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Skeptics and doubters, you are so very welcome here. You'll be treated with respect and dignity, and your questions will be taken seriously. And starting off, we're digging in as you guys are loading your questions in the live chat. And this just might be, by the way, this might be kind of a mega edition, maybe. We'll see how it goes if I have the stamina to keep going and if we get enough questions, um, of the q and a, because I really want to answer a lot of skeptic questions. It's just on my heart to do that today. Hopefully that's the lord leading me in that. And I really wanted, um, to kick off with something I thought would be very interesting and helpful, educational for people, which is the topic of Bible contradictions. So on Facebook, someone had sent me this, this, um, thing by the american atheists group. This is a website that, um, has been around for a very long time. And let me, let me show you guys what I'm talking about here is the american atheist list of Bible contradictions. This is, uh, the website and the organization started by Madeleine Murray O'Hare. Right? Remember, like, getting the Bible out of schools and prayer out of schools kind of stuff? That was her. And the article that we're about to read was written by a well known atheist guy, Frank Zindler, who's written books about, like, how Jesus didn't exist. He's debated William Lane Craig. This isn't just a Hackley website, although I'm saying that for a reason. Not because atheists and skeptics are all hacks or something, but because we're going to cover things that are supposedly Bible contradictions. They give a list of 15 Bible contradictions. I'm going to go through the first seven of them today. Just. I took them right in order. Just the first seven, because 15 was too much for a q and a. Even seven is too much, probably, but we're going to do, like, kind of a mega edition today. So here's question number one. Does the Bible have contradictions? More specifically, does this atheist website by well known, uh, Madeline Murray O'Hare as her organization, as well as Frank Zindler, who wrote the article? And it was a well known and respected, at least in some circles, atheist, uh, edited a book on how Jesus never existed. Um, that's a whole other topic. But does it give you real Bible contradictions? So here's the first supposed contradiction. It's about the Sabbath day, and it's got an Old Testament verse and a New Testament verse. The Old Testament verse says, um, exodus 28 28, remember, the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Okay? And we know that the. They were taught to observe the Sabbath. No working on that day. Um, then it would be like a religious day, a religious festival, almost a religious observation, every single day, every single week on Saturday.

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Yet in romans 14 five, they'll say, the contradiction is that Romans says, one man, and it's in King James here. Esteemeth one day above another, another. Esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, meaning, hey, it's up to you if you want to observe the sabbath or not. Is that a bible contradiction? My answer to this is going to be, um, a story from my childhood, when I was a kid, and I promise you, this is intellectually sound, what I'm about to say. Please hear me out.

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When I was a kid, uh, my mom would tell me, be home before the street lights turn on. I remember this is one of those rules that you kind of, like, have as a kid, okay? We didn't have cell phones. I didn't have, like, a watch. I was watching, but everybody noticed when the street lights turn on. So be home before the street lights come on. If I got home and those lights had already turned on, I was in trouble. And when I got older, all of a sudden, I didn't have that rule anymore. Why is it now? Is that a contradiction? When my mom's like, go out, have fun, no time limit on when you come home. I'm, like, 18 or something, um, versus when I was nine and I had to be home by the time the streetlights turn on. Is that a contradiction, or is it merely a different circumstance and setting? Well, clearly, the exodus passage and the Romans passage are written over a thousand years apart. There's a significant difference between the two. We should at least consider the possibility. But that's actually what the Bible declares. It declares that this is. This is a matter of growing up. Um, in Galatians, chapter three, verse 23. And I'm going to be very quick on this because I have so many things we're going to cover.

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M.

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Well, this is not ideal.

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Let me get. Let me get my software loaded back on the screen here.

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I'm sure I can get it going. It's just going to take a moment. I appreciate your guys patience while I figure this out, because it's important to me that we actually put the text of scripture on screen.

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Um, it's probably this one.

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This is just going to take a second. Um. Oh, there we go. Did I do it?

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All right. Okay. Text of scripture on screen. That's more like it. So here it says, um, speaking of, like, the difference between the law, when we were young or before Christ shows up, before we have that maturity that we have in Jesus Christ versus after, when Jesus shows up. So before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. Meaning it was for a time and a season. So then the law was our guardian. Or some translations. I, uh, like to put this tutor. T u t o r, as in a training. A training person, a, uh, teacher, someone who educates you and teaches you about important truths, but you eventually take the training wheels off. So the law, the Sabbath, these things are like the training wheels. They're educating, teaching us about God. You come to Christ and these things are not necessary, although they are optional for christians if they want to, if they want to follow them, in order that we might be justified by faith. So it says, now that faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian or a tutor, because in Christ we're all like sons. And there's a whole bunch of theology here in Galatians I won't get into. Let me just say this. Christians have known this forever, since the very beginning of Christianity. It's the foundation of the statement in Romans about like, hey, one can observe the Sabbath or not. That idea, that concept is based on the idea that Jesus fulfills the law so that we now say, hey, its goal has been accomplished. The command to observe the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ. Some Christians say, hey, Christ is my sabbath. He is my rest, and he is the promise of my future rest in God. Um, so, yeah, this is not really a contradiction. This is just a, ah, flattening out of the Bible so that we're not acknowledging different times or different covenants. And that's not a convenient apologist thing for those who might be thinking it is. This is actually a core christian doctrine thing. It's like the foundation kind of, of Christianity is this whole idea of a new covenant in Jesus and how that does change things for people. Um, so the law was good, but it was a schoolmaster. It was like training wheels to teach you lessons. You don't need the wheels anymore. You could leave them on. It's not going to hurt you. Exactly. But if you pretend you need them, then you're actually saying something negative ultimately about Christ's ability to accomplish what he did. So that's the first thing. Let's get into the second supposed contradiction. And this is next one on the list from Frank Zindler here. The permanence of earth. The permanence of earth. Is this a Bible contradiction that the book of ecclesiastes says, the earth abideth forever? And I could add several other verses in other parts of the Bible that say the same kind of thing. The earth abides forever. It sticks around forever. But two, Peter 310. It says, the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burned up. And you could keep reading in two. Peter seems to indicate a destruction of the earth and everything around us, up in the skies and all that. Um, and then they're sort of recreated. There's like this destruction recreation moment, and there's a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells. So, yeah, that's a big deal. Is that a Bible contradiction?

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Um, the word that's used for forever, which I have an image of. I thought I put this image. Boy, I'm really behind the ball. I appreciate your kindness to me. I should have had this together. No excuse, but let me.

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Let me get it going. I want to put it on your screen. The. The image that I'm going to show you right now. This is, um, basically, it's a hebrew resource. Okay? The word for forever here in ecclesiastes, it doesn't mean, um, um, for time unending. Okay? That's not the singular definition of the word. The word itself can mean a long duration. It can mean antiquity, like distant time. It can also mean futurity or going far, far into the future. Now. It can mean eternality, like this thing never, ever changes. But it's also used of just something that happens for a long time, just for. For generations that go by. And that, of course, is actually the context of ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes compares the existence of the earth to the lifespans of human beings.

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And so there's a. There's a context that's there. Um, let me put it on screen for you. A generation, it says goes, and a generation comes. That's generations of humans. One goes, another comes, but the earth remains forever, meaning the earth is many generations long. That's an easy, simple understanding of ecclesiastes. It doesn't bend Hebrew over backwards. It doesn't do anything like that. Um, so there's one example there of explaining it, but there's also this, right when ecclesiastes was written, there's also, around the same time period, psalm 102 being written, and it says, they will perish. Speaking of the creation the created world and everything, they will perish, but you will remain. They will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away. But you are the same, and your years have no end. God is eternal. Eternal. He's like big since eternal. And then the earth has. It's long lasting by comparison to humans. But of course, it has an eschatological future of being destroyed and remade. That's actually an Old Testament teaching. That's not just a new Testament one. You can look at Isaiah 34 four if you want more on that, or Isaiah 51 six. Two other passages you can look at. So psalm 102 also, um, gives us kind of a second possible reconciliation of the idea that the earth is forever, yet it's going to be destroyed. And that is, um, that they will be changed.

