Why Jesus Matters Today More Than Ever: A Conversation with Detective J. Warner Wallace

hey friends we've got a great show for you today we are live with my friend jay warner wallace who makes a case as a cold case detective that jesus is a person of interest without using the bible uh you know jim from writing cold case christianity we had a chance to co-write a book together called so the next generation will know has been a dear friend a mentor for me jim i got to tell you i think this might be your best book and i mean that completely sincerely i think it's brilliant i think it's interesting and we're gonna jump right in because my wife saw the cover which i'm gonna hold up here for a second and she paused she goes ooh that's interesting like you've got something not only in the cover but the book that grabs people so before we get into the content how you make a case for jesus tell me first what do you even mean by a person of interest which is what you use to frame this book you always ask the best questions if anyone doesn't know that sean and i have been go back a number of years but i'm indebted to sean because i only wrote books because of sean mcdowell he's the one who said hey you should write a book about this stuff and that's what cold case christianity was so you know brother that although i know i'm a lot of older um and yes if i don't know how you would think i'm your mentor you're the reason why i got involved in writing books to begin with so so this is all about you buddy and i'm glad to be on your program because i've been watching all the people that you interview on this on this program and i'm thinking my goodness this this guy's gonna yeah i'm i'm just honored to be part of it now let's go to person of interest yeah when we picked that cover i was very interested in trying to get out um i wanted something that felt more like uh like fiction like a like a a mystery that we could solve together that i could teach some principles of of of thinking about evidence to to now i know i did that in cold case this is the exact opposite of cold case so yes what i mean by person of interest what i mean is that that you could make a case for jesus that cold case makes it from inside the new testament are the new testament gospel is reliable should we trust what they say about jesus how do we know from a cold case perspective that we can trust eyewitness testimony that's what cold case does and it works from inside the new testament this says forget about the new testament if there was no new testament what would you know about jesus just from everything outside the new testament and that's what i wanted to do here imagine a scenario in which every new testament has been destroyed what would you know about jesus if every new testament manuscript this avoids the problem then about like for example well what does bar ehrman say or any skeptic say about whether or not we can trust the new testament uh this reason or that reason or this contradiction or that contradiction or this piece of manuscript evidence or that forget about all of it let's imagine all of it was destroyed you're still stuck with jesus of nazareth and i think he'd demonstrate his historicity and his deity without having to reference the new testament at all and that's what we're trying to do in person of interest well you do it well and the way you use it is with three f's the fuse and the fallout which identifies the felon tell us what you mean by the fuse and the fallout and then we'll start diving into some of the particulars well so i just was where i'm working on a case right now in los angeles and the district attorney there's an old friend of mine this is the first case he's worked in his career without me being the case agent so i'm just kind of working on the edges working on the closing um uh for him as far as almost ready to close in front of a jury and as i showed this to him and he's not a believer so i'm showing him the evidence you know in this this process and he's going oh i recognize that case i recognize that case yes but i'm hoping nobody else does right because i'm trying to use the cases for my career to kind of illustrate this process look we've done a number of these what we call no body missings okay these are cases usually it's a husband who kills his wife and then he claims that she ran off and and you know she willingly left him and it's just a missing person's report and that's how it's usually taken and then a number of years go by and she never returns and it turns out he sold the house remodeled it there's never been a picture taken of the crime scene there's never been anybody who investigate now it's been remodeled and completely destroyed so so how do i make a case in front of a jury when i have no body because her body never he got rid of it and i can't find it then two i have no evidence from a crime scene that's the process we're taking here imagine we have no evidence from the crime scene of the new testament how could we demonstrate that jesus is who he said he was now in these criminal cases i typically tell a jury you know on the day she disappeared something horrific happened in some explosive event if in fact we think her husband killed her occurred but explosions are preceded by fuses that fuse burns up to the point at which a bomb goes off and then that bomb is ends up providing shrapnel all over the blast radius so we can make a case in front of a jury from just the fuse and the fallout even though we don't know what actually happened on that particular day i've had cases where i can't answer the question how did he kill her exactly when did he kill her how did he get rid of her body how do you move her car i can't answer any of those questions for a jury but i still end up with convictions because i can demonstrate that the fuse and the fallout identified the felon well could we do the same thing with jesus if we didn't have a new testament crime scene evidence if all we have is the fuse of history and the fallout of history could we make a case for the jesus of history and that's what we try to do in person of interest well let's talk about that and one of the things you do in your book is you not only have uh years as being a detective but you're an artist too and it's it's honestly brilliant so people have to get your book to see some of the visuals but let's walk through some of what you call the cultural fuse and by the way for those watching we have two copies of jim's book we're gonna give away towards the end uh for the best question and jim we're gonna allow you to pick what you think those best questions are free book we'll send to you so the fuse are certain things leading up to the crime itself you talk about a cultural fuse now there's a bunch you go into your book we can't go into but give us an example of maybe communication or roads of what you mean by the cultural fuse so we're looking at the fuse of history that burns up to the appearance of jesus i think there are three strands to that fuse and those strands are the cultural views and the spiritual views and the prophetic views now that the cultural fuse really talks about what is happening in the governments and empires that existed prior to jesus leading up to the appearance of jesus and of course all of this is about how much territory around the mediterranean was possessed by particular empires leading up to the roman empire because it turns out the roman empire occupies the uh the largest section of the mediterranean really the known world at the time and it occupies all of this territory it provides a certain infrastructure that makes the the ability to communicate the story of jesus possible in a way that was never possible before what i mean is uh if you look at the history of the roman empire and all of the the civilizations that existed prior to the roman empire you will see that it's only under the roman empire that we have the establishment of sufficient roads all of those roads that paul used to communicate the truth about jesus to the world around him were only possible after the roman empire you know all roads lead to rome well it turns out that rome had a