Three Big Reasons We Know the New Testament is True

1:59 And so please welcome our friend, Dr. Frank Turek. sometimes people ask me if I know someone relatively famous what's that person like off stage what was Charlie Kirk like off stage just like he was on stage What is Skip Heitzig like offstage? Moving on. Just like he is on stage. there's nothing fake about your pastor. He loves Jesus. He loves the Bible and he loves you. And, um, he and I have spent about the last seven hours together and that's about six hours more than I spend with anyone other than my wife. So you, you're blessed to have such a great man and a great Bible teacher.

3:19 On. on September 10th we were just flipping hats and 12 minutes later Charlie's lifeless eyes were looking at me in the back of an SUV he wasn't looking at me he was looking past me right into eternity absent from the body present with the Lord was there any purpose to his life is there any purpose to your life what is it this is the interactive portion of the program what is the purpose of life why are we here You guys are sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher right now. actually I want you to think about something do you realize that everyone you love will die everything you build will crumble everything you say will be forgotten everything you do will come to nothing you and your identity will die and vanish unless the resurrection is true if there is no resurrection if there is no god if there is no afterlife if there is no judgment it doesn't matter how you live it doesn't matter if you live as a murderer or a missionary it doesn't matter if you live like tyler robinson or like charlie Kirk. It doesn't matter because ultimately if there is no God, there is no judgment, there is no resurrection. We're all going to wind up in the same place. Nowhere. We're just going to go out of existence. So it doesn't ultimately matter how you live here. You have

5:29 no purpose if there is no God. So what I want to spend a little bit of time on tonight is to talk about evidence for this resurrection. And we do this in the book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. And we typically go through four points to show that Christianity is true. Does truth exist? Does God exist? Are miracles possible? And is the New Testament telling us the truth, particularly about the resurrection because if the resurrection really did take place then game over christianity is true on the other hand if the resurrection didn't take place if he stayed in the tomb then christianity is false do you realize that christianity is a religious worldview you can investigate and discover whether or not it's true it's not just someone's philosophy you can see if these events really occurred in history Now, I don't have time to do the first three points.

6:30 I'll just say one minute on them. Does truth exist? How many times have you heard people say, there is no truth, right? Or you have your truth, I have my truth. To the people who say there is no truth, you may want to ask them a question. Is that true? Is it true that there's no truth? Because if it's true that there's no truth, the claim there is no truth can't be true, but it claims to be true. Did I say that right? I know that can give you intellectual constipation. Because it's a self-defeating statement. It's like saying I can't speak a word in English. To say there's no truth is a truth claim. It defeats itself. It's like saying you ought not judge. Someone says that, what might you say back to them? Then why are you judging me for judging? That's a judgment. Jesus didn't say don't judge. He said judge not lest you be judged. He's not telling you not to judge.

7:23 He's telling you how to judge. These are self-defeating statements. of course there's truth. The second question, does God exist? One argument for the existence of God is that the universe had a beginning out of nothing. Even atheists are admitting this now. They don't think it's God, but what else could have created the universe out of nothing? If space, time, and matter had a beginning out of nothing, what could have created that? Only something outside of space, time, and matter. In other words, the cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial powerful personal in order to choose to create and also intelligent to have a mind to make a choice now ladies and gentlemen when you think about a spaceless timeless immaterial powerful personal intelligent cause who do you think of god you say how do you know it's the christian god frank we don't yet i mean this could be allah or some other theistic or deistic god but if we keep going through the questions and we realize that jesus really did rise from the dead then we can go back and say that the same being that walked out of the tomb 1,993 years ago is the same being in whose divine nature created the universe out of nothing, right? You don't get all the way to Jesus with some sort of scientific argument that the universe had a beginning. You get back to a first cause, but you don't know if the first cause is Jesus. You've got to see if Jesus rose from the dead to see if he is the first cause, all right? Now, the third question, are miracles possible?

8:47 I always ask people what's the greatest miracle in the Bible and a lot of people will say the resurrection no the resurrection is easy compared to the greatest miracle the greatest miracle in the Bible is the first verse in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth if that verse is true every other verse is at least possible well even atheists are admitting the evidence for the first verse that the universe had a beginning of course they don't think it's God. But what else could it be, as I just mentioned? Look, if Genesis 1-1 is true, then God can do whatever he wants. It's not logically impossible inside the universe. I mean, if he can create the whole universe out of nothing, can he walk on water? Can he raise the dead? Can he part the Red Sea? Of course, these are easy for God to create the universe out of nothing. So the answer to the first three questions is yes, yes, and yes. Now we've got to dive into question number four. That's what we're going to spend our time on here tonight. Because a resurrection can't be possible if there's no God and miracles are not possible. But we're going to see that there is, we'll be just seeing that there is a God and miracles are possible. So now we have to see if the New Testament writers are really telling us the truth. And I just want to talk about three major reasons I think the New Testament writers are telling the truth. In the book, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. The chapter is called the top 10 reasons we know the New Testament writers told the truth. We don't have time for 10. We're going to do three. And here are the three we're going to cover. The first is the fact that there are embarrassing stories in the text they never would have invented. I'll explain what that is in a minute. The second is it's their eyewitness details that only eyewitnesses would know. You couldn't make this up if you weren't an eyewitness. And then finally, they died excruciating deaths. In fact, the word excruciating means out of the crucifixion. That's where we get the word from. These men who were in a position to know whether Jesus had risen from the dead or not because they were eyewitnesses died excruciating deaths when they could have claimed it never happened. Leave us alone. Don't

10:57 kill us. They didn't do that. All right. So you guys ready to go? All right. Let's start at point one, embarrassing stories. What are embarrassing stories? Historians know that if they investigate a text, not just biblical text, but any text from history, if there's something embarrassing to the author or authors in it, it's probably true. Why? Because you're not going to invent things that make you look bad. You might invent things that make you look good, but you won't invent things that make you look bad. In fact, let me ask you guys a question in here. How many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look good? If you don't have your hand up right now, you're lying to make yourself look good. And it's not working. We know you're lying. All right. How many people in here have ever lied to make yourself look bad, to embarrass yourself?

11:53 No, you don't do that. You might lie to make yourself look good. You won't lie to embarrass yourself. Well, the New Testament writers have filled the New Testament with embarrassing stories they never would have invented. That's why we call this the dove factor. They're not making this up. In fact, Wes Huff, another apologist calls the disciples, the duh-ciples, right? Because how often do they not understand what Jesus is doing and what he's saying? It's embarrassing. We didn't even get what his mission was until he's already ascended to heaven. It's crazy. I mean, think about this. Peter, their leader is called Satan by Jesus. Do you think Mark who wrote this down made that up? You think he said to Peter at one point, Hey Pete, I'm going to make this a real interesting story. I'm going to have the Lord call you Satan. What do you think Peter would have said? Have him call you Satan. This is embarrassing. And then Peter says, Lord, I'll never deny you. What does he wind up doing? He denies him three times. And then at the crucifixion, all the disciples, with the exception of one, they all run away for fear of the Jews.

13:02 This is like a Monty Python movie. Run away. They all run away. And who are the brave ones? The women. That's right. You can give yourselves a hand. I am woman. Hear me roar. now who wrote the new testament documents down men now what man is going to invent that he was hiding for fear of the jews why the women went down discovered the empty tomb would any man in here invent that i mean if i was there and making it up i'd make myself look good wouldn't you i mean i'd write something down like this we marched right down there and we overpowered that elite Roman guard. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. John said, get out. Peter Roundhouse kicked them. Thomas said, we'll be back. No doubt.