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The sky, the earth, all of this stuff will be changed, transformed. So there's a sense in which the earth lasts eternally if you include its. So, like, okay, let me give you an example. I'm going to die, but I'm also. I can't die. When I say this, I mean it in different senses. I mean, I might myself. My personhood and my being will live forever. This body will be destroyed. And, uh, on christian theology, Christ will raise it back up, but he not only will raise it up, he'll change it. It'll be a new body. So in a sense, I can't really die. I'm going to continue existing forever. But this body will go through a change, a new life. So I will have an eternal body, but this will be different slightly than the one I'm in currently. Now, that's christian theology. If you don't believe it, that's up to you. But you can understand the concept, at least, that the earth will be changed. In a sense, it remains forever. In a sense, it is destroyed because there is both destruction and remaking. There is a temporal end of this stage of the earth's being, and then there is a future unending experience. And that, that, if nothing else, is internally consistent. And I think it answers that question. You guys are loading your questions in the live chat right now. I'm going to take as many as I can today. I'm not going to limit it to ten. I will hopefully go longer if I feel like my mental focus and stamina is there. I don't want to. I don't want to do Joe Biden on you.

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I shouldn't have said that.

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Um, at any rate, the next supposed, uh, I'm not sure, guys. Don't read more into that than I said. But anyway, here is, uh, the next one, seeing God. Now, this one I'm going to move pretty quick on.

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Um, this one says, in Genesis 32 30, I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved. Yet in John 118, we have a statement that nobody has ever seen God. No man hath seen God at any time. I've actually answered this very recently, and I answered it in detail, like where I spent more than three minutes on it. Like, I really went into some detail. So I'm going to link below that video because I don't want to repeat the same content over and over again, but it happens to be in this contradiction, supposed contradiction. So down below, there's a link to a video on ten questions, episode six, where I answer this in detail. First question, click the link. It'll pop right up. I'm going to move on then to number four, supposed contradiction. And, uh, today we're taking questions from, uh, atheist skeptics, just non christians in general. All those questions are welcome. If you're a christian, but you have a skeptical question, you have a challenge to the christian faith. This is also the right place to put it here. And I ask that everybody be very respectful to those, even if they're rude to you. Be respectful to people in the comments, please, as a representative of Christ. Okay. Human sacrifice. Uh, this is a big one, and which is why I'm so little on your screen now, Leviticus 1821 suggests that human sacrifice is wrong. It says, thou shalt not let any of the seed of thy seed pass through the fire to molech. Neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God. I'll add more verses to this to show that the Bible says human sacrifice is wrong. But Frank Zindler writes in his little article here. He says, in judges, though the tale of Jephthah who led the Israelites against the ammonites, it should say ammonites, not ammonites, just, uh, a typo. There is being told, being fearful to defeat this good religious man sought to guarantee victory by getting God firmly on his side. So he prayed to God.

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And here's the prayer from Jephthah. If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh forth out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace. From the children of Ammon shall surely be the lords, and I will offer it up for burnt offering. So he's about to go fight the enemies of Israel. He's like, hey, God, I'm going to give you this deal to guarantee victory. It doesn't say that God agrees to the deal, and there's none of that commentary in there, but he definitely makes this offer. Then Frank Zindler writes the terms were acceptable to God. That's his commentary. That's not in the text. Remember, he is supposed to be omniscient and know the future. So he gave victory to Jephthah, and the first whatsoever that greeted him upon his glorious return was his daughter, as God surely knew would happen, if God is God. And notice he always puts God in lowercase. This is like a cheap insult, uh, to christians. It really is, because there's a reason why definitionally, you uppercase God, to just define God as, uh, the monotheistic understanding of God in judeo christian views. But, uh, at any rate, they're going to change the letters of words here because the mockery is intentional. Um, I guess I didn't put, I didn't capture all of this on your screen, but I'm reading to you what he wrote on the website, and there's a link to the website down below if you want to check it out.

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So his daughter comes out. Then, uh, Zindler goes on and says, true to his vow, the general made a human sacrifice of his only child to goddess. And he quotes judges 1129 through 34. So Jeff is like, hey, God, give me victory. I'll kill the first thing that comes out of my house. I'll give it a burn offering for you that burnt offerings, typically fully consumed with fire, destroyed. Um, then he gets victory, comes back, his daughter comes out, and he's like, oh, you've ruined my life. I can't believe it's you. And so he's like, hey, that's a contradiction. Um, I just want to say, speaking realistically, that this is not a contradiction. This is a moral dilemma, right? You could say the Bible here is endorsing human sacrifice. Now, I disagree with that, but I'm saying, like, if you wanted to bring an accusation that would fit the text, it would be. At least it would. It doesn't fit the text, really, but you get what I mean, right? If you want to bring an accusation that was more relevant to the text, it would be, um, the Bible here supports human sacrifice. Kill your kid to get military victory. That would be the thing I would expect someone to say. Instead, it's called a contradiction. See, contradictions are two things that can't both be true at the same time. Um, so God said, don't kill your kids. And then in judges, Jephthah does this thing, and God appears to give him the victory. It's not strictly a contradiction. It could be that just God says, hey, don't do that. Um, but, hey, you already did it. I guess I'll help you out. But that requires, uh, an assumption that I think is wrong, which is assuming in the text that God is approving of what Jephthah did, and he's responding to this offering of the daughter with military victory. None of the other judges in the book of judges read the whole book. None of them give these offerings to God in order to gain victory. Not a single time. Jephthah does this simply on his own. Um, it could easily simply be commentary on Jephthah going against God. Right. God m not approving. This is actually consistent with the book of judges. Read the whole book of judges. I haven't done it online, but I've taught verse by verse. Took my time going through the book of judges. I learned a lot. One of the things I learned is that the book of judges has a theme in it, that the judges are morally compromised individuals. It's very rare that one of them is not in sin. Right. That doesn't have major, major sin issues in their lives. Deborah is, like, one of the best ones. It's very rare that this happens. Samuel, really great. But not Gideon, not Jephthah. Uh, not Samson. You probably are familiar with Samson, right? How he sleeps with a prostitute over and over again and all this stuff, and he's arrogant and he's selfish. That's actually meant to. It's not to tell you God approves of these things. It's to show you the kind of people that are there. Because one of the themes in judges is every man did what was right in his own eyes, and that this is an unhealthy thing. They weren't following God. They were following themselves.

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That being said, this wouldn't be a contradiction. It would just be, uh, a sinful act to demonstrate the wickedness of mankind, even the people who were on the good side. A good lesson for us to learn. Just because you feel like you're on the right doesn't mean you're nothing. Being wicked now, um, I would then just take that as, like, an encouragement and a warning. God, um, can and will use you even though you're flawed. That's encouraging, but also a warning. You can do one good thing and be on the right side, and you can still totally blow it right in the middle of all that. And that's a good lesson to learn. Judges teaches that lesson a lot, a lot, over and over again. I can think of story after story in the book of judges where that same lesson is learned.

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But there is some pushback to this. And, um, I'm on the side that says, um, well, before I give you the pushback, let me. Let me say I'm on the side that says the Bible rejects human sacrifice very clearly. And that's how I interpret the judge's story, that this was wrong.

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If he did, in fact, kill his daughter, he may not have. I'll get back to that in a second. But in deuteronomy 1231, we get the following.

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And, ah, there you go. Um, you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abominable thing that the lord hates, they have done done for their gods. For they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. This is actually exactly what Jeff the promised to do, right? Burn offering. And he says, you will never do that for me. You will never do that for me. In fact, we can add to this, uh, in another place in the Old Testament, he says, if a parent offers their kid, they get the death penalty. You murder your. You do religious murder like this, you get the death penalty. This is something that God absolutely refutes. If you think about the story of Abraham, if you're a skeptic, you might be thinking, wait, God told Abraham to offer his son. Isn't that evidence, Mike, that God really does approve of human sacrifice, at least in some cases.