period the roman empire had a period of time in which they had conquered everyone and had a period of peace called the pax romana in which they could actually take those resources usually spent on war then they could spend them on infrastructure and they built roads and tunnels and bridges and improved the system of postal service in such a way that the message of jesus as he appears in the first century was easy to communicate to the entire known world the reason why christianity spread at the pace that it spread is largely due to the fact that it happened in the first century during the roman empire now it could have happened look here's the point is if you look at all of the the the cultural conditions that had to be in place before a message like the message of jesus could be communicated to the known world it turns out that the optimum time to appear would be during that pax romanu that 200 year period of time in which a piece had been established and money was being spent on the infrastructure which allowed messages to travel so there's an aspect in which you can kind of look at you know you see those those scriptures where it says that jesus um kind of came at the uh you know at the right time in history and you ask yourself well what what would be required for it to be the right time in history well one of those things would be the cultural infrastructure that made the message of jesus so easily communicable to all of the known world and that's why we talk about that cultural fuse that makes sense so if you look at it from a human standpoint then we see all these things that are lined up to make this possible but on the flip side if we look at from a divine standpoint you're saying if god is going to choose to reveal himself all of these things have to be in place and jesus comes in this narrow window with communication with rhodes with the pax or mana so there's this cultural fuse that's building but you also give what's called a spiritual fuse and i love this because both you and i have been we've responded in different ways to the claim that christianity is a copycat religion and the way you approach the idea that jesus is a myth i think is fresh and unique and frankly brilliant so explain what you mean by the spiritual fuse and how you respond to the claim that jesus which is cobbled together to save you from these other deities well it turns out that every claim that jesus is similar to some prior mythology from an ancient people group and that somehow that similarity it works against the reliability of the story about jesus actually works for the reliability of the story of jesus here's what i mean if if what you'll see is i examined all of the um ancient mythologies of the significant ones where i mean you could go on and on forever and all the details but i tried to i spent probably about if if not for co-evade 19 this never would have happened this book would not have been written because as i realized as i was getting to the end of that year where we spent probably nine months sitting in front of a fire or in my study researching this book i don't know how i thought i was going to make the deadlines if if not for the fact that every event got cancelled in that year from about you know what february to july and it allowed me the time to do the really serious research on this so i read through all of the mythologies that people typically say well look that's similar to jesus well yeah broadly there are broad similarities i found 15 broad similarities between all ancient mythologies all of them now not everyone's got all 15. usually it's like maybe the most is nine or ten the least is maybe six so somewhere between six and ten of these 15 broad similarities are possessed by every ancient mythology i don't care which one you're referring to so if you look at buddha and you look at addis they're going to share some similarities well why would you be surprised when ancients think about the nature of god they think broadly about similar categories look if god is supernatural he's probably going to work miracles that's very that's the one common thing to all mythologies uh he's probably going to appear miraculously he may enter into the next world miraculously well these are things i think that we would expect of god if god is god so you see these kind of ancient expectations of god being drawn out in the mythologies that people groups create and then jesus appears when he appears he's the only one who possesses all 15 of all of the expectations of ancient humans it's as if if you if you understand this and then you go back and you read acts 17 and you look at the uh speech that paul gives on mars hill you will read that with new eyes because of new year's because you will see that paul is really saying what this what we discovered is that yes you people are all very religious and you all have certain expectations of god but i am here to tell you that your expectations either in large part or in small part were met in their entirety in the person of jesus of nazareth and again why would this be the case well i use an illustration in the book because and i use it on my live stage presentations that's probably a little more visual but but when i was working undercover i was uh dispatched and we worked undercover as a team i had really long hair i had a goatee i looked pretty bad and i was working on a case geographic geographic surveillances we don't know who the bad guy is but we know that all these burglaries are occurring in our town in this neighborhood so we would sit in this neighborhood right and we would just wait and see if maybe we'll see a burglar what are the odds of you actually not very good okay so the odds of actually catching somebody this way is pretty lame and sure enough one day as i'm sitting waiting to see if a burglary occurs in front of me i hear that the radio dispatch has dispatched a black and white unit two blocks away to a burglar that had just occurred not only i'm sitting so close i missed it by just a little bit so i'm hearing this i decided to jump the call get to the call get to the victim before the officer gets to the victim to take a report so i drive over there i'm in my playing car i got long hair i got a raid vest i brought shorts i jump out of the car i approach this guy who's waiting for a police car and he won't even give me the time of day i'm like dude i'm trying to get information because we got a surveillance team here we could actually maybe get out there in the area and catch this guy before he leaves town what did you see did you see a car did you see any suspects he won't even talk to me then the police car drives up this dude gets out with a uniform and he tells him the whole story what's the deal there well see he was expecting a police car to come and take a report he sees me i did not meet his expectations he would not give me the time of day the better that the expector or the expected rather meets the expectations of the expector the better the response it's as simple as that if god intended to come in a way that meets the expectations of people who are seeking him well it turns out jesus comes in the most robust way do you really think that the people who wrote the jesus story the eyewitnesses of jesus knew the depths of egyptian mythology do you really think they knew that of persian mythology do you realize that jesus even meets the expectations of the people on the south american continent who describe quesacoil do you really think that somehow these authors knew no it's just that jesus meets the expectations of all of us most robustly because he is the god who inspired those expectations in the so in the first i think this is actually evidence for jesus not evidence against jesus and if you put that in a timeline you'll see this kind of interesting i don't really remember or not but you were the first person i ever showed that timeline to other than susie so when we were you know when we were first you know uh looking at this susie and i i had basically a blogger's sense of this red zone in other words this period of this window of opportunity that could occur and where would it occur if you overlap