe,
there's nothing in the universe that could be
contradicted in the Bible. But we've all kind of bought
this narrative, whether you're a believer
or not, that, like, well, faith is being pushed away
by science, and the more science we learn,
the less we have need for God. That is flat out not true,
and in my new book I talk about the fact that
not only is it not true, we can know that it's not
true and the opposite is true. The more we learn from science,
from modern science, the more evidence we have,
and I'm saying a level of evidence that you won't
believe me until you read it. Joni: We can all start, maybe,
like, with the Big Bang. Let's talk about that. Eric: Well, actually,
I wanna start with the title of the book so people
understand. It's not a book about atheism,
right? In 1966, there was a famous
"Time Magazine" article that asked, cover article,
is God dead? The world was kind of coming
to its conclusion, like, science is pushing God out,
and so let's put this right on America's living room tables,
coffee tables, is God dead? The evidence since 1966,
including the Big Bang, which you just brought up,
all this stuff has been shifting in the opposite direction,
so that today the logical question to ask,
and I'm not making this up is: Is atheism dead? I actually say atheism as
an intellectual idea is dead. There may be a lot of atheists,
but there are a lot of flat-earthers. It doesn't change the fact that
we know the earth is not flat, but the idea that this comes
form science, I just find it so ironic
because, I mean, the Big Bang
is a classic example. I find all this stuff funny,
right? Einstein, in 1911, now you can't
think of a greater scientist except for Isaac Newton
than Albert Einstein. In 1911, his equations were
leading him to believe the universe is expanding, which
means that if it's expanding, that at one point
if you go backwards from where it expanded, that
it started at a single point. This was what Einstein came up
with privately. As a scientist, he thought,
"This is embarrassing. People are going to accuse me
of being a creationist, of, you know,
talking about the Bible, so I have to hide
this information." So, he created this
cosmological constant, this fudge factor, because
he was so embarrassed by what the evidence
from science was showing. And a few years later,
he had to eat crow because other people said, hey,
guess what, Einstein? You're wrong, it is expanding,
or at least you're right but you didn't, you know? And so, this concept
of the Big Bang developed where scientists were
embarrassed because they said, well, it looks like the universe
was created out of nothing. That's what science is saying,
but it makes us uncomfortable because we wanna believe
the universe existed forever. And so, the first chapter
of the book in some ways is the least interesting of
all the science chapters, but just this idea of people
dragging their heels and saying, "This makes me uncomfortable
because it looks like it shows the existence of a creator God." But no joke, that is
the least compelling. The evidence from science that
has come out of what's called the fine-tuning argument is
so insane that I just scratch the surface in this book. But that is something
that in our lifetimes, the evidence from science
for a fine-tuned universe, that everything is calibrated
so perfectly that it doesn't make sense
that it just happened, that is the killer. It's killer evidence. Joni: So, talk a little bit
about that. What has science discovered
that essentially proves this argument? Can you recount some of that? Eric: Well, it would be
kind of like, we'd all say, like, we all believe in chance, so if I flip a quarter,
it can go heads or tails, right? Great, what if I flip a quarter
and it lands on it's edge? You'd be like, woah,
that's weird, but it could happen. It could happen, okay? But imagine I flip it again
and it does it again. What are the odds of that? Astronomical, okay, I flip it
again, it happens again, what if it happens
a hundred times in a row? You would all
look around and go, "This is not -something
weird is happening." Rachel: That is
a trick quarter. Eric: Okay,
something weird is happening, because chance
cannot produce that over, and over, and over, and over,
something's weird, okay? That's basically what happened
with science. They would discover something
really freaky, and they would say, "Well,
I guess it's just chance." For example, this is,
again, you know, in our lifetimes they've
discovered that the size of the earth, you know,
you watch "Star Trek," you watch these movies,
you think, "Hey, a planet could be
any size." They have discovered in
our lifetimes that if the earth were the tiniest bit smaller,
I mean, like 2% or 3%, we could not have
our atmosphere, we could not have life. But they've also discovered,
if that's not weird enough, that if it were 2% or 3%
larger, we could not have our atmosphere,