14:02 some of you will get that tomorrow and then on Sunday morning we marched right down to the tomb and we saw Jesus who congratulated us in our great faith and then we went and comforted the trembling women I would never say it was Mr. Sissy Pants why the women went down to discover the empty tomb and oh by the way why would you never say the women were the first witnesses in that culture forget about the fact it was embarrassing to men it was but why would you never say they were the first witnesses in that culture if you're trying to prove to people that Jesus rose from the dead because a woman's testimony was not considered on par with that of a man so if you're making up the new testament story you'd only have the men be the first witnesses yet all four gospels say the women were the first witnesses which is telling us what they really were it was embarrassing but they admitted it anyway in fact one of the witnesses was a formerly demon-possessed woman. Wow, what a credible witness you got there.

15:05 I actually had a woman come up to me once and she said, Frank, I know why Jesus appeared to the women first. And I said, why? And she said, because he wanted to get the story out. I said, that is an excellent point. I had not thought of that because ladies, when your man comes home from work, does he say much? There could have been a nuclear explosion down at the plant. He's not going to tell you. You'll see it on the news before you hear it from him. You'll be watching the news going, Hey, hi. Oh yeah. Forgot to tell you the nuke blew up. I've been hot for three days. What's for dinner? He's not going to tell you. In fact, we were at the university of Cincinnati a couple of years ago. And this guy came up to me after the seminar. And he said, you think that's bad? He said, I have a friend who was on a private plane, just he and the pilot and the pilot died mid flight. And my friend did not know how to fly the plane. So just like in the movies, the tower talked him down. When he went home that night, his wife said, how was your day, dear? He said, same old, same old.

16:20 i can't even believe this next verse is in the new testament but it is do you know when jesus takes his disciples up on the mountain in matthew 28 as recorded in matthew 28 and gives them the great commission where it says go therefore make disciples of all nations notice he doesn't say make believers he says make disciples there's a difference christianity is not just fire insurance In other words, you're supposed to be following Jesus in every area of your life. Anyway, as he's given them the great commission, they're all standing there. The disciples are. And it says in verse 17, this some believed, but some doubted.

17:05 What? He's resurrected right in front of them and they're doubting. This is embarrassing. It's like they're standing there going, you see that guy over there? Yeah, that guy over there is Jesus. No, Jesus. He was, he can't be him. He was just killed not long ago. No, I'm telling you, it's him. the Romans killed him. He can't be Jesus. It's him. How can it be Jesus? You know, the Romans were professional executioners. You know, they whipped him. They put nails in him. They put a spear in his side. Blood and water came out. I mean, if they didn't kill him and they let him off alive, they could have been executed for failing to carry the execution out. I'm telling you, Jesus is dead. It's him. It can't be. It is. How do you know? the women told me they're not making this up there's even potentially embarrassing details about jesus in the text in mark chapter 3 it says that jesus's own family wanted to seize him and take him home because they thought he was out of his mind they thought he was nuts his own brothers don't believe in him we learn later however that james the half brother of Jesus, who wrote that little book in the New Testament called? Man, you guys are sharp tonight.

18:26 He dies as a martyr in the city of Jerusalem in 62 AD. The Sanhedrin throw him off the Temple Mount and then they stone him to death. He's the pastor of the church in Jerusalem. You know, no Bible writer tells us this. You know, tells us this Josephus, the Jewish historian who may have seen this himself because he lived from 37 AD to about 100 AD. He records this and another writer, Hegesippus, records it as well. Why is James dying as a martyr for his own brother's alleged resurrection in the same city he's alleged to have risen from the dead end when prior to the resurrection he didn't think his own brother was God? Because according to 1 Corinthians 15, the earliest evidence for the resurrection in the entire Bible, an ancient creed, 1 Corinthians 15 verses three to eight. One of the people to whom Jesus appeared to was James, his brother. Before the resurrection, James said, yo, bro, you're not God. After the resurrection, he said, yo, bro, you're God. Now, how many people in here have a brother? All right. How many people have a brother who thinks he's God? Yeah. You don't believe in him either. Neither did James. It took a resurrection. Jesus is called a madman. He's called a drunkard. He's called demon possessed.

19:41 Do you think they invented this? He has his feet, white, but the hair of a prostitute, which easily could have been seen as a sexual advance. And oh, by the way, there are two prostitutes in Jesus's bloodline. Who are they? Rahab and Tamar. Now, do you think Matthew, when he was recording the genealogy, said to himself, you know what? I really think I need to spice up the Messiah's bloodline a little bit. Let me put a couple of prostitutes in here. Rahab, Tamar. No. No. In fact, there's a lot of shady people in the bloodline. The bloodline of the Messiah, Judah, from where we get the term Jew from, not a good guy. He's the guy that sold his brother Joseph into slavery. And then he later slept with his daughter-in-law Tamar. This guy's in the bloodline of the Messiah. David's in the bloodline of the Messiah. David, a man after God's own heart. Yeah, but he's a liar, adulterer, and a murderer. Gee, I guess there's hope for the rest of us then.

20:37 Bathsheba's in the bloodline. But when Matthew gets to her in the genealogy, he doesn't say her name. What does he say instead? Uriah's wife. He's telling the truth, but it's a slam. Because who's Uriah? Husband of Bathsheba, whom David had killed so he could cover up the crime and have Bathsheba for himself. The writer's telling the truth, but it's a slam it's embarrassing also jesus their messiah is crucified like a criminal this is embarrassing they're not making this up why would they do this you know we just got back from a trip to egypt when you go to egypt and you go to those monuments you know what they are they're monuments of propaganda to how great the pharaoh is they don't record anything negative but you look at the bible it's like a who's who of sinners in fact Dennis Prager you may know of him he's a conservative Jewish man who's not a Christian but he believes the old testament's true and he says this one reason I know the old testament is true is because no people group would invent such an embarrassing history of themselves you notice that I would ask Dennis well if embarrassing testimony works for the Old Testament, why doesn't it work for the new? They're not making this up either. It's not a made up story. All right, let's do the second one. Eyewitness details. They were there. I'm about to read a couple of verses from what we now call the gospel of Luke. It's a biography of Jesus.

22:21 And as I read these couple of verses, I want you to think if it sounds like Luke is making up a story. This is Luke chapter three, verses one and two. It says this in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor Judea, Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip, Tetrarch of Aetrian, Tractonicus, and Licinius, Tetrarch of Abilene. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the desert. Does it sound like he's making up a story? He's given an exact time here, 29 AD, 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who came to power in 14 AD. I mean, they didn't have the kind of dating system we have now. They would date it by the reign of the emperor. So he's telling it's 29 AD. All eight people are known from history. They all were known to live at this exact time, this is not a made up story. In fact, there are several more details in Luke that are eyewitness details. The book of Acts, his second work, has 84 details from chapter 13 to chapter 28, the end of the book, that are all eyewitness details. Only an eyewitness would know this. We have them all listed in chapter 10 of I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

23:44 Obviously, we can't go through them all here. But I will say this. Archaeologist Titus Kennedy just wrote a book where he points out all of these people that you see here in the New Testament, these 37 people, have all either been found in the dirt or found in other writings outside the Bible. We'll start with Jesus. He's mentioned in Josephus and other writings, and he's also been found in archaeology. Everything else is in alphabetical order. Caesar Augustus, Caiaphas, we'll see that in a minute. Erastus, all the Herods the Bible gets right. James, John the Baptist is mentioned by Josephus. Peter is found in archaeology. Pilate, in fact, there are seven figures associated with the crucifixion of Jesus, which have now been found in the dirt, in archaeology. the first is Herod we have coins from Herod and Josephus the Jewish historian talks about Herod as well Simon of Cyrene who's Simon of Cyrene he's the guy that carried the cross for Jesus we found the burial box of his son it was found in Jerusalem in 1941 what's a burial box an ossuary it's about this big about a year after somebody died the Jews would go in take the bones out and put it in this ossuary. Thousands of these have been found. And this one said, Alexander, son of Simon of Cyrene. What's Cyrene? We would call Cyrene Libya today.