the the the worship of all of these ancient deities because they don't all end up being worshiped forever some do like buddha is still being worshipped but a lot of them like addis is no longer being worshipped so you can mark off a beginning time of the worship of addis and an ending time of the worship of addis if you do that with everyone you will see that there is one place where everyone overlaps and then if you overlap on top of that the prophecies of daniel about when the messiah will come and you overlap on top of that the pax romana where you have that period of peace and all those roads are available and you've got this great postal service available you end up with a small area of overlap in which all three of these strands are overlapping and if you see it visually in the book you go wow i mean i i remember showing you in an airport yeah that's right with brenda crouch remember we were sitting we have just done an episode of huntley street i went under huntley street for our book so the next generation will know and i this is how long ago this is 2019 i think and we were i mean i've been working on this book for about a year back so i was just kind of developing the visual overlap and as i found it for susie of course you know it was really about the pax romana and um the the prophecies of daniel back in the day back you know 25 24 years ago when i first became a christian but you know back then i had more or less a blogger's a sense of what the overlaps were investigating this i wasn't trying to write a book with case notes and footnotes and cited and all of that i was just kind of scratching out what i thought i was discovering eventually and when i remember showing it to susie it was like like thing there turns out there's a red zone you'll see it in the book as i overlapped this visually between about 29 bce or or bc and about 70 ce or a.d and it turns out that overlap from 29 to 70 jesus appears after one-third of it and then he's crucified at two-thirds he's right in the middle of the red zone overlap it's like crazy and as i thought to myself okay so it turns out that if i didn't know anything about what caused that difference you know you see those letters bce or ce that that jesus would be a good explanation because he falls so if you didn't know anything from the new testament but you did have the timeline of history and you traced the fuse of those three things and developed a red zone you'd go wow something's about to happen right here and the one person and by the way i looked at every other potential cause in the first century if you look at every other person who ever lived in the first century all the big ones the leaders of nations the writers of poetry the the writers of history none of them had any impact you don't even know their names for the most part yet this little dude this little guy jesus of nazareth this nobody this is the dude who changes all of history and so to me that was like wow okay so we're talking about the fuse that leads up to like uh the the crime so to speak and we have the cultural fuse where in this history of the world all of a sudden there's the right communication the right roads there's peace where message could be widespread there's the spiritual fuse where all these different stories of dying and rising gods that have pieces all come together jesus arises at that moment where there's kind of a spiritual expectation you also the third one before we get to the fallout is what you call the prophetic fuse and i love that you talk about clear versus cloaked prophecies because i think sometimes those get muddled together so talk about the prophetic views and make that distinction for us if you can yeah you know i i was never impressed with um prophecy i know that sounds terrible as a christian right like you know all this typically all this stuff is used to make a case for the appearance of jesus and the divine supernatural nature of jesus because you have all this prophecy that is predicting jesus and i remember being in this big church where i first heard anything about jesus at all and they had a guest speaker and i remember that guest speaker spoke about prophecy it was the first time i had ever been exposed to this idea that jesus had been predicted so i i um listened and i traced along with him in the book the bible uh in the old testament right like what's he saying is his prophecy and i remember like thinking i'm like unimpressed in other words he would cite something in the old testament and i would read it and i would say i'm not sure that's even about the messiah let alone jesus i mean it seems like this is david talking about david or this is you know it didn't seem like it was specific to them here's what i did i basically started to separate out all of the things that i felt that now let me make the distinction between clear and close so so sometimes in a crime scene you'll have something that will point to the suspect immediately given the technology we have so for example if i had your fingerprint at a crime scene well we have a lot of fingerprints in the system right now a time way more than we have dna so if i had a fingerprint and you happen to have your fingerprint in the system because you are fingerprinted for any number of reasons well i can identify right away that's the guy i'm looking for because his fingerprint is in the crime scene so those are clear pieces of evidence that point to a suspect before i ever physically encounter him or meet him i'm gonna know who to go knock on the door because i've got clear evidence identifying the suspect that's one kind of evidence in the same murder scene i might have like a button or like a button is a good example because um i don't always know when a torn button you know it's laying on the crime scene i i can see the victim doesn't have a button missing but maybe it came off a different shirt from the victim how do i know that button is from our suspect it might be but i really won't know until i knock on the door of the suspect and do a search warrant and go through all of his shirts and see if any of his shirts are missing a button if they are missing the same kind of button well that's a piece of cloaked evidence that didn't point to my suspect from the onset but in hindsight it will point to my suspect and it'll confirm the guy who maybe the fingerprint identified so that'll be used in trial so i have clear evidence and cloaked evidence in any crime scene i think the prophecies are kind of the same way and so what i've done in the books i've identified this is hard to illustrate because so much of this is visual right and so i've done 400 illustrations for the book so these are ways of visualizing all of this but but you'll see in the book what i've done is i've i've separated it out and the end notes are a big deal to me i mean the endnotes were two-thirds so so this book one-third is the actual book two-thirds are the case notes but we knew we couldn't put that in a book and i didn't want an academic book in that style anyway so i kicked out all of those case notes to a pdf file so when you buy the book you'll see the link you can go to the pdf file and download the pdf file you'll see that it's two-thirds it's twice the size of the book and that is really talking about all of those prophecies i have separated them out all the ones that are clear and point to our suspect before we ever identify him they point the even jews would say these are messianic prophecies and then i have all the cloaked prophecies who really you could argue that's not even about the messiah but turns out after the fact the button matches the shirt and you're like going okay this makes sense now i will tell you a story sean i'm not going to mention the names but you and i have a good friend who's involved as an evangelist and a member of his staff reached out to me who was deconverting right he was saying he was no longer a christian and the reason he was saying he was no longer a christian was because he felt like the authors of the new testament had abused and misused verses from the old testament that they claimed were prophecies of the messiah and every time he