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And, um, Jesus, of course, is God offering himself. That's a completely different category. But with Abraham, God actually refuses to let him kill his son and instead provides this ram caught in the thicket. And so there's a replacement. Abraham's amongst people who do offer their kids. God goes, I want you to have a heart that's willing to give me anything, but I don't want you to offer your son. Here's a replacement, then, to, like, seal the deal on this, this human sacrifice thing. When God leads the people out of Egypt, he says, you will offer me the firstborn of the lambs, the firstborn of the cows, the firstborn of the this and the that and this and that. And he goes, and your firstborn sons, they belong to me, but you will redeem them. You will. You will give an animal instead of them. This is to show that God is clearly saying, even when I a claim can be made upon a child, I would rather have an animal instead. Which is what Jephthah should have done when he realized the stupidity of his vow. And he comes home and his daughter comes out. I think, according to the law, the right thing he should have done is said, oh, I will offer the best animal I've got instead, because God does not want human sacrifice. Okay. That would be where I would lean on understanding. That one is that it shows the deep sin and flaws of. Of Jephthah. But there is another, um.

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Um, another thing to mention. Just making sure my notes, I'm not missing something. Okay. Yeah. Judges eleven, verses 37 and 38. It tells you what happened right? After all this, right? When Jephthah fulfilled his vow, what does it actually say? It says here.

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So she said to her father, let this thing be done for me. Leave me alone two months. This is her request. After she finds out, right, that I may go up and down on the mountains and weep for my virginity, I and my companions. So she goes on a two month, a 60 day mourning where she goes, uh, up and down the mountains, whatever that means, right? Like, however that worked out. But she's. She's basically going out and having a time of mourning with some companions to accompany her. And what is she mourning? Her virginity.

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Now, you could say, well, she's mourning because she'll be killed and then she'll never have kids. And so his name, Jephthah, it's his only daughter. His name will not be carried on. Her progeny will not be carried on. This is the end of the line of Jephthah, which fits with it being a foolish vow. Right? This is like a rebuke, I think. But there's another possibility here. And the idea is that she was just a virgin perpetually after this. But because you can't, according to the law, you are not allowed to give your kids. And also, according to the law, you're to redeem your children from sacrifice. So you offer something instead. God doesn't want that. And you can actually be given the death penalty if you did go through with it. Like, what priests. What, what, what priest God approves of is going to allow this? None. Um, so maybe instead, okay, we can't offer you. Maybe we'll offer you as a servant in the temple who will stay single and be devoted in the temple. This was a class. This, like, this did. Did happen. There were people who just chose to do temple service as a thing. There were women in the temple. We read about this, actually, in a couple places in scripture, we read about this when the children of, um, in, uh, first Samuel, I think it is, the children of Eli are sleeping with these women who would help serve in the temple. We read about in, uh. Is it deuteronomy we read about these women who would serve in the temple as well. Or Exodus. Exodus 38 eight. Let me show you.

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So he made the basin, the basin of bronze and its stand of bronze from the mirrors of the ministering women who administered in the entrance of the tent of meeting. Um, there were women who would come forward, and there were. There were very segregated societies when it comes. Not segregated, not really the right term. Um, they were gender paired society. So, like, if a woman shows up at the temple for some reason, then there's a good chance a woman is going to somehow assist in what she needs. The early church did this, too. If a woman got baptized, it would be another woman to help with the baptism because they were trying to preserve modesty and proper relations between male, uh, and female, something we really work hard not to do in our culture today. Um, at any rate, there were these women that did this. Plus we see this with Samuel in the book of Samuel, right. First Samuel, where his mom, she's praying, lord, please just give me a child. And she finally gets pregnant and she says, if I have a child, I will dedicate him to you completely. So then she takes her kid as soon as he's old enough and brings him to Eli, the priest, the high priest, and he says he's going to just serve you. He's dedicated to the Lord. Like, that's what I promised. I'm going to fulfill my promise. So he's dedicated to you. Um, and then he lives there serving and ends up becoming a really great servant of God. It's possible that Jephthah's daughter mourns her virginity because she then goes into service at the temple or amongst the priests. That doesn't make her a priest, but it may be where she ended up. Is that true? I don't know. I think I should at least to be, because. I don't know, I should have an answer for both sides. Um, I lean towards thinking that because judges is such a lawless land, it's like a wild, wild west of the. Of the Old Testament. I feel like it may just be exposing the wickedness of mankind. They don't. They won't listen to what God has written in his word. They keep doing it their own way, even when they have heroes. Those heroes are also losers. That's consistent. And the further you get in judges, the worse it gets. I hope that that helps. I do think that there's no contradiction there, um, to be. To be said, and this is not my list of contradictions. This is an atheist provided list of contradictions. So what was that? Was that four or five? That was four. Okay. Number five.

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The power of God.

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The power of God is supposedly, uh, in contradiction. The Bible here, Matthew 1926, says, with God all things are possible. But then judges 119 shows something that God, according to this list of contradictions, that contradicts that, that shows that not all things are possible with God. God couldn't do this. So here it says, speaking of the book of judges, the Lord was with Judah and he drave out.

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It's just weird to say that, uh, and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron. Yes, it said drave. That was not me.

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So God was with Judah. And I think for this to be a contradiction. What do you guys think?

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It seems like Frank Zindler is taking the last he of the last part of this sentence to refer to God when it's really in reference to Judah. Let's read it again. The Lord was with Judah, and he. Is that God? Well, no, that's Judah. Judah drave or drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron. So the he there, I think, is actually talking about Judah. Judah is the one who, you could say God drove out our enemies before us. Sometimes it says that. But if you read the passage, you'll see the active, um, thing working here is Judah, not God.

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So Frank seems to have taken this supposed contradiction as, um, being the case, because God is powerless to actually drive out the armies because he's not as strong as iron chariots. This is a really weird and clumsy perspective on the text of scripture. And I just want to point it out. This is a guy who was running, at least for years, running one of the big atheist organizations out there, well known, famous. It's atheist.org is their website. Right. He has written many books about why he's anti religious and stuff. Um, he leads others in this stuff as well. He writes this article, it's up on the website for years and years and years, and it has this, like, really basic misconception. A lot of the things that people say are contradictions just aren't in the Bible. They're just not contradictions. And I hope that that makes sense. Um, let me say side note before we go to the next one. The power of God, God being able to do anything doesn't imply God being able to do logically impossible things. Can God make a square circle? Can God make a married bachelor? These, um, are definitionally impossible things. They're not impossible because of a lack of power. They're impossible because of the constraints of logic and rationality. And God's not going to go against his own logical, rational character. I don't believe by creating things that are utterly irrational, I don't think that those things can't possibly exist. So God can do anything possible. It's not a statement that God can do the impossible.

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That's the difference between, I think, a more mature understanding of omnipotence and a more clumsy one. Um, yeah, anyway, I'll just move on. That's just a side note there. Okay. Personal injury. Contradiction number six, the 6th supposed contradiction.

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This is using, uh, Jesus to say that it's a contradiction with the Old Testament. And I got a grant. The atheists here like, hey, I've heard lots of christians say this, especially progressive christians who want to say that Jesus really does go against the Old Testament because they're going to go against it too, uh, that Jesus disagrees with, with the Bible so that they can disagree with the Bible. They feel like it gets Jesus on their side. Obviously the atheist is doing it for a different reason. They're going to say, you can't really trust it's an inspired book if it has these contradictions. Um, and of course, I actually would disagree with that logic, but I don't think it has contradictions. That's what I'll stick to for today.

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So. Exodus 21 23 25, it tells us, thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe, equal justice, right?

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You do this much damage, you have to bring this much restoration.

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Matthew 539, though, Jesus, he says, and I'll just quote part of it earlier on, um, he says, you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And he says, yet I tell you, resist not evil. But whoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other. Also, Jesus directly is like, you heard it said eye for an eye, seeming to refer to the Old Testament. And then he's like, but I'm telling you, don't return evil for evil. Don't do the tooth for tooth thing. If they strike you, turn the other cheek.

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Um, see, it's understandable why people would see this as a contradiction. And my heart goes out to you, like, yeah, I get it. I totally get why you see this as a contradiction. Let me just explain to you why I don't.

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The statement in exodus is very context specific. The eye for eye, tooth for tooth thing is about the legislative body in Israel.