25:25 How many people in the first century do you think had a son by the name of Alexander and his name was Simon and he was from Cyrene? Not very many. This is probably the burial box of the son of Simon of Cyrene. Pilate has been found in a lot of places. This is the Pilate stone from the coastal town of Caesarea found in 1961. Pilate's also in Josephus. He's also been found in rings and stamps. When you, like a bula, you know, you stamp something to show a message. So Pilate's been found in coins. We know that Pilate existed. We also know that Caiaphas existed. Who's Caiaphas? He's the high priest that sentences Jesus to die. Remember he has him before the Sanhedrin there. And Caiaphas says to Jesus, are you the Messiah, the son of the blessed one? And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the son of man coming with power on the clouds. A reference to Daniel chapter seven.

26:27 he's claiming to be Yahweh. And so, so Caiaphas says, blasphemy. And then he tears his robes and he looks at his colleagues. Did you hear what he just said? We don't need to hear anything else. He's committed blasphemy. Jesus claimed to be the great I am. He's claiming to be the God figure from Daniel chapter seven, that guy, we have his bones because in 1990, they found his ossuary. Now notice by the way, how ornate this ossuary is compared to Simon of Cyrene's son's ossuary. Caiaphas was a high priest. He gets a jazzed up. He gets a pimped up ossuary. Whereas if you're just a commoner, you don't get this kind of thing. There's only one Caiaphas known from history. And we have an ossuary from him with his bones in it and the bones of his family because his bones were, he was about 60 years old, according to the analysis.

27:29 So not only do we know he existed, we have his bones. You can see this in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Also, Peter's been found in inscriptions in Capernaum and also Bethsaida. And also, we think his crypt is under what we call St. Peter's Cathedral, the Vatican. Annas has been found. Who is Annas? I mentioned Annas a minute ago when I read from Luke chapter three verses one and two he was also the high priest he came before Caiaphas and Caiaphas was his son-in-law this his tomb was discovered in 1993 but abandoned nobody went there anymore so when we went over to Israel in October I told my guide Ellie Shukran I said Ellie I think I know where this tomb is we need to find it. He says, I will find it. Ellie is the guy that discovered the pool of Siloam and excavated most of the city of David. So one morning when he met us and our tour group, he said, I found it. He said, we will go see it over lunchtime. But unfortunately there's a camel chained in front of it. So we might not be able to go in. So at lunchtime, just a few of us go down there. We had to leave the tour group to do this. We go down to this tomb and the camel is now up on the top of the tomb away from the front. So I said, this is our chance. Let's go.

28:53 So we're running through camel dung to get into this tomb. And when we get into this tomb, there's camel dung everywhere and a lot of garbage and trash in it. And Ellie goes in there and he goes, this is amazing. Because I don't know if you can see this. I don't have a good picture of this. But see these little holes in the wall here? That's where you put the ossuaries. And he had five sons, so there were six holes. One for him and his five sons. And you can't see it behind this anise thing, but there is a etching of what the temple looked like over the center little cubby hole there. that's the only drawing we have of what the temple looked like it comes from annas's tomb and so i told ellie i said ellie you got to tell the authorities about this tomb it's been abandoned nobody goes there anymore but you know what tomb everybody goes to the tomb upon which the church of the holy sepulcher is built upon whose tomb was that the tomb of jesus in the first century annis was at the top of the food chain in jewish in the jewish hierarchy jesus was a common criminal but two thousand years later nobody goes to Annas' tomb. It's filled with cow dung. Everybody goes to Jesus' tomb because he rose from the dead. We also know that Jesus existed from archaeology. Here's one of the archaeological discoveries. His brother James, the guy that died at the hands of the Sanhedrin, we found his burial box. The James ossuary, when this was brought from the antiquities market in Israel in 2009, the guy who brought it forth was immediately arrested. Why? Because they thought it was a forgery and it's illegal to create antiquities, forgeries in Israel. But it went to trial and he

31:02 was exonerated because they realized this is a legit ossuary from the first century, including the inscription which says, James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. very unusual to put the brother on an ossuara you always put the father but not the brother why would you put the brother on there jesus was a special person obviously seven people associated with the crucifixion have been found in the dirt this is not an invented story ladies and gentlemen now one more reason excruciating deaths they died for this. Now, this is the argument that says that these men who were in a position to know whether Jesus had risen from the dead died excruciating deaths when they could have saved themselves by simply saying it never happened. This is a painting of Peter being crucified upside down. I think this is a Caravaggio. We're not sure he was crucified upside down, although under his tomb, under the Vatican, is missing the feet. We have the legs, but not the feet. Titus Kennedy says it could be because he was crucified upside down and when they just cut him off the cross. But here's what we need to remember. All of these people that wrote down the New Testament documents, they all started as Jews. Even Luke is now considered by most scholars, or at least some scholars to be have been Jewish.

32:33 We thought Luke was a Gentile. There's more evidence that he was a Jew as well. These people didn't believe that a man could claim to be God. That was blasphemy. They also didn't think one guy would rise from the dead in the middle of time and save everybody. They knew we'd all rise from the dead at the end of time because that's what Daniel and Isaiah say. But they didn't think one guy would claim to be God and rise from the dead. And what do they wind up doing? They wind up claiming that a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead. and then they take all sorts of abuse after being excommunicated from the synagogue for saying this, even to the point of death. Why would they do this? In fact, this is a very important chart that I'm gonna put on the screen here to show us the apostles' beliefs and practices before and after the resurrection. Before the resurrection, they believed in animal sacrifice. After, they believed Christ's sacrifice has fulfilled animal sacrifice.

33:27 I mean, they've been slaying lambs for hundreds of years. And suddenly Jesus shows up and they go, you know, we don't need to slay these lambs anymore. These are just symbols of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Here he is. Before they believed in a binding law of Moses. Afterwards, Christ's life fulfills the binding law of Moses. Before they believed in strict monotheism. Afterwards, they're believing in a trinity. Three persons in one divine essence. Yes, you can see the trinity in the Old Testament, but it's much clearer in the new. before they believed in the sabbath in fact they thought they could be stoned for not obeying the sabbath afterwards they're worshiping on sunday and paul even says don't let anyone tell you have to obey any sabbath or festival day why would they do this because jesus is our rest now we rest in jesus it's the only one of the ten commandments not repeated as obligatory in the New Testament. Not that it's not a good idea to take a day off. In fact, Charlie's last book, Stop in the Name of God, he asked me to edit. I didn't have to change much. The kid was brilliant.