would land on one sure enough he would land on one of these cloaked prophecies so i spent some on the phone with him just trying to show him the difference between clear evidence and cloaked evidence and although the cloaked evidence won't necessarily identify your suspect from the onset it will confirm your suspect from hindsight and that's what i think is happening here with a lot of these so so i'm very careful when i communicate oh there's these prophecies i separate them into two bins but i also in the book try to do another separation where i say look i've had informants that i've used on cases especially when i was working undercover that our whole opinion we made a living using informants and some of these formats are deemed reliable so they're ris reliable informants and some are deemed confidential reliable informants cris so we have these these different these different ways of identifying informants and reliable informants in terms of court proceedings are simply those informants that have already demonstrated their reliability by accurately telling us some piece of information that we confirmed if they say oh this guy here he did this crime over there and then i go back and i find oh yeah he did do that crime now if he says that same guy's about to do a crime next week we have a reliable good reason to believe this he's telling us the truth because he was reliable about the first piece of information why would i not trust him on the second okay well you could actually divide profits the same way you could take a look at the profits and say you know what some of these are more reliable than other not not said all of them could be reliable but what i mean is some make predictions about historical events and those actually occurred so i would separate those out and so here's my whole point the reason why i separate out the relia you can look at a lot of of prophets in the old testament not all of them make predictions about historical events that actually occur you know ezekiel does isaiah does daniel that's okay great now here's what i would say if you're skeptical about prophecy okay i'm with you tell you what just for sake of argument just for sake of argument now let's throw out all the cloaked prophecies get rid of them okay don't trust anything that the new testament authors some of those things in the new testament are in the gospels are an author citing a cloaked piece of evidence to say hey the button fits the shirt toss that out fine not only that let's go ahead and toss out any prophecy made by anyone other than somebody who also predicted something historical that came true in other words a reliable prophet well now you're down in like four prophets and you're only down to half of their prophecies because only half of those are going to be clear tell you what you've still got way more than enough reason to believe that jesus is the messiah so what i tried to do in the book is separate that out and show you that i don't care how you cut this pie you're stuck with jesus and the prophecies from the old testament about jesus are still strong even if i was willing to toss out like two-thirds of them because they're either not from a reliable prophet or they're again when i say reliable i mean previously tested by historical prophecies or they're cloaked toss all that stuff out for sake of argument you're still stuck with uh reliable you're still stuck with significant prophecies that describe and what i tried to do in the book this is why you need to see it is i think i did i don't know if anyone else has done this maybe you know look no one does anything new under the sun so i'm trying to sure sure but but what i tried to do was to say hey if i put them in a timeline and showed you where isn't that interesting i thought this was kind of like why one of the questions that one of the answers to the question why does jesus show up when he does does come down to prophecy and if you look at the timeline have you ever seen anyone list the prophecies not based on who said them but on when they were said in history well it turns out if you did that if you like broke them down and placed them on a timeline you would realize that if you're trying to answer the six investigative questions of what when where how why and then finally to answer the who question you don't have the answers to the first five until you get to micah and then you have the answer or malachi and then you have the answer to the last one so so so you you you'll see that yeah if you stopped after the you know if you stopped halfway in the timeline you don't have a couple of questions answered but if you keep on going the prophets answer all five of the investigative questions leaving you with the who well there's a reason why jesus comes when he does because he comes at the end of that history of prophecy which now has completely identified located and giving you the time frame because daniel gives you the time frame of when he's going to show up that was interesting to me just to see that yeah this is why he doesn't show up seven centuries earlier if he showed up then there's not enough prophecy to even identify him whether you look a little further a little further oh all these dominoes fall now it's perfect time to show up all right for those of you watching i want you to visualize that you have a fuse leading up to a crime scene and the crime scene here we're talking about is the coming of jesus as the god man and then the fallout that comes after it so the fuse is what you talked about culturally communication roads uh prophetically certain expectations from the old testament and this spiritual fuse that there's this expectation even outside the jewish religious community at that time for a spiritual figure like jesus the fallout is certain evidence you look after the crime scene now some of this this section just blew me away i can't imagine how much research and time this took but talk about some of the fallout for jesus for example in actually talk about how fallout matters for a crime scene first and then we'll tie it to jesus well you know this right because you're a professor and you know how much you you trust your your research assistants and so i i've never had a research assistant until this book but i just felt like even with all the time we had in kobe 19 i needed help and i could give direction a lot of it was just about sifting through a bunch of like you know dust to find fingerprints right so so i did hire two research assistants and said hey here's what we're looking for let me know what you can find and i credit them in the beginning of the book so so in the end um i think that was what made it possible now as far as fallout goes right look sometimes after a crime that our suspect will do certain things that he shouldn't do necessarily the case that i'm working right now in los angeles it's pretty clear that if you're going to destroy all of the property of the person you say just took off and you're going to destroy that property in the first week well why would you do that if you think she just ran away you expect her to come back right unless you of course you know she's not coming back in which case you're going to feel like you have the liberty to destroy all of her property so when i see that happening early i'm not trying to give you tips about how to cover your murder but the point is if i see that early i'm going to say well why would you do that why would you speak as though she's never coming back if you aren't quite sure if she's coming back there are things that happen in the fallout after a murder takes place they can kind of tip the hand of of who's involved well something similar happens with jesus right i mean something happens if you didn't know it was jesus but something's going to happen in that first century that's going to change all of history and it turns out that afterwards every significant aspect of human history has the fingerprints of who oh yeah jesus in nazareth and so it may be that jesus of nazareth is the reason why all of that history turned on a dime so so i looked at those areas now i was very specific about this i was interested in