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Under mosaic law, when somebody commits a crime, there's an equal penalty or equal recompense.

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That's the idea. Um, you strike somebody and you blind their eye, and you did it wrongly. You were the aggressor, the attacker. You blinded them. Now, some would say this is barbaric, but I also. But it's also barbaric to put people in cages for ten years at a time.

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A lot of people would rather be like, how about I get eye for eye instead, and then I get to go free? Like, I don't stay in a cage for ten years. Um, am I making a case for changing our laws? I'm making a case for, like, a rational perspective on things. We tend to think that everything within physical violence is barbaric, and things that involve cages is not. I don't think that's a biblical view. I don't think it's a rational view, either. We should be honest that when we impose penalties, whether they're cages or they're physical, uh, corporal punishments or if they are financial punishments, these things are all extreme, even though there are times when they are appropriate and. Right. I think that that's an accurate view. Whether you agree or not, it's up to you. Um, at any rate, you've got the legislative structure, so that. Let's say that I blind you, punch you in the eye, and you're blind. Then I go before the court, and you're like, give him the death penalty, because you're angry and your family's angry, and everybody who knows you is angry. And the video went viral on YouTube, and everybody knows that I'm a bad guy, and they're like, kill him. Well, the law would be there to say, we can't do more to him than what he did to you.

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Eye for eye.

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So it's about equal measures in court. That's the idea. And you can't be favorable to the rich, and you can't be harmful, uh, against the poor or vice versa. You have to be absolutely fair every time. That's the standard of justice in the scripture. Uh, it was a little different with theft. If you stole a person's sheep, you would restore more than one sheep. Um, but, uh, you might say, well, it was damages in addition to the theft. And that's the thing anyway. It was also a deterrent for crime and all that stuff. So you've got this fair justice in the old Testament, and then Jesus comes, and he's not talking to lawmakers, he's not talking to people who are enforcing the law. He's talking about personal vengeance. In Matthew five, he says to them, you've heard it was said eye for an eye. But the way that this verse has been twisted in the mind of the, of the common man is if someone strikes me, I strike him back. Well, that's not about justice. This is about personal vengeance. So the way that the courts issue justice, I'm now issuing my personal justice. And Jesus is saying, hey, look, God has set up the government to exact justice, but, uh, he's not creating a nation of vigilantes who exact their own version of justice. You know, you hit me, I hit you back. You mess with me, I mess with you back.

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Instead, Jesus is like, I want you to exhibit grace and kindness, to be like me. So that when someone attacks you, you do what you can to diminish it, to not respond in kind. You can still call the cops. And guess what the government's job is when that person has attacked you is to give them justice. But you're not to do vigilant any personal vengeance. That's the idea that I think is the context of Matthew five. And I can support this with other scriptures. Um, romans is probably the best place to go. So if we go to romans twelve, we see the same tension between personally not taking vengeance, but still honoring the justice that comes from government, which often government fails in this, but that is the ideal. So here we see, um, repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all people. Here. Paul is invoking Jesus in the sermon on the mount in romans 1218. Now, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all beloved, never avenge yourselves personal vengeance, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemies hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing, you will he burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. This is the key. When you do personal vengeance, you become overcome by. By evil. So give it to God, he'll deal with it. You be kind, you be gracious. Even if they reject you, they're just storing up more judgment for the day to come. Um, but hopefully they'll end up, you know, turning, but then without a beat. And remember, these chapter changes were. Chapter, uh, headings were added later, these separations. Right. Literally, the next words that Paul writes are about government and government justice being good. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, including their. What they're punishing, their eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, stuff. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. And those who resist will incur judgment. What kind of judgment? Well, God's judgment, if the authority is acting rightly. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is an authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval. For he is God's servant for your good. But check this out. If you do wrong, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Now, there's a lot of people thinking right now as I read this, but there's police brutality and there's abuses of people in government. Yeah, Paul's. That's absolutely true. But the need for real policing and the need for correct criminal justice is never going to go away, because there will always be real criminals. And that's what Paul's talking about. That government, when it's acting eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, when it's doing the thing that you're told not to do, it is God's avenger. So I'm not going to do personal justice, but I can absolutely appeal to the government and say, this is God's instituted punishment of crime, not me doing vigilante stuff. I hope that makes sense. Um, super consistent with Jesus, super consistent with Old and New Testament. I see no potential contradiction there. Let's look at the next one.

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Um, which is our last one for today, circumcision. And then we're gonna go to your questions. Hopefully we have enough coming in. We'll see how it goes. Never know.

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This is my covenant. Genesis says, which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed. After thee, every man child among you shall be circumcised. So circumcise your boys. Okay, this is to Abraham. So all the descendants of Abraham, they're told they have to get circumcised. That's kind of key. I don't know if Frank Zindler actually was aware of that. This was descendants of Abraham. God did not command anybody else to get circumcised. I'm not a descendant of Abraham.

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Right? Most many of you are not. Um, no, man. M I'm Irish, okay? My family's descendants of a bunch of pagans. Okay, that's Celtics and pagans and whatever else they were. Um, yeah. Then Galatians. Five two. Though Frank Zindler suggests this is a contradiction. It says, if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. This is such a perfect example of supposed contradictions that are just on the surface. To the one who's never read the Bible, you're like, wow, that looks like a straight contradiction. And to those who have read the Bible, they're like, wow. Do you ever read anything in context? Uh, this is just a fair thing to ask. Do you ever check the context?

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Like, who is Paul writing to?

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Who is God speaking to in Genesis 17? Abraham. Who is Paul writing to in Galatians?

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The Galatians, they're gentiles.

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God told Abraham, get circumcised, you and your kids. And Paul says, hey, gentiles, you don't need to go become physically circumcised to have Christ.

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Here's the dilemma that was going on in the early church. It was actually a really big deal, and whole swaths of scripture are devoted to it. The book of acts tracks this in detail throughout, like giving a historical account of the dilemma. Then you have some teaching in the gospels that relates to this. When Jesus declares all foods clean and people are like, wait, what does that mean? Um, the real question was Jesus, is this jewish messiah? When non Jews start believing in Jesus, do they have to become jewish? This was like the dilemma, do they have to get circumcised? Do they have to start obeying the law of Moses? Do they have to start observing the Sabbath? Do they have to observe kosher eating proper foods and the feast days and going to Jerusalem and all of the jewish things, do they have to do all that? Can the men cut the corners of their beards?

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And the answer in the book of acts, acts 15, was, no, the gentiles do not need to do these things. In fact, it's a burden that we do not want to put on them. It was not that the Jews can't do them. It was that the Gentiles don't need to.