34:33 He's saying you ought to obey the Sabbath. Not that you're obligated to, you get to take a day off. Concentrate on God and your family. put this thing away can you do that for 24 hours no okay before they believed in a conquering messiah afterwards a sacrificial messiah before they believed in circumcision afterwards they believed in baptism and communion okay let's go back to embarrassing for just a second let me let me ask you guys a question ladies and gentlemen if you were inventing a new religion would you pick this as your point of entry your price of entry what i've got to do to join your group what no i'm out who's making this up now ladies and gentlemen what would have caused these pious jews who thought they were god's chosen people to abandon everything on the left and adopt everything on the right virtually overnight the only thing i can think of is what psychologists call an impact event what's an impact event an impact event is an event that occurs in your life that is so dramatic that it can turn you around 180 degrees just like that.

35:57 Some impact events are so dramatic that although you might not remember what you had for breakfast this morning, you'll remember an impact event that happened 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago if you're old enough. There's probably only a few of you in this room who can answer this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. If you can remember where you were and what you were doing November 22nd 1963 raise your hand and hold it up high ladies and gentlemen see these people with their hands up these people are very old November 22nd, 1963 is my earliest memory. I was two years old in two days. Yes, yes, I'm 64 years old now. I know. I know. I don't look a day over 63. In fact, when I turned 50, my wife was very encouraging. She said, honey, you're going to live to be a hundred. I said, how do you know? She said, because you look half dead already. anyway november 22nd 1963 is my earliest memory i'm a toddler i'm standing in the living room in our home in wannamasa new jersey and my mother is sitting on an ottoman in front of a black and white tv weeping uncontrollably mommy what's the matter what's that they killed the president they killed the president president kennedy assassinated that day i can still see my mother in my mind right now when she was 26 years old sitting on that ottoman she's 88 today but i can see her when she's 26 impact event i don't remember anything before that and very little after that where were you in the challenger exploded where were you in the second plane hit the tower where were you when Trump was shot?

37:44 Where were you when Charlie Kirk was shot? I was 25 feet from him. Do you think I'm ever going to forget that? I couldn't forget it if I wanted to. the first thought I have when I wake up to this day is Charlie. The last thought I have when I go to bed is Charlie.

38:08 It should be that way. It's an impact event. Now, do you think if Charlie Kirk would have walked out of that morgue three days later and did miracles for 40 days and then ascended to heaven, that that would have been an impact event? Of course, a resurrection is going to be an impact event. that's the only way I can explain how all these pious Jews abandoned everything on the left and adopted everything on the right virtually overnight and then went to their deaths for it why would they do this because it was an impact event this is how you can explain well how could they have remembered all this they couldn't not remember it oh it was written down years later doesn't matter. Even if it was written down years later, if we wanted to write a book about nine 11 right now, could we do it? Could we interview eyewitnesses who were there? I can tell you exactly where I was. I don't have time to tell you where I was and what I was doing, but I could tell you, and you could too, if you're old enough impact event.

39:19 in fact what did the new testament writers have to gain by making up a new religion what did they get they got kicked out of the synagogue and then they got beaten tortured and killed last time i checked that was not a list of perks in fact they had every motive to say the resurrection did not happen not every motive to say it did you know i get this question a lot maybe you do if you're a christian are there any non-Christian writers to talk about Jesus and the apostles. Yeah, yeah, they're all in chapter nine of I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. In fact, we got this question last night at University of New Mexico. But you know what's lurking underneath that question quite often? Is an illicit assumption. What's the illicit assumption? You really can't trust the New Testament writers because you see those people were biased. You can only trust the non-Christian writers to tell you what really happened. If you think about that for more than 10 seconds, you'll realize how stupid that assumption is. What did these people have to gain by making up a new religion. Nothing. They had everything to lose by it. Now, some of you may know my friend, Jay Warner Wallace, the cold case homicide detective who's been on Dateline more than any other homicide detective because he solves murders decades old. And Jim has written several books. One of them is called cold case Christianity, where he uses his homicide skills to investigate the greatest homicide of all time, the homicide of Jesus called cold case Christianity. That's his website, coldcasechristianity.com. He's a Christian, of course. And Jim says that whenever he finds a body that has been murdered, he doesn't need to track down a thousand possible motivations for the murder. He says, I know that guy was murdered for one or more of these three reasons. There was either a sex issue, a money issue, or a power issue. Why? Sex, money, and power are the three things that can drive people to murder. In fact, they're the same three things that drive any of us to sin. Why? Because sex, money, and power are good things. In fact, they're so good, we'll often take shortcuts to get them. That's what sin is. So Jim says, if you're going to say the New Testament writers invented all this, you've got to find one or more of those

41:25 three motivators. All right, let's take a look at this, ladies and gentlemen. Did the New Testament writers suddenly get real popular with the ladies for saying Jesus had risen from the dead? No, they didn't get sex. Did they get money? No, they weren't 21st century prosperity gospel preachers. Did they get power? No, they got the opposite of power. They were persecuted. Paul had power when he was persecuting the church. As soon as he becomes a Christian, he's the one persecuted. They didn't get sex. They didn't get money. They didn't get power. They had no motive to invent this. They had every motive to say it wasn't true. Not every motive to say it was. Oh, but they're Christian sources. No, they're not. They're all Jewish sources. They all started as Jews. They became Christians. Why? We'll see here in a minute. But another question you can ask is this, why would they die for a known lie? At this point, you might say, timeout, Frank. If you're going to say that martyrdom shows that Christianity is true, don't you have to say that martyrdom shows Islam is true because they have martyrs? No. Why? Because there's a lot of differences between the Muslim martyrs and the New Testament martyrs. But let me just give you one difference for our purposes here. The Muslim martyrs haven't witnessed anything that tells them that Islam is true. They just have faith. In fact, Muhammad denied doing miracles. The New Testament writers, on the other hand, witnessed the resurrected Jesus. They saw Jesus. They touched Jesus. They with Jesus. They verified with their own senses that Jesus had risen from the dead. Some people will die for a lie they think is the truth. Nobody will die for a lie they know is a lie.

43:10 And the New Testament writers were in a position to know whether it was a lie or not, and they went to their deaths anyway. You can't get better evidence than that unless you were there yourself. Now, let me say one more thing about this. And for those of you who believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God as I do, this is going to sound like heresy for a minute, but it's not. Stick with me. Pastor Skip's going, we're out of time, Frank, we're out of time.

43:35 Christianity is not true because a series of documents we put under one binding called the Bible says it's true. In fact, Christianity would be true if the Bible never existed. You say, how can that be? Ladies and gentlemen, do you realize that there were thousands of Christians before a line of the New Testament was ever written? Why? Because they didn't read about it in a book. They witnessed the resurrected Jesus themselves. Okay.

44:10 Christianity did not begin with a book. Christianity began with an event, the resurrection. There would be no series of books that we now call the New Testament, written by Jews in the first century, claiming a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead, unless a man really did claim to be God and really did rise from the dead, because there's every motive to say this didn't happen, not every motive to say it did. Are you guys with me on this? In other words, we can put it this way. The New Testament writers did not create the resurrection. the resurrection created the New Testament writers. They then wrote it down so we could know about it, but it would have been true had they never had written it down. Let me look at it another way. Which came first, the resurrection or the reports of the resurrection? The resurrection. The Bible, the New Testament you're holding in your hand, is a result of the event. It's not the cause of the event. So you don't say the reason I believe the resurrection is true is because the Bible says so. No, the reason you believe the resurrection is true to a skeptic is because there's good evidence that the resurrection occurred and the documents that we now call the Bible are historically reliable. There's evidence in there that they are, they are historically reliable. You with me? It would be like a Muslim coming to you and say, you ought to be a Christian or you ought to be a Muslim because the Quran says so. You're going to say, I don't believe in the Quran.