two things number one because there's lots of books out there and i have them sitting back here um on my shelf and i've re i've quoted those in my footnotes there are lots of good books that are written by people who are talking about the impact that jesus dinesh jesus wrote one recently there's a bunch of these out there that talk about the impact that jesus had but none of them attempt to sift through that impact to see if there's evidence we could use to reconstruct the story of g remember i'm saying that jesus had such an impact on history that you could reconstruct his story in every detail from history so i'm only looking at those aspects of culture i'll give you an example of this it's clear that jesus has had an impact on the on the way that we think about medicine and the way that we think about serving the poor and serving those who are underserved medically right but i'm looking for those aspects of culture that i could actually reconstruct the story of jesus through them not just the areas where he's had huge impact so for example i include the medical sciences in my science chapter but here's my point i think there are six areas of culture that not only were forever changed by jesus but various fingerprints and so from those fingerprints you can reconstruct the story of jesus they are the literature the visual arts and music um education science spirituality uh these are so there's there's there are literature visual arts music education science and spirituality those are the six those six i think are the most important aspects that i revere of culture as an atheist so about halfway through this book i stopped and i said ah man i don't you know look i write apologetics books this is what i do i make a case and i try to stay in my lane i you know that for example i don't often talk about cultural issues the next book i'm going to start to branch out in that a little bit but for the most part i'm making a case for jesus and for christianity from the evidence that's on the table and so i know i'm doing that but i got about halfway through this book and i wrote it back to my publisher and i said you know it strikes me this is really more a book about why jesus matters and i wanted to change the subtitle which we did because it turned out that those sixth thing about five of those six things literature music visual arts education and science were the things that i most revered as an atheist having no idea that we wouldn't be anywhere we are today in those five areas if not for jesus and his followers so he mattered to me even before i knew he mattered because the areas of culture he impacted mattered to me and it turns out i was indebted to jesus i remember i was architecture you know i had my master's degree in architecture so i'm in germany with my wife visiting her family because she was born in germany and they used to make fun of me i was there for a month it was like you know church castle next city we would go out every day driving around in my little volkswagen white volkswagen beetle that i rented and we would we would go to church a castle and next city another church another castle next city i was looking at the architecture well it turns out the most spectacular architecture i was looking at was in churches and it was all from christ followers inspired by jesus featuring jesus yet i just like that doesn't matter i'm looking at the structure and the beauty of this really so it turns out that these areas of culture are so deeply and you might say well that's in the west jim no no no if you're doing science anywhere in the world you're indebted to that area of the world european christendom yeah i get it in the scientific revolution in europe people were all christians but it didn't have to happen there there were more people everywhere else in the planet than there were in that tiny spot called europe okay it happened in europe under christendom for a reason the worldview that was being represented by that population was a christian worldview and it ignites the sciences in a way that other world views don't so yeah i get it you can say but look if you're doing science anywhere in asia if you're doing science in persia if you're doing science anywhere in the world anywhere it turns out you're still indebted to the fathers of science who came out of a christian worldview and the vast majority of the science fathers of every discipline from astronomy chemistry quantum mechanics computer sciences those are christ followers i mean this is get over it they are the the nobel laureates in the sciences are dominated by christians two to one the next group coming down is guess what even a more amazing group jewish believers or at least jewish people identify as jewish are the next group and about you know one half or a little less than half of the christians and then it drops off significantly there are six times more christians involved in the sciences as nobel laureate winners then there are atheists and agnostics combined i mean we have a tendency to think that i i cannot believe in supernaturalism that a man rose from the grave and still be involved in the sciences really we have always been that we've always been we've always believed those two things christians have dominated this by the way muslims were involved and were heavily involved in this yeah that's true for the middle ages and then drop off drop off the map why theological reasons i think there's a book called the closing of the muslim mind that tries to kind of parse that out sure but the reality of it is is that we have to make a choice as christians if we don't know our involvement in how important christ and his followers have been to the sciences and we now think well that this is not a christian endeavor shame on us young people need to be involved young christians need to be involved in the sciences one of the things that catalyzed the sciences under christianity was this view that yes while the written special revelation of the new testament and of the bible is closed the natural revelation and what we learn about god from the natural sciences is still open it's never going to contradict the special revelation but there is more to be discovered and you get a chance to write in that book the book of natural revelation if you're a scientist worshiping god with your mind let's jump in through these and just kind of give maybe some some quick bullet point answers so people get the broad argument that you're making here you're not necessarily saying this makes christianity true if i understand it correctly you're saying if god did step into history this is the kind of fallout we would expect and we see it with jesus and not even close to any other figure who's ever existed does that sum it up correctly okay yes you did a great job with that because i think the reality of it is we can make a case for the historicity of jesus just from history the history of jesus is connected to reality and we have a reality in history that demonstrates the historicity of jesus but beyond that i think that the expectation i would have that this dude think about this dude you watched the chosen in the last couple of years right we watched this series called the chosen and we're all like oh this is going again i want you to put yourself at least that visually gives you a sense of the part of the world and the group he's leaving and the nature of who he would you expect that guy to have this kind of impact on history i just think that's remarkable and i talk about this in the book i like make a list of all the other people in the first century forget about that i make a list of all the other world leaders most of them you won't recognize and they didn't have this kind of impact on history i made a list of all of the religious leaders and deities no not like jesus of nazareth i made a list of all the other people who claim to be the jewish messiah there are a number of those you don't even know their names because they're not the jewish messiah so it turns out that this guy has an unparalleled impact on history that makes no sense at all if he's just as ancient sage in the first century in jerusalem but it makes