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Now fast forward to Galatians. This was a hotbed of where this debate was taking place. And there were people showing up who were from Jerusalem claiming that they were like, we represent the original Christians, the original saints. We're from Jerusalem. The city we're from gives us authority. Does that sound familiar to anybody today? Um, anyway, then they go to Galatia and they say, you guys have to become circumcised, and you have to become jewish, or else you cannot be a Christian. You can't be saved. You can't be forgiven by Jesus. So Paul writes to them, and he says, guys, that's so untrue. And I'm paraphrasing here, Mike Winger paraphrased, that's so untrue to claim you have to be circumcised to get saved, that it actually sort of spits in the face of the grace of Christ. So that if you start doing things, doing works, like you're going to improve yourself for Christ, you're going to be a better person so that God will accept you. You're actually saying that the cross was not enough for you see, the cross was enough for the uncircumcised to be saved. You don't need to get circumcised. You don't need to start obeying the law of Moses. You want to obey the heart of the law. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God above all else. You want to obey the heart of the law. But you don't need to obey all of the ceremonial stuff. Why? Because what I said earlier, the law was our schoolmaster, our tutor, to lead us to Jesus Christ. Now that you're in Christ, you don't need those things. Jews in the book of acts would often still observe the Sabbath, still observe all those things. It was not. They weren't told. They couldn't. Peter even went to the temple. Paul offers a sacrifice in the temple, not for his sin, but a sacrifice related to, like, um, following the Old Testament commands about vows. When you make a vow and when you finish your vow, and Paul does this in the book of acts. And so we've got jews observing these things, but to say that gentiles have to be circumcised to be saved is to spit upon the grace of Christ. And so that's a huge issue. Paul's like, no, no, no. I will not allow you to put this, this law on the believers. That's not a contradiction, guys. That's just us understanding the theology of Christianity. And, um, none of these were contradictions. I didn't come up with this list. This is the atheist provided list. You assume they're your best examples, if it's your list, if it's published on a website, if it's shared on Facebook and stuff, it's from atheist.org, from Frank Zindler, you know, Madeleine Murray O'Hare. But they were not, in fact, very good. So I hope that you guys have given me some questions. This is going to be, again, a mega. That's the intention. The mega, uh, long one. We'll see how long I can go, as long as my brain lasts. And when I, when I go down the road of presidential debates, I will, I will just, I'll call it. I'll pull myself out of the race. All right, number two. Sorry, it's too funny to me. Um, give me some grace if that irritates you. All right, Andre, Kyria has the following question. I have a coworker that is an atheist. He said that there are parts of our bodies that are not necessary and that might prove evolution and not a creator. Any thoughts? Um, yeah, I have several thoughts on that. First off, personally, um, I would want to avoid, uh, focusing on evolution with a non believer and focusing on that topic more for in house christian discussions. Um, I know that that's going against the grain, and most people would not agree with me on that. Uh, maybe I'm wrong. Okay, take this as like this guy on the Internet has a thought you can think about. Um. Um, I would avoid this topic. There are christians who believe in evolution and christians who do not in. And you may say, well, obviously one side is wrong, but m what I would affirm is that they're both actually genuinely christians. Meaning, why am I arguing about, uh, a discussion that while it matters, it isn't ultimately salvific. Like, you can. You can believe in this or not and still be a Christian. I want to focus on the topics that bring this person to Christ. Does that make sense?

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One way to do this is to try to draw out the implications of evolution. So this is true. Um, I've heard many skeptics say evolution means that we don't need a God. Um, or string theory. If vibrating strings are really the source of all the matter and everything we see in the universe, then we don't need a God. Or, um, the multiverse theory that if you trace back the origin of the universe to there being just multiple universes, there's so many universes that surely enough, some of them are going to have the perfect situation for life, that this means we don't need a God. All of these arguments make the same flaw, is they have an artificial stopping point for their explanatory power.

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I don't need to explain where the strings come from, or I don't need to explain where the multiple universes come from, these infinite universes. I don't need to explain.

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Um, on the evolution question, how on earth things were so coincidentally put together in a way that intelligent life would form purely by force of chemical reactions with no controls.

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That's a big leap. Like, if you were to say, um, I reject evolution, and therefore, clearly we're designed. Some could say aliens did it, then you have to ask where the aliens come from, because that's an artificial stopping point too.

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Um, and you would eventually get back to God. But let's suppose that you were to affirm, no, no, no. We really did evolve. It started with just like big bang, boom, bunch of hydrogen. Boom splits up into different kinds of atoms and chemicals in the universe, and you've got energy and matter and dark matter, and you've got all this stuff. And eventually suns form and planets form, and then water and hto h two o. And then some chemical reactions happened that go from non life to life.

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And then some chemical reactions take place where that life starts to actually have natural selection going on, and that eventually continues to develop and grow until we have intelligent life today. And it all happened, you could say by random, but it all happened. Let's be more specific. Based upon the fundamental nature of chemical interactions, the laws of physics, and the quantities of, of what, um, materials are in the universe, those are some really big claims.

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How can I, you know, we get the watchmaker explanation that some people have is like, if, you know, if you see a watch, there's a watchmaker. Even if you show me that the watch, like, let's say a watch, uh, the watch was a result of a random explosion where a bunch of material that was all, I don't know, iron or something, it blew up and then it just sort of fell together in just the right way to create a watch. And some would say, mike, you've skipped natural selection and you've skipped biological. Yeah, I get that, but try to follow the analogy. I'm not making analogy about those things. Um, would you not say, wow, an explosion led to that? That seems like a very carefully engineered explosion. I mean, how amazing you have to be to make an explosion that results in that.

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But the universe is more intense than that because some of the factors that are involved here, and this is what I want the atheist evolutionist to consider, is the amount of material in the universe matters, the rate that the explosion happens really, really matters. If it happens too fast or too slow, we don't get our universe. Uh, no intelligent life will exist. No life will exist. The amount of things like gravity or the strong nuclear force or the weak nuclear force, um, that fine tuning stuff like gravity, what makes gravity just the way it is and no different. If it was slightly different, we would not have any life.

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The table had to be set in such an intricate way for life to exist on this planet that just saying we evolved does not answer the question you then have to ask, what on earth can explain such a particular set of circumstances that it allowed intelligent life to happen through chemical reactions, like, what made a hydrogen atom that shape, what made the carbon atoms this perfect environment for life to end up developing? Carbon based life doesn't really work with anything else. Silicon based life and all that. It's all good Sci-Fi but it doesn't work to my knowledge.

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I would want to push them on their own worldview and show them their own beliefs about the universe already point to God. And if they go, well, multiverse. And they go, what makes all those universes? Well, I don't know, like some big universe making machine or something. You keep getting back to God. String theory. Okay, and where did the strings come from? You need some eternal, uncaused thing no matter what you start with, and that's where I would go with that. Um, as far as, uh, vestigial body parts, which you asked about, andrea, uh, he said there are parts of our bodies that are not necessary and that might prove evolution and not a creator. Losing body parts, um, would demonstrate evolution in the sense of some change happening.

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Right.

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Loss of body parts could, uh, demonstrate some change happening. That's not the same as saying we all have the same common ancestor. That's a huge leap. And it's not the same as saying that abiogenesis takes place. These are just very different categories, but I really wouldn't want to argue with them about it. You could say, well, hey, they found out the appendix really has a purpose. And a lot of the vestigial items, which means, like, evolutionary leftovers, actually do have functions and purposes in humankind.

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Um, also, losing things, like losing the use of your wisdom teeth, doesn't prove improvement. It just proves change. You need a lot of special, novel information to prove evolution, but I want to avoid those debates, to be honest. I'd rather first get them to God, um, and then move from there to Jesus and the Bible personally. All right, number three, um, apsoles, uh, says one of my biggest issues is that you need to believe in Jesus to be saved. If someone is born in a muslim country, they would have to sacrifice way more than the average westerner. How is that fair?

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Um, it's not fair.

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Um, but I, but I want to challenge. Absolutely. I want to challenge what might be an unwise view of fairness that you're requiring the universe to have. Because if you.

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Gosh, how many? I have so many things I want to say about this. Um, what is the basis of the idea? Let's think about it. Why does God have to give us all the same experience in life?

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I can't think of a reason I'd like him to, but we all grow up with this when we're kids.

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I tried to run that race and that other guy beat me, and he tried, but I tried even harder and I lost. It's not fair. He just has longer legs. He's just more athletic than I am. It's not fair. And your parents would be like, well, they say, you guys know the phrase life's not fair.

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The assumption that God has to give everybody the same experience, spiritually speaking, is an assumption that I do not think we find in scripture. Now, on the front end, he doesn't give us the same experience, but on the back end, he gives us a different judgment. This is one thing I'd offer that would, I think, help to some degree. So I did not have the same opportunities as a Muslim born in an islamic country to receive Christ. They had different opportunities. In some ways. It might have been more, maybe God like, directly gave them revelation of Jesus Christ. And we have heard many stories of Muslims where they get saved. I met a guy when I was getting, uh, a coat, like a suit store years ago and who was a Muslim. The, uh, guy was measuring me from, um, I can't remember what country it was he was from. Anyway, it was a middle eastern country. And, um, he had said that God revealed Jesus to him just divinely, powerfully, supernaturally. Boom, Jesus was revealed to him. He became a Christian even though nobody else around him was. That guy obviously had a more intense experience than most westerners, most atheists who were like, I just wish God reveal himself to me. And, um, yet that's what happened with this guy. I mean, you could say he's a liar. Um, but I don't assume people who say things like that are lying. He had an experience that he's really talking about.