and I tell why in the book. But I'm saying, like,
so you mean to tell me that if our earth were not
exactly the size that it is, there would be no life. And we're talking science. Science says yes,
we now know that. Hey, that's one example. I'm just giving you one example. The examples are in the hundreds
now of they find something - the one that I like, again,
this is, like, sort of simple, you know,
solar system examples. The planet Jupiter is 400--
sorry, 400,000,000 miles away from earth. If you've ever seen
it in the night sky, it's like a pin prick of light. It's so far away you
can't even imagine, four times farther than the sun,
tiny, there it is, okay. Science now knows,
this is science, we're not talking
about the Bible, we're talking about science says
that if Jupiter weren't there, with its tremendous mass,
because it's a very large planet, it's gravity is so
strong that it is drawing away, like, you know, 99.9%
of the asteroids and meteors that would hit earth. Because of the existence
of Jupiter, we are able to exist,
because science knows that if Jupiter weren't there,
and all those asteroids, there's not a ghost of a chance
life could exist on planet Earth. So, those are two examples. There are hundreds
of these kinds of examples where a normal person
would look at it and say, "So,
that's a freaky coincidence. You're telling me Jupiter,
if it didn't exist, we wouldn't be here?" But it goes on and on, I mean,
that's like the solar system. Then you get down to the
fundamental laws of physics. If any of the fundamental laws
of physics, the value of gravity, whatever,
were different by, like, 0.0001, there would be
no universe. Like, you think,
so this is science, so they should be teaching
this in school, but the more it adds up,
the more you say, okay, so if this is all
so perfectly fine tuned, who did the fine tuning,
or are you telling me it's a coincidence? Joni: Right, okay,
so I think you talk about the walls of Jericho. Eric: Oh, you know, yeah,
the Bible says a lot of stuff, and a lot of people say,
"Well, you know, it was written
in a different culture," it's kind of this mythical -
these are mythical stories, it's ancient literature. Okay, until you find
through archeology, like, oh, wait a minute,
that was a real place, and it seems like what the Bible
says happened actually happened. That's kinda freaky. So, there was an article,
this is what started me on the whole journey back in,
like, the early '90s. I was reading the "New York
Times," and I come upon an article by a major writer
for the Times talking about new revelations that
the walls of Jericho, which they know was Jericho,
fell inward. And there's a lot
of other stuff, again, it's in the book, but it's like,
you know, 40 years earlier, some archeologists said, no, it's just the opposite
and it disproves the Bible. So, like now in the 1990's,
they're like, oh, no, no, no, no,
actually the evidence proves the biblical account, and that
to me is one of the mild ones. There is stuff that I came
upon that I thought people almost won't believe this until
they look into it themselves, that the evidence from,
I said science, but also from archeology over,
and over, and over points to
the Bible as history, not as a collection
of folktales. And I thought you know what? You can't force someone
to believe this, but I dare people
to look at the evidence. I dare you to look
at the evidence and you tell me
what is your conclusion? There are so many stories
like this in the Bible that you dismiss. My favorite one, the one
that made me write the book, literally, was -well, I mean
there are two stories, one from science
and one from archeology, but the archeology,
I was in Albuquerque speaking at some church in Albuquerque,
and somebody said, "Oh, you gotta meet
Dr. Steven Collins, he's a biblical archeologist." He's the guy who discovered
biblical Sodom. And I said, "Excuse me,
he did what?" Sodom, the story of Sodom
and Gomorrah is like the first couple of pages
of the Bible. I would even doubt that it's
possible for archeologists to discover something that
ancient and it just seems, like, mythical, even though
I believe it happened. You're telling me some
archeologist could find it? Well, I met Dr. Steven Collins,
and with skepticism I looked into this,
because I thought a lot of people say a lot of things,
maybe they want it to be true. It is insane, and
when I discovered that, when I discover these things,
the first thing is I'm amazed, then I'm angry that I haven't
heard this before. Because I said to myself,
the evidence is all there, I'm not making it up. Joni: And what
was the evidence? Like, what did he find
that was so spectacular? Eric: Okay, basically
he knew -he was doing some, like, some tour in Israel,
some bus tour to teach people about different sites. And they get down to the
southern part of the Dead Sea, where other
biblical scholars said, oh, we think Sodom and Gomorrah