perfect sense if he is the god who created all of us if god stepped into the world as a man you would expect him to reorder history to be to all of history would align for his arrival and then afterwards the huge impact would be like no other person in the history of persons that's why he's a person now i do think that this kind of unparalleled impact should at least make us say well whoa whoa maybe i should read the new testament that's why i wanted to write a book that was kind of like the companion piece to cold case christianity right because that's everything inside the new testament everything outside the new testament so give us the quick kind of twitter thoughts on the effect in the fallout for music because when you first showed me these slides i it was it was pretty remarkable so paint that picture quickly for us then i want to jump to universities okay so two things impact and then reconstructing the story impact is unparalleled it's not just in western culture you'll see if you are a big fan of music today and you made a list of the top 150 artists in pop music rock raft country whatever it is they're available right now on billboard magazine they're available at rolling stone it's available at imdb i made a list of all of those about 150 artists all but two have sung a song about jesus not necessarily a nice song sometimes it's pejorative but the point is you cannot say that about any other historical figure or any other god deity or religious leader only one person draws that kind of attention well that's western music oh really not necessarily it turns out that western music has had a global impact if you listen to what like what's known as k-pop korean pop music pretty cool actually but it kind of feels like you know like boy bands you know from the uh from the 90s but the point is if you listen to that they're they're emulating the the genre of music that the jesus followers or people who sung about jesus whether they were followers or not one of my favorite stars uh movie our psalms is by um trying to remember with who did this uh the song was jesus thinks you're a jerk this is awesome right i mean people use jesus as a source of inspiration or infuriation in in all of their their music no one has had the impact on music and by the way the history of music i looked at all of the significant milestones in the history of music like when do we move from just kind of monotone chants to like harmonies oh a christ follower did that oh when do we move from memorizing and communicating melodies by memory from one person to another to actually writing down melodies on musical scale who oh a christ follower invented that well wouldn't you move toward it turns out every significant advancement in the history of music is not only made by christ followers but it's typically done in a christian setting so it turns out that whatever you're listening to today if you were to kind of draw out the the rough structure of the music is it are there harmonies involved are there major and minor scales well those were created by christ followers it is using certain kinds of instruments a pretty pretty good chance those were created by christ followers if you just look at what's being done in music today it's indeed even though you may not have any idea that that's where it came from that's the kind of impact that jesus had why because the world view inaugurated by jesus was a singing worldview born out of the judeo-christian jewish culture as a matter of fact you'll see that the psalms that were sung by david in the psalms are most scholars think those are the same songs that were sung for example by jesus at the lord's supper and it turns out the rich tradition of music if all you had were the hymns sung by christians in the first 400 years and not only have i identified those for you in the book i've gone through every one of those hymns and i'll tell you what you can pull out of each hymn you can reconstruct the story of jesus and the rich theology of the christian worldview if all you had was the music of the first four centuries that to me is a huge impact and it helps us to establish again you could destroy the new testament but unless you're willing to also destroy the history of music you will not erase jesus that is to me one most interesting thing from your book when you look at the fallout 4 movies you can reconstruct the life of jesus the fallout for music reconstruct the life of jesus art in the early century scenes and life of jesus architecture universities scientists and their writings this doesn't prove christianity is true but you're saying it's the kind of fallout we would expect if it were true which should make us pause and think wait a minute why did this guy have such a transformative influence on world history especially when you think about the fact that he traveled by foot had no political power his family was insignificant he wasn't married had no military power why him is the question you're asking in this book and i think christian's the skeptic should read it with an open mind now one more question that we're going to shift and take some live questions i see some questions i see some pushback which is great which i really enjoy what about the fallout for other religions and you go into depth on hinduism mithraism is long we don't have the time to go into each one of those but talk about the influence jesus had on other religions and how it's unique compared to any other religious figure well what's fascinating is everything that follows jesus of course you would expect at some point to hat tip or acknowledge jesus and that's true if it's islam or ahmad islam or if it's baha'i or if it's new age spirituality anything that follows jesus in the timeline of established world religions those folks the leaders of those groups or even their own scripture will acknowledge jesus and some they'll find a place they'll emerge mention or modify their related their their religious beliefs to accommodate jesus but what's interesting is that there are a number of religions that preceded jesus like buddhism and hinduism and and and the worship of addis and mithras all of these preceding religions also end up merging jesus in some way well how can that be they preceded jesus well because they existed then on the other side of the timeline for at least a short period of time so although they started before jesus they extended into the common era and once they get into the common era they're like oh we've got to do something with this jesus guy so you will see that like leaders in the buddhist movement or hindu leaders they will make room for jesus they will say that jesus can be described in a way that's consonant with their with their religious beliefs of that system they will describe it as an enlightened man or as another manifestation as the baha'i faith does they will find room for jesus in their system even though many of these pre-existed jesus now that's interesting to me right here's why jesus doesn't do that in return it's not like you know it's true he comes in the middle of that timeline of all these spiritual world views and he never says oh yeah we can accommodate buddha well buddha sees him no we can accommodate indra no krishna no zorraster no he doesn't accommodate anyone who precedes him instead he says i'm the only way i am the way to the father except through me and getting there isn't that interesting everyone wants to hat tip and borrow from jesus but jesus doesn't borrow from anyone else and that to me i think is interesting to see that so that's why when we say typically if you're gonna if you're interested in spiritual things you ought to start with jesus because it turns out you could reconstruct the story of jesus just from the way that non-christian religions describe him because they often will admit to certain characteristics of jesus in order to incorporate them into so here's what's interesting about that i have a map in the book where i show all of the places where non-christian traditions have touched the global map it turns out you would know something about jesus in all of those far corners of the world where christianity is