45:39 You got to give me evidence for the Quran. Same thing is true with non-Christians. You should give them evidence as to why you think the Bible's telling the truth. All right, so here's the overall argument. Let's land the plane by asking this. It's true, so what? the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many why did jesus come what's the purpose of your life what's the purpose of my life what was the purpose of charlie's life to know this jesus and to make him known In fact, maybe a year before Charlie was murdered by gunshot, he answered a question on campus from somebody who wanted to know how he could get into heaven. Notice Charlie even references a gunshot in this video.

46:38 What would you actually want to tell me if I have 30 seconds left to live? Boy, you got 30 seconds. In 30 seconds, you're about to meet eternal judgment. And there's only one way that you can get bailed out of that. And it's not all the good things you did or the moral scorecard. It's whether or not you have Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Amen. That's the only thing that's going to matter. And so you've got 10 seconds left of dying from a gunshot wound. And you ask the question, who is Jesus Christ? And the answer to that singular question, who is Jesus Christ, is the most important question for everyone in the audience. Not how much money you have, not how much good stuff you do. It is, who is Jesus Christ? You might say, oh, Jesus was a teller of good tales, or Jesus was a good person, or Jesus was a historical figure. None of that's going to cut it. It's whether or not you repent and you ask Christ to come in as your Lord and Savior. That's the only thing that will save you from eternal death. since jesus really did die and rise from the dead we all need to stop trying to achieve your salvation you don't achieve your salvation you receive your salvation you don't achieve your identity you receive your identity if you have to achieve your identity all the pressure is on you and there's always somebody that can do it better and you might even lose that capacity.

47:58 But if you receive your identity, it comes from God. You're not in competition with anybody else. It's free. It's a gift. That's why Jesus came, because there's no other way an infinitely just God can allow sinners like me and you to go unpunished because he's infinitely just. So what does he do instead? Instead of punishing us, he punishes himself in our place. And then by trusting in him, we're not only forgiven, we're given his righteousness. That's why this is called the greatest story ever told and it happens to be true. So your life matters. My life matters. Charlie life matters because the resurrection is true. so he's gone for now but he's absent from the body present with the Lord and every day people go to where Charlie is the question is where are you going to go there's only two possibilities you're either going to go be with God that's heaven or you're going to be separated from God that's hell it's up to you where you go God's not going to force you to heaven against your will. Now, as we go to questions, Pastor Skip has said, I brought some books and I have, and I want to send you the entire PowerPoint presentation, by the way, of this and several other presentations. Follow that QR code. I'll send it to you. If you're say over 70 and don't know what a QR code is, text the word evidence to 855-909-0582. Those folks watching out there in internet land can do the same thing as well. If you're over 80 and don't know how to text, ask your granddaughter. Okay. Um, we brought, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, which argues from the ground up that Christianity is true. Stealing from God. We talked about last night at the university of New Mexico. One aspect atheists steal from God is a standard of morality.

49:53 And they say there's too much evil in the world. As we talked about last night, you wouldn't even know what evil was unless you knew what good was. And you wouldn't know what good was unless God existed. So they're stealing from God while they're arguing against him. That's what that book is about. And then the book that gets the best ratings, but the fewest people know about is Hollywood heroes. Hey, your favorite movies reveal God. If you know people that like movies, they're going to love Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is the superhero, the real superhero that all of these movies are modeled after. Whether you're talking about Iron Man, Captain America, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. Harry Potter? Oh! Oh! do you know that jk rowling has admitted she took the storyline right out of the bible yeah harry potter is the savior of that world his life parallel parallels the life of jesus so if you know anybody that likes movies they're gonna love jesus all right let's go to questions where are we doing the questions we have somebody with mics you got to come up to the mic because people on the internet won't hear it and no one likes to ask the first question so let's move right on to the second question second question either pastor just come right on up All right, this man has a freedom shirt on, so he's gotta be all right then.

51:24 Yes, sir. What's your name? oh no no just give him the mic yes sir go ahead yeah um what's your name uh mason mason go ahead yeah uh so i i get this one every now and again just uh justifying and and anyway so uh noah three lineages all of the earth right so then there's the question of like so the bible um promotes brothers and sisters things like this all the stuff but um i saw an interesting video about Y chromosome and how you can trace it back to three lineages. I know DNA technology is relatively new in the scheme of things.

52:07 Would that still be your best justification for that? Or what would you, how would you present that argument? The study of the genealogy of man, theories come out, it seems like every 10 minutes they change. So I don't put a lot of stock in them because I was told 10 years ago, it couldn't come from one couple or three couples. Now I'm told it can scientifically. So I don't know what to believe anymore. And there are people far more skilled than me in that field that have an opinion on it. Someone like Stephen Meyer might be someone to look at who wrote the book, Return of the God Hypothesis. By the way, has anyone seen Stephen's new movie? It's been in theaters this week. It's called The Story of Everything. Has anyone seen that? Okay, great movie. If you haven't seen it, it might still be in theaters. Go see it. It's talking about the three great recent discoveries over the past hundred years that point to God, the creation of the universe, the fine tuning of the universe and the incredible code called DNA we find in life. But trying to trace all that back and figure out, you know, is it scientifically possible to have all this? I've heard so many competing theories. I don't know what to believe. All right. I think though the scriptures are telling the truth. And why do I think the scriptures are true?

53:17 because if Jesus rose from the dead, he predicted and accomplished that, then he's God. And if he's God, whatever he teaches is true. He taught the entire Old Testament was the word of God and he promised the New Testament. You say, why trust Jesus? I just have a personal policy. If somebody predicts and accomplishes his own resurrection from the dead, I just trust whatever the guy says. Okay. So on Jesus's authority, I'm going to trust what the Old Testament says. All right. Thank you. All right. Hey, what's your name? I'm Brittany. Brittany, go ahead. What is your take on evolution and the age of the earth? Because science seems to think that it's billions of years old. I am absolutely certain the universe is at least 64 years old. i'll throw my mom in there it's at least 88 now you know pastor skip has a book called you can understand the book of genesis where you kind of go i don't know what the right answer is in that if i remember correctly and i'm kind of the same way um but i will say this i know a lot of christians think the old testament certainly teaches a young earth but i want to ask this question this is a question from john lennox who wrote the book, Seven Days That Divide the World.

54:33 What does the first verse of the Bible say? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Okay, when did God create the heavens and the earth? In the beginning. Does it say when the beginning was? No. What does the next verse say? And the earth was formless and void. Wait a minute. In the first verse, we have the creation of the universe. That's what heavens and earth means. The next verse, suddenly we're talking about the earth. You say, what about the days? The days don't begin till verse three. We haven't even gotten there yet. How long did it take from creating the universe to now talking about the earth? We don't know. This is why John Lennox says he believes the Bible is teaching or he leaves the question of age indeterminate. we don't know how old the universe is okay and by the way when you read the account the sun isn't created or at least isn't made to appear until day four and if you go to day seven which is a day of rest according to hebrews four we're still in day seven so day seven's longer than 24 hours what we're saying here is there's reason to believe that Genesis one was not intended to tell you how old the universe is. That wasn't even the question when this was written down. Who is Genesis written to? Maybe it's important to say this. The Bible is not written to you. It's written for you. Who is Genesis written to? Genesis was written to the Israelites who had just left, had just left 400 years in Egypt, and they were slaves for many of those years.