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So, yeah, there was a guy who, you're a guy who's in the category you're discussing who actually had, in a sense, greater revelation of Jesus Christ than most people would say they've received in their lives.

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So it's a little hard to assume, but am I, can I, can I drop my whole answer on that? I cannot, absolutely not. Because it's not like I'm going to think every muslim gets, like, a special revelation of Christ, but I'm not going to discount the work of God's spirit and what he is doing in their lives. Um, I talked to another Muslim who, uh, he was from England, but he was part of a muslim subculture within England, so all of his friends were Muslim and all this other stuff, and he just found himself getting intensely interested in Jesus. And this was when I, back when I worked at the church, um, and I was answering the phones one day and he called for prayer. And I was like, yeah, I'll pray. And he had seen my, I just started my videos online. So he called for prayer and he found the church and called. So I talked to him. We talked for a while. We talked a bunch of times. I sent him a box of bibles and stuff like that, and books to give out to Muslims in his community.

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His story went like this. He said that he suddenly became very interested in Jesus, because in Islam, Jesus is a prophet of Allah, in Islam, according to Islam. So he was more interested in Jesus. And he goes, you know, Jesus is one of the prophets. How come we never talk about him? I want to learn more about Jesus. And so he starts, like, reading a little bit of the Bible here and stuff and digging in more and more. Long story short, the guy gets saved, radically, gives his life to Jesus Christ.

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His family beats him up and cripples him because it's part of the culture. And so they cripple him because of this stuff. One of his relatives threatened, we're going to kill you if you don't recant, if you don't stop talking about Jesus. Another one secretly came to him. He's telling me a brother, his came to him and said, if Jesus really did that for you, you shouldn't be ashamed of him. But he wouldn't say it publicly because he was afraid.

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What I'm saying is, life is more complicated than this. Like, um, picture that, what we often paint of other cultures, we have a one dimensional, monocolor picture of other cultures. I pick England. I have one picture of them, Saudi Arabia. Okay. All that being said on the back end, right, the front end is all your experiences, your revelation of Jesus, how much knowledge you have of God, how much the spirit works in you. What people, God sends to you. Moments where you just go, I just know that I need God. Um, those types of things happen on the front end of your life, but on the back end of your life is judgment.

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When an islamic person who is raised in islamic country stands in judgment, they will be judged according to what they had revealed to them. That is, they're not judged based upon names they've never heard. Although if you're islamic, you've heard the name Jesus, probably. But you're not judged upon information you've never heard. You're judged based upon what God has revealed and how you have responded. That's the fairness. It's fairness in judgment. It's not fairness in everyone has the same life experience.

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Fairness and judgment were judged differently. Jesus affirms this when he's like, hey, um, amongst those who saw him physically walking the earth, he tells them they'll have stricter judgment than Sodom and Gomorrah. Why? Well, jesus didn't. Didn't go to Sodom and Gomorrah. They're still judged, but it's different.

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It's a fair judgment on the back end. I trust God to do that judgment perfectly fairly. I hope that helps answer that question. Um, question number four. This is Hosea in 97.

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Um, how can we believe in a historical jesus if the oldest manuscripts we have are from the second or third century? That's a great question. Um, so this really bugged me a lot when I was younger. I remember feeling like, hey, we've got perfect. We have perfect bibles. Everything we know is perfectly accurate. And then finding out that there are debates, like, how did I not know? Like, pick a bible. Here's. Here's one where the print is starting to get too small for me to read.

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Uh, and here on the footnotes, you're going to see these little footnotes. And amongst these footnotes are statements like the in u text and the im text read likewise, for which thing I hate. Wait, what is this? Other readings.

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There's all sorts of footnotes about these same verses that I'm reading about how they're. They look different in a different text.

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What's that about? I mean, it's always been in my bible. I just didn't pay attention to it. When I started digging into this stuff and finding out about it, uh, at first I got nervous because I heard a lot of people claiming scary things about the bible. Like, you can't. It's not reliable. Look at all these different versions. Look, it's been translated too many times. There's too many debates about different verses and what they mean. You don't, you don't even know who wrote the gospels. You don't know this. And a bunch of forgeries. I heard all these claims. I gotta fix this.

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Bugging me.

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All right. And I dug deep into the topic. I did a, uh, uh, series called, uh, evidence for the bible where I did this, like over 20 videos. And three of the videos are just devoted to this topic of like, how do I know I have a reliable script, scripture in front of me in my hands, and I'm looking at the text that Paul really wrote. A. I will link those down below for the long answer. Okay, I'll give you the short answer now, but the long answer is going to be linked down below. Three videos. I have them in a playlist by themselves.

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Maybe one of the mods can put them there. If someone's like, I want to jump on that right away. Go for it.

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Um, at the end of this research, it changed my view of scripture to a degree not of the reliability of the Bible. But, um, I learned that the newer translations, the ones that are often demonized by people, that they're actually pretty good for the most part. I also learned that the reason why we know we have the Bible is not because we have one ancient copy that we see as perfectly reliable, but because we have so many different versions. Different copies, I should say. Not versions. Versions is the wrong word. So many different copies that we know what the original said.

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Let me give you an example. Um, some, uh, guys do this in class. They'll sit down with their class, 20 students or modern classes, 385 students, and they'll say, everybody write out what I'm going to say to you. So he gives them like a, maybe he puts something on the wall, he writes it out, then they write it out. They copy it to the best of their ability. Or maybe he says it out loud. He gives a speech and records it, has everybody write down what he says.

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Then he gathers all their papers. Now imagine you have access to these papers and um, you then using these papers, try to piece together what did he really say? Well, this paper has the word plow and this paper has the word now which one did he probably really say? And you start to do what's called textual criticism. Hmm. Mhm.

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Does the sentence make more sense, like with the word plow or with the word now does it, does it look like the word now is original and it led to someone, him saying that is what led to someone thinking. He said, plow. An example in scripture is where Paul says, we were like children among you. There's this verse where he says, we were like children among you. But one ancient text that has Paul writing this writes, we were like horses among you. If I remember correctly, we were horses among you. Which is ridiculous. It doesn't mean anything. But the word children and horses, there's like one letter difference in Greek. They're almost the same word. So we can compare copies, and we go, what did Paul really write originally? There's no debate about it. He wrote children among you. It fits the context. It makes sense. It explains why someone put horses, because there was just a typo there.

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Most of the issues we have are things like that. Um, there are some challenging topics. But long, uh, story short, the New Testament is widely agreed upon by scholars to have the same content in it in your bible as what it originally had when it was written. This is not a big debate in scholarship. They'll debate over specific little verses, but usually the debate is, hey, in your footnote it says, it might read this way. And then in the text it has this. And the debate is usually like, do we switch those? Do we put the footnote here and this there? The degree of uncertainty is minimal and non impacting for the most part. There's two major passages in the new testament that are more debated. Mark, the end of Mark, last eight verses of Mark, and then John, um, the story of the woman caught in adultery. These are the only two passages that I think would get on your radar if you were to look at all the different verses where there might be some level of debate. These are the only two passages. I cover those in my three video series. I encourage you to check it out. But the way that we know the. The Bible says what it says has to do with families of manuscripts. There's a whole. There's a whole, um.

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Basically, you can make a whole career out of studying this stuff, and people do.

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And we have great, strong confidence that the. That the bibles we have today, if you get an ESV, an ASB, something like that, you're going to get a very, very reliable representation of what was originally written. And. And any questionable section or issue or verse is going to be either not questionable at all, really, or something that will not really be impacting your faith, um, or impacting the teaching of scripture on that topic. Um, it does get complicated, admittedly, but that's the simplicity, the simple version of this. So Bart Ehrman is famous for writing a book called Misquoting. Jesus, where he says, like, basically, if you read the book, your impression, and this is debatable that I'm saying this, but, um, I believe your impression will be, I cannot trust what I'm reading in the gospels, that that was even what was really written.