were down here. And he's thinking,
you know what? The guys who said
that are good guys, but they had to get this wrong,
because what the Bible says is that Sodom and Gomorrah were
part of the cities of the plain which would be north
of the Dead Sea, south of the Sea of Galilee,
so he's like, I need to look into this. So, he looks into it,
and he finds a couple of sites up there that have never been
excavated because of, you know, Israel's war with,
you know, the Arab countries or whatever. There's always good reasons
why you don't know something, right? So, there's nobody
doing archeology there, so he finds one site, and I'm
giving you the short version, and he starts digging down
as the do in archeology, they're going layer by layer. When he comes to the level
of whatever it would be, about 1750 B.C., they can tell
by the ceramics, the pottery, right? They know exactly where we are,
okay? They find a layer
of soot and ash, average depth of about 5 feet,
that was completely inexplicable in scientific terms. Fire, earthquake, whatever,
it just - there was no explanation
to find a layer of soot. They could smell the soot. This s 4,000-year-old soot
that's never been uncovered, right? But then the freaky thing is,
amidst this soot, 1750 B.C., right, they found tiny, tiny bits of they said it was
like a Cuisinart had - why are they finding these
tiny bits of melted brick? You ever try to melt a brick? You know what, you're talking
like 5,000 to 10,000 degrees, right? Melted brick, melted human bone,
whatever, but the killer, they found a piece of pottery
that this guy, who is this expert knows,
ceramic typologist, he goes, "That's definitely 1750 B.C.
I can see it," right? But he goes, "Wait a minute,
maybe I got it wrong, because there's a glaze on it." Glazing was not invented until,
like, 700 A.D. Uh-oh, we've got a problem. But he looks at it again
and he goes, "No, I know this is
from 1750 B.C." He knows the kind of jar it is,
and this and that, so they take it to a lab
in New Mexico. What happened in New Mexico
in the '40s? They were doing tests for,
you know, atom bomb tests, right? So, the place where they used
to do these tests with these atom bombs would
create such heat of, like, you know, I don't know,
30,000 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever it was,
that it would melt the sand. So, when they brought it into
the technician and said tell us what you find when you look
at this in your incredible microscope, they said, oh, yeah,
it's a nice piece of trinitite, which is what they would call
the stuff that they found in the deserts. And the guy goes, no,
look at it. Well, what they discovered
was the only way a piece of pottery from 1750 B.C.
could have this glaze would be if it was exposed
to 5,000 or 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit for, like,
you know, a couple of seconds. I mean, anyway, the details,
there's all these details. But this is when they--
now, the killer, and again, this is science. "Nature Magazine," which is
one of the premier peer-reviewed journals in the world
of science, wrote an article, it came out literally, like,
two years ago, where 21 scientists weigh in
on all of this stuff. And their conclusions,
they were so blown away by this that they said, well,
they had to bring up in this article that
it looks exactly like the biblical account
of Sodom and Gomorrah. They're not saying
they believe it happened, but they're saying that
the details are so freakishly similar that they needed
to mention it in the article. But what I find really
interesting is that after the 1750 B.C. level,
right, because these cities are
thousands of years old, so there was a city there
4000 B.C., 3000 B.C., 2000 B.C.,
then you get this event. For one thousand years
after this event, there is zero human civilization
on that site. In other words, whatever
happened there was such a nightmare, that no one
would dare ever settle there again because it was
so horrifying. So, archeology is now proving
that the first couple of pages of the Bible are history. I didn't expect to see that
in my lifetime. Joni: So, what was the other
thing that convinced you? That was one. Eric: The science,
I met a man in Houston, Dr. James Tour, I write
about him in the book. He's one of the premier
scientists in the world today, without any doubt,
a nano-scientist, which means he creates
molecules in the lab. You ever try to create
a molecule? No, you know, you need a pair
of tweezers that you can't see. I'm joking, it is insane. He's, like, working on a level
of microscopic stuff, right? I had dinner
with a bunch of people, and he was one of them,
and he starts talking to me about something that I had
never talked about before. We always get in these arguments
about evolution and whatever, so if you have life,
how do you get from, you know, the single cell to
everything we have now, right? So, you can have an argument