56:20 They're not asking the questions we're asking. They're not walking through the desert going, I wonder how old this place is. That's not their question. Their question is, is Yahweh the true God or are the gods of Egypt the true gods? If you look at Egyptian creation stories, these finite gods are just, they're not explained where they come from, but they're already in the universe and they have to fight one another to bring order to chaos. This is the Egyptian creation story. Moses comes along and he says, no, that's not how it happened. God's outside of all this. He just speaks and he brings order to chaos. He doesn't have to fight anybody. He's all powerful. So some scholars are saying Genesis one is a polemic, meaning a corrective on the Egyptian creation stories. It's not trying to tell, it's trying to answer questions about how long ago, or is evolution true, or that's not what it's dealing with. And the point is, regardless of how far back you go, whether you go back thousands of years or billions of years, you still need a creator. You still need a creator no matter how far back you go. Now, I'll save the question on evolution. We have plenty of videos on our YouTube channel about this, but I want to go to more questions, but I think microevolution is true. Macroevolution is not true. And I think there's evidence against that. Okay. Thank you. All right, let's go over here.

57:44 Hi, my name is also Brittany. I was wondering, do you believe in the harrowing of hell theory? The what of hell? Harrowing of hell. What does that mean? In which Jesus went to Hades to save the souls from the Old Testament. Okay, there is 1 Peter 3 on that, which some say that Jesus did go into hell and preach to the souls in hell. But some Christians aren't so sure about that. Would you hand that mic to Pastor Skip? Pastor Skip, I wanna hear your take on that. Jesus didn't come to hell if he went there to save people from that condition, but if anything, to announce his victory over death and hell. Amen.

58:36 See, you don't need me. You got him. He knows. Thank you, Brittany. Yes, ma'am. um i wanted to know about the world that was before and about what was before the world that was before it's mentioned in genesis and i think it's mentioned in thessalonians i think and then i also wanted to know about um satan before he was the serpent okay this is another question that the Bible, the origin of Satan, isn't explicit about. Although there are passages in Ezekiel and Isaiah that some say are talking about Lucifer. And of course, Jesus says, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning, right? We know there was a fall, but it's not described at least in detail as to when this happened or how it happened. We have to sort of speculate and read between the lines for it. But we know there was a fall prior to, it appears, the creation of the universe. That's what it appears to be. Was that your question? Yeah, and about the world that was before. The what was before? I'm not getting that word. The role? The world. The world. Well, it may have been prior to the creation of the universe. God may have created the angels, including lucifer who became a fallen angel and took it appears from if we're reading revelation 13 right a third of the angels with him in rebellion against god that's what all we can take from from what's written we we can't speculate any further on that sure yeah yeah go ahead go Are we going to have jobs as Gentiles?

1:00:28 Are we going to have heavenly jobs in heavenly places? Or are we going to reign with Jesus? Well, according to the millennial, in the millennium, there will be jobs. Some people are going to rule so many and others are going to rule others. Pastor, add to that. Agreed. We're going to have positions of authority. We're going to have, we're going to be serving the Lord. we're going to be ruling and reigning with christ but we're going to be busy for a thousand years that is what we believe is pre-millennial yes not everybody holds that view if you're post or amillennial but yes and then when we get to the final heaven it's not explained we don't know for sure okay okay is the world destroyed or the world is going to be this world the earth is the earth The earth is going to be destroyed by fire, but then recreated.

1:01:24 The ultimate heaven is a remade heavens and earth. And when we die now, like Charlie, he's absent from the body, present with the Lord in a spiritual sense. But one day his body and our bodies are going to come out of the tomb and be reunited with our spirits. And we're going to have glorified bodies that will never break down, that won't get dresser disease. That's when your chest falls into your drawers.

1:01:49 Okay. They're not going to degrade. All right. Yes, sir. My name is Richard. How do you know? Yes, sir. One question I get from unbelievers is why does God allow so much bad? So people are starving in the world, dying every day. Tornadoes and earthquakes are happening. And I know we live in a fallen world, but it's hard to convince the unbeliever why all this is happening. Yeah, well, there's two questions there. We covered this for an hour last night at the University of New Mexico, which is on our YouTube channel, the Cross-Examined YouTube channel. And about two years ago, I was here and did a similar presentation, If God, Why Evil? Two quick answers. We know that none of that would be evil unless God existed, because nothing can be evil unless there's a standard of good, because evil is a privation or a lack in good. Evil is like cancer.

1:02:44 If you take all the cancer out of a good body, you've got a better body. What happens if you take all the body out of the cancer? you got nothing. Evil is like rust in a car. If you take all the rust out of a car, you got a better car. What happens if you take all the car out of the rust? You got a Pinto. All right. In other words, evil does not exist on its own. It exists as a lack in a good thing. So whenever we say something's evil, we're presupposing something's good, but something that is good can only exist if God exists because his nature is what defines good. In fact, you can look at it this way. God creates something good. When we do evil, we're degrading the good he created. So Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer, degraded the good creature that he created in Charlie Kirk. Not completely. He shot his body. Charlie's still alive. He's just not here with us. So God gave us free will because free will is necessary to do good and to love, but we can also use it for evil. Now, why does God allow some evils to occur? Sometimes we don't know, but we know why we don't know. There's something known as a ripple effect. The ripple effect says that every event that occurs ripples forward to affect trillions of other events. So if you ask me, why did God allow Charlie Kirk to die? I don't know why, but I know why I don't know why. I'm inside of time. God's outside of time. He can see the end from the beginning. I will tell you this, that in that memorial service, we had 75,000 people in the room.

1:04:16 We had another 40,000 or 30,000 people in the room next to us. There were 100 million people watching online. And as of November last year, 1.2 billion people saw some of that memorial service. It was the greatest evangelistic event in history. I still get emails and people at TPUSA gets emails all the time. I became a Christian because of Charlie Kirk. There's the ripple effect. It wasn't just a ripple. It was a tsunami of good that came from it. So God allows certain things to happen and we don't know where it's going, but we can trust God because he knows the end from the beginning. Okay. Now the book stealing from God back there goes into it. All right. So I don't know if I mentioned this, but all the proceeds from the sale of the books are going to feed needy children. Mine, just so you know. All right. Yes, sir. Go ahead. Hello, Frank. My name is Mike. Good evening. Hey, Mike. Jesus Christ is Lord. So just want to say that. Quick question. So I was reading John and it seems like Jesus puts conditions so he talks to nicodemus and he says unless you're born by water and the spirit you cannot see receive eternal life and then he mentions that unless you eat my body and drink my flesh you will not receive eternal life and i understand we're saved by grace and not works but i guess my question is when jesus is talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood is he using hyperbole from your studies or is he being literal in fact if you look through the gospel of john if you take him literally every time he says something he's a door he's a gate he's a sheep he's a shepherd he's a vine right there's metaphor after metaphor throughout the gospel of John. And it look, everything in the Bible is literally true, but not everything is

1:06:22 expressed literally. When we say Jesus is the door, we don't think he has hinges, right? I don't think transubstantiation is true. You know, the Catholic view, but suppose it is okay. We can agree to disagree on that. Um, but I will say this, it would be difficult for the view to be true because at the last supper, Jesus is saying, this is my body. His very body was holding it. Is Jesus' human body in two places at once? Is it in the host? And is he holding it? That would seem to be odd. I don't think he meant literally. He's speaking figuratively throughout the gospel of John. All right. Now, I agree with you that we're saved by grace through faith, but works are the result of our faith. in other words you are saved by faith or you're saved by grace through faith or let me put it another way you're saved by faith alone but your faith is not alone it's accompanied by good works because it demonstrates that you're saved you don't earn salvation but you're demonstrating you're saved by your works and this is what James is talking about in James chapter 2 I will show you my faith by my works. You can't see faith. What can you see? You can only see the works that faith produce. So that's what James is talking about. Does that make sense? All right. Thank you.