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However, in debates and in certain moments, Bart Airman will admit that that was not the impression he was trying to give when he wrote his book, even though it is the impression people get that he thinks somebody asked him once, it was an interview or something, where they were like, well, what would, if you could fix the Bible? So it said what it originally said. So that, like, Mark says what Mark really originally said, Matthew said what Matthew originally really wrote, what would you, how different would it be? And Bart's like, oh, yeah, I'd be pretty much the same because this isn't, this is more smoke and mirrors than it is actual things to worry about. Um, that would be my response. Long video series. I will link below as soon as the stream is over and you guys can check that out. Let's go to the next question. This comes in from Dennis, who says, how do I know Christianity is right, true compared to other world religions? Um, there's a number of ways to know that Christianity is true. Um, one of them is simply to say, like, I have experiential, experiential knowledge in my relationship with God, in my supernatural experiences, that Christianity is true. I don't think every Christian will say this, but certainly if you feel like the holy spirit cries out, uh, like, I trusted in Christ, and I, God is with me. I have been indwelt by the spirit. This is great evidence. Let me qualify it for you, for the person who has it. It's great evidence. It is not great evidence for the non Christian because they don't have it. So all you're telling them is, I have an experience you don't have. Trust me, it's for real.

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Not the best evidence. Right? Like, understandably, it's not going to be super persuasive to others. To some, it might, but in general, I could see why people would doubt it.

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There's other evidences you can add to this. Christianity is not a one trick pony when it comes to evidence.

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So you can add things like, um, testable truth claims. So, for instance, the hindu understanding of the nature of heaven and earth and all those things. Or maybe the japanese understanding. Um, the japanese islands were formed by the death of gods.

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Okay, can we examine and see, uh, if the islands were created by biological material? Um, this is not the case. So you can look at different religions and you can test their claims, their truth claims. Now, they can always say, well, that was a metaphor, and maybe it was a metaphor, but let's make sure we're not just using that as a cop out. Right? Um, there are sometimes where people do use metaphors. They use pictorial language, they use archetypal language to talk about the past. That does happen sometimes. But many religions have truth claims that they make. For instance, Islam has a truth claim that, uh, up until recently has been at the center of Islam. They're moving, some of them are moving away from it now because it's indefensible, but not because it's not at the center of Islam. The truth claim is that Jesus was never crucified.

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It only looked like he was crucified. It wasn't Jesus. He was never crucified. Think about that.

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So if Jesus was crucified, Islam is not true.

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This is a pretty serious claim on Islam. It's part of, like, their major claim. It's not just a minor claim. Um, these claims can be proven false. It's been claimed historically on Islam. They've claimed that, uh, Muhammad himself was prophesied in the Bible, in the Old Testament, that it prophesies about Muhammad. But when you look at those prophecies, they're clearly not about him or anything like him. When we say Jesus was prophesied, that's a testable claim. I can look at the Old Testament and try to say, does this make sense? And I'll just give you the short answer. It makes so much sense that usually what I hear non believers say is, oh, uh, well, they just wrote that about Jesus specifically to make it fit the prophecy. Why would they say that? Let's follow the logic. It's because Jesus really does fit Isaiah 53 in psalm 22. And so they're going to go, oh, well, you must have wrote that about him, um, after the fact. Why? Because it does match.

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So we can at least acknowledge it matches. Then we can ask a new question. The things that you say they made up about Jesus, how historically reliable are those things? Like, I don't know, did he go around proclaiming that he was God's eschatological agent, the messiah? Did you know that there's historical consensus among believing and non believing historians that Jesus did, in fact, believe that, that he was God's eschatological agent? They like to use these, they're scholars. They like to use these fancy words. He was God's end times. Guydeh. Um, that's historical consensus, that's over 90%. They believe that. That Jesus went around preaching, um, that he was the son of man. That's consensus. You don't need to be a Bible believer to say this. He used the title son of man all the time, that one of the reasons he was crucified was because of his claims about being the son of man and that that ties into the prophecy of the Old Testament. Like in Daniel, he's coming as judge. Do you know that one of the greatest things that we see about Jesus in prophecy is the cross and how he dies on the cross at, uh, Passover, picturing the Passover lamb and the sacrifice there, and how there's all these connections with all this Old Testament sacrifice stuff that's been sort of set up ahead of time.

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But here's what's cool. Historically speaking, you do not have to be a Christian. You do not have to believe the Bible to believe this. Jesus was absolutely crucified under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified. On Passover, he was crucified, and then very likely, the majority believe, buried in a tomb that was later found to be empty.

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These are testable historical claims that have a lot of verification in them in history. Even the type of tomb that is described, it's only existent in Jerusalem.

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This is going to sound like I'm making stuff up to people. Um, there's been historical work on this, a lot of work on this, because Jesus is kind of an important figure in history.

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So when it comes to burials, it was the Sanhedrin's job to bury and take care of people who died in Jerusalem that didn't have family. There were visitors who died in Jerusalem. So Joseph of Arimathea, a representative of the Sanhedrin, shows up and says, can I take Jesus's body? Nicodemus, a pharisee, does it. They bury them in a tomb, a tomb in which no man had laid. Historically speaking, you couldn't put a crucified victim in a tomb where someone else had been because it defiles the tomb.

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They were considered judged by God. So it defiles the tomb. So it puts him in a tomb wherein no one had laid.

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Um. Oh, but Mark and Matthew and John and Luke, they're all writing historical fiction that didn't exist at the time. Like, nobody wrote fiction like that, where they would carefully write historical details just to make a fake story like that. Um, not, like, close to the time, not in this kind of style. It's just that genre of literature didn't exist.

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The tomb itself, the design and description of the tomb that Jesus was buried in, that's given in the New Testament fits tombs found in Israel in the first century. In particular, it does not fit tombs found outside Israel, like in Rome or other places. And a lot of people have suggested that, oh, well, they made up this stuff about Jesus from Rome 30, 40 years later.

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How did they get the tombs right? Roman tombs didn't look like that. The Romans didn't have these practices with Sadducees and Pharisees. They didn't have these discussions. They didn't have the geography of Israel and stuff figured out. They didn't know these things. They didn't have Google. They couldn't just do, uh, that.

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So, at any rate, what I'm suggesting is the prophetic statements about Jesus in the Old Testament, many of the most impressive ones, can be demonstrably proven true using historical analysis, not relying on the New Testament as divine.

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That's really important. That's at least some interesting evidence for Christianity. You can't do that for any other religion. No other religion has fulfilled prophecy like this. Like this, right? They can claim stuff. I know there's this hindu prophet guy, uh, I think he's hindu, some eastern mystic prophet dude on YouTube, and he'll literally look at weather reports and then he'll get up and he'll prophesy about the weather. He's just, and if you google, like when, the day he does this thing, you could see, like he's just reading weather reports and then pretending it's prophecy. This is bigger than that. This is much more than that. Um, Christianity is demonstrably true when it comes to prophecy, when it comes to evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, when it comes to, um, um, your life experiences and that sort of thing as well, there's other aspects that you can look at and go, wow, this is valid. The internal consistency of scripture blows my mind. You have to study the Bible a lot to get there. Usually people aren't willing to do that, so it's hard to make the case for the internal consistency of the Bible. For that, I'd recommend a very long series I have called Jesus in the Old Testament or how to find Jesus in the Old Testament. Speaking of the internal consistency of scripture, does that make sense? Uh, you can have an internal revelation that Christianity is true and that works for you, but it's hard to communicate that to someone else.

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But when you have external things like prophecy, the resurrection of Christ, historical evidence for that, the internal connectedness, showing inspiration of the scriptures, you have things like that. Um, that's pretty powerful. You have some stuff that's even, like, scientific in nature. Hebrews reveals to us that God created everything in the universe out of nothing. So Hebrews shows us a non eternal universe that had an origin in time. That was not a popular view. In fact, until big bang theory became extremely popular. And I'm not talking about the tv show that, um, was when they were like, I guess the universe is not past eternal. There were all these theories about how the universe was just eternal in the past, yet the whole time the Bible was saying it was not. Um, so that's interesting. Um, that's at least soft evidence in support of the text. All right, let's go to the next question. Number six.

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Libby Neef has a question.

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I often hear the argument quote, if God doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender, then what about disabilities? How would you respond?

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Um, usually when I hear questions like this, I don't know about you guys, but I think of what assumptions are loaded into the question. Like, sometimes when people make you answer a question, they're making you affirm things without you realizing it.