about that. I believe in intelligent design,
I believe God did it all, I don't believe in
Darwinian evolution, but that's not the point. How do you get life itself? Not how do you get from life
to different life, how do you get
from zero life to life? So, this nano-scientist is
saying to me, "Eric, I know a little bit about
this, I've looked into this." You know, he didn't brag,
but he probably knows more about this than anybody
in the world, but I looked him up,
and he probably does, right? And he says to me, in 1952,
there was a famous experiment in the University of Chicago, it's called the Miller-Urey
experiment. Every one of us in high school,
it was on the test. We all -it was on the test. And in that experiment,
they basically said, oh, we're gonna approximate what
was on the surface of the earth about four billion years ago,
which of course there's no life, but we're gonna run
some electricity through it, like if lightning strikes it,
what would happen? And they created
some amino acids. Well, let's cut to the chase. In 1952 when they discovered
that lightning could create some amino acids, amino acids
are infinitely far from life. They thought, "We're on our way. We're going to show how
through random processes, you can go from no life
to life." So, this guy, Dr. James Tour,
and again, I give you details in the book,
but Dr. James Tour says, "Eric, it's been 70 years. They have not moved that
ball forward one millimeter." In other words, they were
so confident science was gonna show us how we get to
a single cell, we're on our way, he says not only haven't they
moved the ball one millimeter, basically the more you learn,
the ball is moving backwards. Because a single cell, which is
the simplest form of life, I mean, any scientist would say, "Oh, it appeared on the planet
four billion years ago, yep," and they you say, okay,
how did that happen? The complexity of a single cell,
now because we know the complexity, the DNA code,
and we know about, you know, membranes, and you know,
they would say protoplasm, now we know that what is
in a single cell, the simplest cell imaginable,
the simplest life on the planet imaginable is so complex
that if somebody gave you all the parts in the lab
and said, okay, now put it together
and create life, no one could even
come close to it. So, this guy, James Tour,
when he's telling me this, I'm thinking,
why haven't I heard this? Nobody's talking about this,
that the more we learn from science, the more we know
there isn't the ghost of a chance that life emerged
by itself. And I mean, listen,
I did my research. I find it funny, because people
are getting funded, they keep doing research
on this, and it's kind of like
you've got a ladder, and you're climbing up a ladder,
and you find out as you're getting to the top
of the ladder, oh, excuse me, but it's really
against the wrong building. Like, we've spent all this time,
we've gotten nowhere. So, I thought to myself,
what could be a greater argument for God than the fact that
the more science learns about the origins
of the simplest life, we're not talking about us,
we're talking about a cell, they can't begin to tell us. And I did a Socrates in the City
event where I talked to James Tour about this,
because we need to get the word out to people that
science is pointing to God very, very dramatically. Joni: So, tell us
before we leave today the Eric Metaxas journey to God. How did you find God? You're a Yale graduate,
you're smart, intelligent. Eric: Well, a lot of times,
you know, the more of an education
you get, the more confused you get,
and the education I got was kind of telling me, like,
that's all been decided. The smart people
don't believe in God. And I guess I bought that,
you know? Like, I got confused and I kind
of drifted and whatever, and so I had a, there's
no other way to put it, like, a mind-blowing,
miraculous experience, because I was so broken
and so lost that I was sure you couldn't know
if God existed. Like, even if he did exist,
I was sure smart people could never know
that he existed. So, I had a miraculous
experience that I wrote about in another book called
"Fish out of Water." Because I think people need
to know. Joni: What happened? Eric: Well, it was -I was going
through a really painful time. I graduated Yale
with an English degree, I was trying to be a writer,
you know. That was my dream, and it
wasn't really going so well, and things got so bad,
I always joke around, that I ended up moving
back in with my parents. Which is, like, you know,
if you're floating around out of college, that's where you go
when you don't know where to go. And it was a very,
very painful year, and I was still hostile
to the idea of God, hostile. And I'd been trained at Yale to
be hostile to people who said, "Oh, I believe in God
and I know him." I'm like, yeah, sure you do. Well, one night, like
right around my 25th birthday, I had a dream that was -