1:07:49 I just want to say thank you for your presentation. Apologetics has opened up a door to theology that has helped me grow more in my faith. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. God bless. Yes, sir. Howdy. My name is Ryan. Hey, Ryan. First off, I just want to say thank you for everything you do, Dr. Trick. I love all your books, everything. It's just awesome. Thank you. My question is kind of around, it builds off that. When looking at the Bible as a whole, the physical realities, the symbolic realities, the stuff you talked about, it's not exactly literal. How do you kind of break that down and determine, you know, what is literal? What's, you know, something that happened, you know, biologically in this world? I'm kind of going back to thinking like of Dr. Jordan Peterson's views on the Bible and how like, you know, maybe it's more about the stories and what they actually mean rather than the stories actually being true. I guess, what do you kind of think about that? Yeah, as much as I love Jordan Peterson, I don't think he's right about that. I think that the, in fact, we got to stop, we got to stop talking about Bible stories and start talking about Bible accounts because they're accounts of historical events. Now, as I mentioned a minute ago, the Bible has a lot of different genres to it.

1:09:01 it's got poetry. You're not going to interpret poetry literally, right? If you do, you're going to, you know, one of the Psalms says, the eyes of the Lord go to and fro. Does the Lord really have eyes? No, it's just an expressive way of saying he sees everything. Okay. So there's poetry, there's law, there's parable, there's apocalyptic literature, there's prophecy, there's history, there's a whole bunch of different genres. And it's going to be on a case by case basis. When you look at a passage to discover whether or not he is he using, is he saying something to be taken literally, or is he saying something to be taken in a metaphorical way that might be a richer way of saying it than saying it literally? It's going to be a case by case basis. And, and, and pastor skip teaches on this stuff. He goes all over the world, teaching pastors about how to interpret the Bible accurately. So, um, do you have any books on hermeneutics skip? I know you've got the Bible from 30,000 feet, but that's kind of an overview.

1:10:02 I have a book called how to study and enjoy your Bible, which is a book that gives observation, interpretation, and application and goes through all of those as a how to what's the name of the book again, how to study the Bible and enjoy it. Check that out. How to study the Bible and enjoy it. We also have an online course called how to interpret your Bible. Very similar to what Pastor Skip teaches. So, you know, have you noticed that most churches don't teach how to interpret the Bible? You would think if we really thought the Bible is the inerrant word of God and we do, that would be the first thing we teach, right? You'd think everybody'd be like Pastor Skip teaching this stuff, but too often we don't. So that's one of the most important things you can learn is how to interpret the Bible. Because I see people pulling stuff out of context all the time. in fact let me just say one thing i know i'm going to annoy a lot of people but i don't care i'm leaving tomorrow you should never say jeremiah 29 11 is a promise to you what's jeremiah 29 11 oh the plans i have for you plans to give you hope plans to give you a future prosper you and all this is this a promise made to 21st century christians living in albuquerque new mexico No, in context, who is that written to?

1:11:20 It was written to the Jews in captivity in 586 BC. They were taken out of Judah by the Babylonian dictator Nebuchadnezzar. He took them all the way to Babylon, modern day Iraq. And God, through the prophet Jeremiah, was telling those people that 70 years later, he would bring them back into the land and prosper them. And it happened in 516 BC. They went back there and they began to prosper. But this is not a promise to us. When people say I'm claiming Jeremiah 29, 11 as a promise to me, I say, why don't you claim Jeremiah 44, 11 as a promise to you? What does Jeremiah 44, 11 say? Jeremiah 44, 11 was the promise God made to the exiles that went to Egypt in 586 BC. He didn't want them to go to Egypt. So you know what Jeremiah 44, 11 says? It says, I will destroy you and all Judah. you don't see that stitched into a pillow you don't see that on a coffee mug you don't see that in a birthday card happy birthday i will destroy you in old judah that is so sweet grandma thank you so much we gotta stay stop taking stuff out of context right yes ma'am hello my name is maxine um do you believe we are currently going through tribulation or if we will endure tribulation when Christ comes back?

1:12:44 And do you believe that the Antichrist has arrived or not yet? You can understand the book of Revelation. Tell them about that book. I don't even need to be here. No, we're not. The tribulation hasn't started yet. The Antichrist is not here yet. But Pastor Skip has written extensively on this. And I need to say this because it's 8 p.m. if you have children in the daycare if you don't go get them now they're going to be given a puppy and an espresso all right and you know what an espresso can do yeah i just that's right i had my first espresso today with pastor skip can you tell yeah so you can get your kids you're welcome to come back but we want to um we want to honor your timetable their timetable but we'll take a few more questions yes we don't want to keep frank here all night though please please the question she had about the tribulation and go ahead so there was the question about tell me exactly just one more time real quickly oh if hello if you believe if we are currently going through the tribulation or if we will endure it when no we are going through tribulation jesus said in this world you will have tribulation but that's different from the great tribulation the tribulation you and i go through now the source of it is from the world and from the devil the tribulation that is coming is judgment directly from god of which christians will be exempt make sense all right let's go over here yes sir yeah um my question regards uh government involvement and family and other biblical matters with God and whatnot.

1:14:29 The reason why I want to ask is because in the Old Testament was the government and in the New Testament was government involved in like marriage matters, family matters, and things of that nature. Because I noticed like today, you know, government legalizes all kinds of things that are actually from God, such as now we can have same-sex marriages, people that they think now that it's legal, it's totally okay to do it. And then you see things with homosexuality and all these other matters becoming topics in the church. Because now you have gay pastors and everything else going on. So I was wondering, in the Old Testament, was the government actually involved in a lot of these? Well, in the Old Testament, it was a theocracy. So, yes, the Old Testament theocracy had capital, several capital offenses. There were capital crimes for. But notice in the Bible, God creates three institutions.

1:15:22 He creates the family, government, and the church. And government is one of the three institutions he creates. According to Romans 13, the purpose of government is to punish wrongdoers to protect innocent people from evil. That's why you have a government. If your government is not punishing wrongdoers in order to protect innocent people from evil, it's not carrying out God's mandate. That's the problem. So again, our government, I'm just going to say my view on this, the past four years of President Biden with the border wide open, that was not protecting innocent people from evil. It was allowing evil to come across the borders in the form of sex traffickers, drug traffickers, terrorists, and other people who were being harmed by allowing this to occur. A government is supposed to have borders. God sets up borders. And the very people who claim we don't need borders have a lock on their door. Right? So a government's first responsibility is to protect its citizens from evil. And when a government doesn't do that, it's not carrying out its duties. And you had mentioned that, you know, we now have laws that allow, say, same-sex marriage and all this. There's three things a government can do on any issue. It can prohibit a behavior, it can permit a behavior or promote a behavior. We have gone from prohibit a behavior to promote a behavior when it comes to same-sex relationships. In my view, that's disastrous. Why? Because the purpose of marriage from a government perspective is to perpetuate and stabilize society. When you have strong marriages, you have a strong foundation for civilization. When you don't have strong marriages between a man and a woman, a biological two-parent family, when you have illegitimate, there are no illegitimate children, they're illegitimate parents.