not dominant just because those world religions make room for jesus that to me is fascinating that's the kind of impact that jesus had even on systems that are non-christian all right jim let's take some questions and when we're done i'm going to let you pick the questions you find most helpful most interesting for whatever criteria you want uh so if you have a question for detective wallace please place it in here brief succinct to the point let me start with the one that i think is is interesting from uh pine creek uh a skeptic who watches my show i hope you'd use that term and that's fine uh he says did christianity ever hurt the progress of science so usually the story that's used in describing the way that it it's christianity christianity now has somehow hindered science is typically formed in the person of galileo right because galileo's story here he is is somebody who is um heliocentric he believes the universe and our our solar system rather is revolving and centered on the sun and that the earth is rotating around the sun well look at the time the pope who was and i have a whole part of my chapter on this the pope who was in power at that time uh actually argued for a geocentric uh solar system in which the sen the center of the solar system is earth and everything rotates around the earth so this story about how galileo was treated by the catholic church and how he was actually under house arrest because he held a view that was opposed by the pope is something to kind of dig in the weeds here a little bit because it turns out the pope was actually somebody who accepted the science prior to galileo because the science prior to galileo through aristotle and through ptolemy was for a geocentric solar system so it's not as though that what was happening here is you've got galileo against the chur first of all it's not galileo against christianity regardless the most you could say is that galileo was opposed to catholic leadership that's all you could say right but it turns out that the catholic leadership at the time advanced the cause of the the the scientific consensus of the time which was for geocentrism so what you really have is a science versus science and this is always the case right now it turns out that if you look at the there were many there was a couple uh who preceded galileo who also believed in the heliocentric universe uh solar system for example copernicus was somebody who believed in that um so if you look at now why were those people not under the same kind of condemnation let's say as galileo well if you read through the history of galileo galileo had a personality issue okay he not only held this view but he also would kind of take jabs at the pope and he would make he wrote a book in which he really mocked the pope pretty openly and a lot of what you're seeing between the pope and galileo has to do with galileo's presentation of his ideas rather than his ideas themselves as a matter of fact nobody contributed more to the advancement of astronomy and the sciences than the papacy than the roman catholic papacy because they had a vested interest in this no one was exposed to more about cosmology than people in the middle centuries when they were exposed under catholic formed universities that were teaching the sciences so it turns out that yes was there a that story that iconic story that people sometimes point to to say well look you know uh galileo was trying to show the truth about the the heliocentric solar system and the pope opposed him well remember the pope actually supported the view held by scientific thinkers prior to galileo and at some point of course science always turns over science we learn more we discover more about the natural realm and we embrace those discoveries and no one has done more for the advancement of the sciences than the modern universities well who form those oh yeah christians it turns out bologna paris and oxford the three modern universities now you can say that were there learning institutions before those three yeah but they weren't the kind of modern university you and i know in which there's a body of students a body of faculty who are are awarding diplomas to people who graduate after meeting certain criterias that's a very modern idea of education that is uniquely christian it comes out of those three universities as a matter of fact if all you did was look at the top 15 universities in the world today they were all formed by christians they may not be teaching christianity they may not be favorable to christianity today but if you went back to those universities and examined their campuses and looked at the buildings and the images and verses of scripture that are on their buildings the original buildings you could reconstruct the story of jesus just from the physical campuses of the top 15 universities in the world and i did that in the book tina lynch has a question for you says which evidence would you say is the most important one that lead or leads to the existence of jesus outside the bible music so i don't know which is the most important but i do know this i was surprised to find so whatever i did in every one of these categories i reassembled what could be known about jesus from literature what could be in the first three centuries i looked at every voice that is available out there in ancient history in the first three centuries of the common era both christian non-christian jews greeks persians romans in the first three centuries and i went that far because i felt like okay look this is all prior to the edict of milan and the edict of thessalonica so these are prior to christianity being comfortable in a power structure that might corrupt the message of christianity so we're going to look at only those voices that are speaking about jesus and the up and down cycle of persecution and tolerance and disruption that was experiencing in the first three centuries once you get to the third century 325 i stopped because then i think you could make an argument that you know so so i looked at those those voices you can reconstruct the story of jesus from those pretty powerfully from the church fathers the ancient non-christians the non-canonical authors you can read the story of jesus i looked at that from music of that from the arts surprisingly the most robust reconstruction possible is from the personal writings of the science fathers those fosters of the sciences who also wrote about jesus in their personal journals so if all you had was the history of science and you wanted to know more and you might think oh well he's talking about copernicus or he's talking about somebody like in the third century or that not the 13th century or the 15th century no it turns out that we still have the we still dominate uh you can find living scientists today who are nobel prize winners and are our prize winners and every other oh there's a ton of by the way scientific prizes i got a list of those in the book and you can find that those winners of prizes are most of more christ followers and they even today write about jesus so if you'd have to erase the history of science to get rid of the truth about jesus that's awesome here's here's one for you that i wonder if you've thought about andrew green says is there a runner-up for most influential historical figure uh how would their influence pan against the case for christ really good question um i'd like somebody to ask that question other than me i i don't i can't think of anyone who comes close if you just look at the number of books written about historical figures the gap is pretty great right down to and i'm trying to i'm gonna i'll never get it up in time sean it's in my case notes on this book but but if you look the gap is huge so in terms of historical figures that have an impact on literature that that is is is it's a huge gap and there's nobody even close but i can tell you those if you look at my list of people in the first century who lived historical figures who lived most of you will recognize a couple but just a couple to be honest there's nobody who's had that if all you said is it fair but even if that's why i said even if you looked at