I'd never had a dream like that in my life. It was not just a dream,
and I won't give the details because it's too long
of a story, but it was completely,
totally life changing. Like, I went to sleep skeptical,
and I woke up knowing God is real, the Bible is true,
Jesus is -you know, like, the stuff that I was
positive you could not know, God spoke to me in a dream
in a way using things from my own life. I mean, which is why I wrote
the book "Fish out of Water," because I said you need
to understand my life so that the dream makes sense. It was so completely
life changing. I always say it's kind
of like going to sleep single and waking up married. It was, like, now all my friends
are gonna think I'm nuts, and many of them did,
sure they did. Because they were just like me,
they were trained to think that only, like, looney people
believe in that stuff. Joni: Give us the details
when you made that decision really to come
into a relationship with God. How did that change your life? Eric: Well, I stopped sleeping
with my girlfriend, and I started saying, okay,
God, if I know you're real, I wanna do whatever
you want me to do, because I trust you in a way
that I never could have before. So, I really kind of--
I said to myself, I would be a fool. If I know God is real,
which I now do, I would be a fool not to put my
career and my life in his hands. And I did, and it's not always
been an easy journey, but I know that he led me
to meet my wife and gave me the career that he gave me,
and you know, you hear this all the time,
people think it's a cliché, but it's like you have a peace
that you didn't know was possible. Like, I just didn't think
it was possible to have that kind of peace. And when you get that,
how are you not going to want to tell people about it? How are you not gonna wanna tell
people that this is not for me, this is for you, too? This is for everybody. Joni: Do you have any regret
surrendering your life to God like you did? Eric: Oh, my gosh,
I have regrets that it didn't happen sooner. I mean, I don't know
what to say. But I mean, really, it's not
about converting people to God, it's about converting people
to reality and truth, which point to God. In other words, I just want
to know what is true. If there is no God,
I don't wanna believe in God. If the Bible is a bunch
of folktales, I don't wanna believe
in the Bible. But if it's true, then I wanna get in line
with that, because that's literally
why I'm on the planet. It's why we're
all on the planet. So, to me it's
ultimately exciting. Joni: Well, I mean,
that was an amazing story, and we are out of time,
but I just wanna say if you're watching today,
and you're searching, I would just really challenge
you to not only think about what we've talked
about today at the table, but to just really begin
to not be afraid to ask God to reveal himself to you. I mean, I tell the story
about my grandfather who was 19 years old and knelt down
and prayed on a Monday morning at a tool and dye mill
in Greenville, South Carolina. He wasn't raised in church
or knew anything about God, and he just said, "God,
if you're there, I need you." You heard Eric's story,
and that's the thing I think that is really the most
important thing that we can talk about today
at the table, is that there's some
of you watching that you do have a God-shaped vacuum inside
of you that you don't even know or understand,
and God will give you that peace that Eric
was talking about. But more than anything else,
God wants to have a personal relationship
with you. He really does. He loves you,
and I just challenge you, get a Bible,
get Eric's book. What was the name of your
book with your testimony? Eric: "Fish out of Water." Crazy story of my life
that led me to the moment that I talked about. Joni: Right, that would be
such a great book for you to get and read,
and if you're watching today, if you just need prayer,
that's why that number is on the screen. We'd love to pray with you. That's really one of the most
important things that we could do. But I do wanna thank Eric
for joining us at the table. Thank you for sharing
so candidly. Thank you for sharing
those truths about science and the Bible,
so very interesting. And be sure to check out
his book, "Is Atheism Dead?" It has a lot of great
information in there. We just barely scratched
the surface. And for resources
and more information, you can visit him online
at EricMetaxas.com. Well, I hope you have been
blessed today. We've enjoyed our conversation. Be sure to let us know
how "Table Talk" is impacting your life. Leave us a comment on Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, and Eric, will you come back
and share more? Eric: Anytime. Joni: Okay, alright,
you heard it, ladies. Thank you, ladies. Thank you for watching, and
just think about what I said. I mean, seriously, I don't think
it's any accident that you're watching. We'll see you next time.
Bye-bye for today. ♪♪♪