1:17:18 When you have people that don't get married and have kids, if you look at the stats, about 80 to 85% of all crimes are committed by kids from fatherless homes. The society breaks down. So the reason the government's involved in marriage is to perpetuate and stabilize society. The problem with same-sex marriage is it makes marriage itself genderless. If marriage is genderless, then it means it has nothing to do with children. If marriage has nothing to do with children, what institution do we have to protect children? We don't. That's the biggest problem. And the law is a great teacher. Many people think whatever is legal is moral and whatever is illegal is immoral. That's a problem. If you're, if you have immoral laws you're teaching people wrong moral lessons and they start acting that way all right thank you all right yes ma'am what's your name hi my name is kiliana and my question is even though that the bible is written by man how do we prove that it is written or god inspired okay well the reason i believe the bible is inspired well there's several reasons but in the book i don't have enough faith to be an atheist we go through them and it all really it hinges on the resurrection because if Jesus really did die and rise from the dead, he's proving he's God. And if he taught the entire old Testament is the word of God and he did.

1:18:45 And then he promised the new Testament. Then on Jesus's authority, I am believing the Bible, the Bible books that we have are inspired and inerrant. Doesn't mean I understand everything about that, but on Jesus's authority alone. That's why I believe the Bible's in here. And that's what we cover. And I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. All right. All right. Thank you.

1:19:11 How can I, as a Christian believe that a genuine good person, like someone who lives their life well, cares for others, is so self-sacrificial in the way that they love their family or friends. and like, you know, as a good moral person, how can I believe that they go to hell just because they don't have faith in God? Okay. Nobody goes to, nobody goes to hell just because they don't have faith in God. People go to hell because they've sinned. It would be like saying you died because you didn't go to the doctor. No, you died because you had a disease. Now, maybe you could have prevented death by going to a doctor, but the reason you die is because you have a disease and every one of us is infected with a disease known as sin. And let me just ask the question this way. I know it's been put this way. What, uh, you know, what about all the good people in the world or why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? I know this is going to be a bit shocking, but the answer to that is there are no good people. There are just less bad people than others. In fact, you guys know that it's much easier to be bad than good, right?

1:20:22 If you don't think so, you've never brought up a two-year-old, right? Right? Do you have to teach a two-year-old to say mine? No, he already knows that. You have to teach a two-year-old to share. And we're inherently selfish. We want things when we want it now, and we want it our way. It's much easier to be selfish than it is to be good. And we all have this problem. And let me just give you a thought experiment here. If every one of us just sinned once a day, which is a ridiculously low number for fallen creatures, but just say once a day, maybe you were selfish. Maybe you cut somebody off. Maybe you had bad thoughts. Maybe you didn't help somebody when you should have. just once a day. After 70 years, you have a rap sheet longer than 25,000 crimes. Now, when you get to the judgment seat and God goes, why should I let you into my heaven? And you go, I'm a pretty good person. And he goes, 25,000 crimes. You call this a good person?

1:21:30 No, you're not a good person. Look, if God is infinitely just, and he is, he has to punish sin, but he's also infinitely loving so he doesn't want to punish sin so what does he do in this kind of divine dilemma he finds an innocent substitute to punish in our place and where can you find an innocent substitute not in any one of us we're all fallen he has to add humanity to his deity come to earth allow us to torture and kill him so he could take our punishment upon himself and when you trust in him, you're not only forgiven, but given his righteousness. So nobody's good. We're just maybe less evil than other people. In fact, what do we typically say? Well, I haven't murdered anybody. I haven't raped anybody. I haven't. Yeah. Well, you're, you're comparing yourself to the worst, right? None of us would even compare to mother Teresa in here. So I think the question assumes people can be good and we can't not without the help of the holy spirit does that make sense all right thank you yes sir hey hey uh hi dr ferturik my name is frank as well what it's what my name is frank frank good name as you travel the country and visit universities and other churches can you provide a thumbnail sketch of what you know earlier you were talking about impact events. What are you seeing in the wake of Charlie's passing, the changes that are?

1:22:55 Well, it's more anecdotal because I don't, if you look at survey data, Bible sales are up. People are going back to church, which is a good thing, quite obviously. I noticed at my events, more of the questions are more about how can I bring my unsaved friend to Christianity rather than I have an objection to Christianity, although we still get some of that. So I've noticed that move. And I don't know where it's going to go, but what we have to do is just double down on defending the faith and showing people the truth. And we need to make disciples rather than just believers. Jesus didn't say make believers. He said, make disciples. Christianity is not just fire insurance. In fact, pastor Skip and I were talking today about, um, the fact that Jesus was not only not seeker friendly, he was not even disciple friendly. In John chapter six, the passage we had brought up earlier about when he says, if you want to follow me, let's eat my flesh and drink my blood. Some of the disciples said, this is a hard teaching.

1:23:56 We can't follow this guy anymore. And then Peter turns, I mean, Jesus turns to Peter and he says, are you going to leave too? Like you're offended too? And Jesus doesn't say, well, look, if you're offended, I'll change my principles. But Peter says back to him, he says, Lord, you have the keys to eternal life. Where else are we going to go? So Jesus wasn't trying to attract seekers. He wasn't even trying to attract disciples. He knew in order to be a disciple, it was a high cost item. You had to deny yourself and follow him. So we don't want to orient ourselves in a way that Jesus didn't orient himself. We want to make disciples, not try and coax people into a half-hearted relationship with Jesus because that's like not having a relationship at all. Does that make sense? I'm just going to interrupt because the mind cannot retain, but the sea cannot endure. We could keep Frank here all night. We're not going to do that. We're going to allow one more question and then we're going to call it quits. But he has books available which answer happily all these questions.

1:25:09 Go ahead. All right. Yes, sir. Go ahead. I'm going to do one more because Don, right? What's your name? Josh. Josh, sorry. I'll do one here and one there. Go ahead. Yes. My name is Guillermo Lopez. Yes. And a quick question. I keep hearing you say to be after from this body is to be present in the Lord. Yes, 2 Corinthians 5, 7, I think. And the question is, some doctors teach that the soul is sleeping. so how how does that work because paul doesn't say that paul says i'd rather right now and go be with christ he's not saying i go to sleep i'm gonna be with christ and also moses and elijah aren't asleep they're with jesus in transfiguration they're alive so and there's probably other verses i could think of that talk about the fact that when you take your last breath here you're either going to be with Jesus or you're going to be separated from Jesus. In fact, Jesus even talks about in Luke, Luke 16, Lazarus and the rich man, Lazarus is with in Abraham's bosom and the rich man is in agony and they're conscious. No, you don't go to sleep. You're conscious.

1:26:22 Well, I don't know about body, soul, and spirit, at least body and soul. Okay, I don't know if there's a distinction. Do any Christians argue over that? But you do have an immaterial reality to it, yes.