the entire list of important i just googled it right because i'm thinking hey most of here's why i say that i love using google sometimes in wikipedia as a source why because it's not very friendly to christians and most of the time if you're a scientist on and you're on wikipedia they have scrubbed your christian identity all altogether now if you do admit that you're a christian it's like whoa you know so i'm only touching the tip of the iceberg because it turns out that most of these histories of scientists for example they've had their christian identity removed and it's hard to get back to that so whatever i'm pitching trust me it's far stronger than what i'm pitching because i'm only pitching the stuff that comes from the most skeptical sources possible and i tried my best to limit myself to the most skeptical sources and provide you with links so if i'm telling you this dude is the father of whatever of you know of microbiology or he's the father of quantum mechanics i'm providing you with the link to go to it's basically a secular source where they're calling him the father of quantum mechanics so it turns out i mean this is i'm trying to be as neutral as i can on that and that's where i told my research assistants to focus so you'll use a source like that to start and get attention and then track down the real source itself that's the beginning so you start off by somebody i just need a pointer and once he's pointed well then i gotta find the books that are out there that actually support that case but here's what but here's the problem um there's a bunch of people i'm sure who are listed in the sciences for example on wikipedia who i can't even start as a pointer because they've removed their christian identity so that's okay because when you see the list of 950 of the science fathers you all think it's enough jim one last question for you then uh gonna gonna let you around one respect the time uh this one doesn't relate directly you've been presenting but i think it's an interesting one to start to kind of end with i've never asked you this myself this comes from the myth vision podcast okay could could jay warner wallace be wrong about jesus is it even possible in his mind that jesus did not rise from the dead yes absolutely anything and everything is possible so is it possible i'm wrong of course give me a break the standard of proof though is not beyond a possible doubt it's possible that you're not even watching this right you're dreaming the entire thing it's possible that we aren't really in two different rooms or it it's all kinds of things are possible but it turns out the standard of proof on any case is is not beyond a possible doubt because i had never reached that i've never reached beyond a possible doubt on any case there's always questions i could offer that i can't answer there's always so is it possible i'm wrong oh yeah but i'm not aiming at that standard i mean that beyond a reasonable doubt by the way none of us live a life in which we are living at beyond a possible doubt if that's the case did you brush your teeth this morning you realize that sometimes people people have actually died of toothpaste poisoning and you brushed your teeth and did you plug anything into the wall people are electrocuted every day by bad wiring did you start your car cars explode every day all over america for one malfunction or another did you drive in the air in other words if you had the standard that i have to be absolutely correct beyond a possible doubt you would not leave your house you would be paralyzed it turns out what we do every day is we live in a different standard yeah it's possible that could happen to me but it's not reasonable so i'm going to go do it it's possible that i could be wrong about what's in this class but it's not reasonable so i'm going to drink it we don't live and express and and move in the world with the prohibitive standard of it must be true beyond a possible doubt as a matter of fact judges tell juries that you don't have that standard about anything and you should not use that standard in this case because judges will say in california i could offer a possible or imaginary doubt about anything so i never worry about well do i have open questions about jesus yeah is it possible i'm wrong yeah i don't think it's reasonable that i'm wrong i think i'm beyond a reasonable doubt but i could never get beyond a possible doubt and so that's why i think we we have to get to a place where we say hey when is good enough good enough and that's really the question is when do i reach a point where i'm like okay and ask yourself this question what's keeping you up all right have you have a standard by the way you don't hold that standard for anything else so why are you holding that standard for jesus that standard for god you don't hold that standard it's possible right now your spouse is cheating on you've been cheating on you for five years that's possible are you gonna be paranoid and checking your text messages no you're going to let your reasoning capacity tell you what's beyond a reasonable doubt and you're going to live that way because otherwise you're a paranoid danger to the world because you can't live beyond a possible doubt so i think this understanding what is the standard of proof is huge which is why i spend a whole chapter on it in cold case christianity if you can't get beyond that you but you be honest be fair you don't hold that standard for anything else but it comes to god oh now suddenly the standard is a lot higher really the highest standard in criminal trials is beyond a reasonable doubt that's a high enough standard for anything that's good enough for me i love it well we've got a few minutes over so we gotta give away uh copies of your book by the way i don't feel bad because you gave long answers so it's it's on you know i know you know me already sean just messing with you hey we've got if you had greg right now you know you and i both know okay greg would be we used to be going you be on question number one right now all right maybe yeah right right okay that's awesome i love it okay we're gonna wait two copies of your book person of interest and i hope i didn't miss any i wrote down there were four questions actually two uh non-believers two i think who are christians and you just pick whichever one you think is most interesting one was about what was i don't know well it does it doesn't matter who matters the question and we'll send it to them yeah you know i thought the last two questions were really good so i don't know who people are or if they're believers or non-believers but the last two questions that's who i would give it to all right we'll take it so myth vision you got yourself a copy of the new book by jay warner wallace this is awesome i'm going to be sorry at some point there'll be a four-hour video on why i'm an idiot but that's okay i'm willing to get that chance that's awesome i appreciate it so myth vision and andrew you also had the second to last question i recognize andrew green you've been in a bunch thanks for joining us uh if you guys will email into apologetics at biola.edu apologetics at biola.edu we will send you a copy of jim's latest book uh by the way those of you join us make sure you hit subscribe we've got some fascinating interviews coming up next week have lisa we'll talk about his new book the case for heaven i have a story coming up soon interviewing an expert on the story of c.s lewis from atheist to christian apologist have both craig keener and jp moreland coming on to talk about the modern case for the miraculous so make sure you hit subscribe you're not going to want to miss some of the shows we have coming up jim hang on one minute afterwards uh so we can chat but to the rest of you we will see you very soon have a wonderful evening

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 19,558

Rating: 4.8485956 out of 5

Keywords: person of interest, j. warner wallace, book, detective, Jesus, history, art, music, science, evidence, proof, prophecy, resurrection

Id: WgnvrENuDWQ

Length: 65min 12sec (3912 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021