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So the phrase God doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender. I think that. That we're affirming when we say that is, we're supposed to be affirming that if you're born female, that was not a mistake. You really are female. Even though you internally feel male, you're not. You're actually female or vice versa. And that this is based on the idea that God doesn't make mistakes.

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Um, I wouldn't put it that way. Um, I wouldn't say God doesn't make mistakes, and that's how I know the difference between male and female. So then the next thing. What about disabilities?

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Wouldn't be a challenge to me, because I go, hey, when the reason why gender is real and gender is not changeable is not because God doesn't make mistakes. Like, you don't need God to be a mistake maker to say that transgender is a real thing, that you can change your gender based upon how you feel, or that gender is an internal reality. The reason is that gender is based on sex. Gender is. This is the policy that I'd have in mind. Gender is based on biological sex.

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That's what it's based on. It is not based on your internal feelings about some amorphous idea of gender.

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That's just feelings. That's just feelings. You feel like a dinosaur. That's okay, because who you are is based on your biology. Here, you're a human, right? And someone could say, so you're saying God made a mistake with me, um, or something. I don't know. I don't know what that means. All I know is who you are is based on biology here. Your biological status of human, not dinosaur or male, not female, is based on biology, not based on your feelings. Your feelings do not dictate your reality. They are your feelings. If your feelings don't line up with your biological gender, it's because your feelings are wrong, not because your gender is wrong. There's no wrong or right about your gender. There's a fact, and there's truth and falsity about your gender. It's not like a. I feel good about it. Whether I like it or not. I'm a male. I was born male. Now, there's some who are born intersex. And you go, are you. Do we classify this as male or female? Do we? Because there's these complicated. And there's a whole variety within that realm. And, uh, in some cases, you're like, okay, well, yeah, I could see you're kind of intersex, but you're really male. Or you're kind of, but you're really female. And there's some people that are in the middle there where you're like, I'm not sure what to say.

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I don't have to know how to answer that question as long as I'm still. And you know why I don't know how to. Because your gender is based on your biology. I'm still looking at biology to dictate what you are as gender. What we've done is we've separated sex from gender in our culture. And this is completely artificial. This is brand new. This is changing the definitions of words in the. In the. In the name of progress. It's not progress. It's delusion.

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I know I'm offending a lot of people when I say this.

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Um, let me say this really quick. In all of human history, in all of human history, you're the only people that have been offended by this.

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Think about that for a second. Why am I the. Why in the history of humanity, am I the only person that's offended by the idea that how I feel does not dictate my reality, that I cannot create my identity based upon my impressions of myself? Why does that offend me? Why am I so mad about that? You've been trained to be mad about that. You've been taught to be mad about that.

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If I feel different than I am, my feelings are wrong, and my amnes has not changed. There's plenty of people out there who feel all sorts of things about themselves. This is, um, not new. Um, I remember there's people who believe that they're God. Right? Who was it? There was this famous actress years ago. I was too young to even be aware. I don't think I was alive. But who stood on the beach and she proclaimed out to the world, I am God. I am God. And there's this, like, I guess, video or something of her screaming into the air that she is God on the beach. And most people looked at her and thought, you crazy. Like, you're obviously not God. Even though she totally felt like God, like she was not. You're not. You're just wrong. Your feelings are wrong.

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Same as the person who says, and catch this. This is where I can help people. Well, now, Mike, you've made me feel worthless.

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Oh, well, see here, I've helped you because your feelings are wrong. You're not worthless. You have great worth. You just don't feel it. You're not a female. You're a male. You just don't feel it. Let's fix the feelings. Let's not chop off body parts and that sort of thing that this is.

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The feelings are not creating your reality, and those feelings will change over time, and it will be very self destructive if you feed into and chase those things as lifestyle. It creates a temporary euphoria, but it creates a long term harm. So the argument, if God doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender, what about disabilities?

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Don't. Don't use the line of reasoning. God made you male and he didn't make a mistake. That's a clumsy, awkward way of putting it. God made you male. How do I know? Because your biology dictates your gender and your sex both, they're the same thing. We've only recently made gender into a new term that refers to your internal sensation of how you identify. That's brand new. That is not what the word ever meant before. Um, and it's. It's. We've invented that, and it's causing a lot of harm to people.

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Your feelings don't dictate your reality. Reality should dictate your feelings. But your feelings sometimes conflict and sometimes are in line with it. Let's go to question number seven. And this comes from Sina c I n a, who says, if the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is just, sorry, my back is being my back. If the doctrine of penalties, as in penalty short for penalty. For those of you who are in junior high, substitutionary atonement is just. If that's a just doctrine, would it be just for an earthly judge to impute the guilt of a murderer to an innocent volunteer and sentence the volunteer to death instead of the murderer? If not, why?

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So this is a, um, skeptical challenge on what I consider to be a core element of the cross. So this is a challenge to Christianity.

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Jesus dies on the cross for my sin. I deserve to be punished, but he gets punished instead. That's the nature of the cross. There's other aspects to the cross, his moral example and all these other sort of things, but that's part of it is the doctrine we abbreviate psa penal substitutionary atonement. He suffers the penalty as my substitution to bring me to God, to fix my relationship with God and deal with my sin. Um, so, yeah, but if God can do that, why can't a judge who's going to send it to murder to death be like, anybody want to volunteer to take his place? And then someone takes his place? And the answer to that is, um, there's one dissimilarity here. Jesus isn't a random volunteer. This is very important in the New Testament. This is not just something I'm bringing after the fact. In the new testament, Jesus is the second Adam. Now, some of you in the comments are like, you mean he's the last Adam? Well, the new testament calls them both second Adam, last Adam. Just read more of the new testament. Um, so he is. He is like Adam, Adam in the garden. Adam represents us all. Jesus from birth is appointed to be the representative of all humanity. He's not a random volunteer. He's literally come for this purpose to represent us all.

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There's another difference, too. Jesus is not just another human dying for a human. He is God himself with us. So God creates us, and then he who's now, by adoption of my heavenly father and my creator, he takes on the burdens of humanity, sends his son. So we have the doctrine of the trinity and all that, right? But God sends his son, who is God with us, taking on human flesh for the express purpose of saving his own creatures from their own sins. This is very different than a random stranger.

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So we get a little bit of this in our justice system, um, not with prison or death penalty, but with other elements. So if I'm given a fine, let's say I was given a $50,000 fine, and my dad showed up and was like, I want to pay that $50,000 fine.

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They would accept that. They would let somebody else pay my fine financially, but nothing. My penalty in other ways in, like, the prison time I deserve and stuff like that, that would not be considered. Right. But he's not just a random volunteer. This is the second Adam, the one who was literally, by God's design, command, and plan to be the representative of all humanity on the cross, who was also God himself with us. So he's the creator amongst the creatures. He's definitely not a random person. So you can't relate it to, like, random people doing things for us so much more than that. Number eight, Tara Carter. Tara Carr says, any idea why Matthew and Luke list Joseph's genealogy when he's not Jesus's birth father? What does that mean? Jesus lineage isn't what needs to be, what it needs to be to fulfill the prophecy. So this gets into a lot of detail, and I'll just give you the quick answer, because I want to answer more questions today. I really want to get as many as I can. Um, Matthew and Luke both give different genealogies of Jesus. They both mention Joseph, but I think that one of them is mentioning Joseph as his literal biological ancestry, and the other one is mentioning Joseph as the married, um, into ancestry. So when it says Joseph, when it talks about Joseph's dad in one of the genealogies, it's actually Mary's dad. So that we have Mary's line and Joseph's line. You go back far enough, they come together, but for at the beginning, they're different. Like, he lies over here but not over here. You know, you kind of have different genealogy genealogies.

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Um, that is, uh, one way to look at those two genealogies. Uh, why would Joseph's genealogy be given and not just Mary's? I think because we're establishing that both Joseph and Mary, his adopted dad, as well as his biological mom, they both have a davidic line. And so it's just giving double assurance of the davidic claim that Jesus has the messiah had to be the son of David. That was very important. He was even born in Bethlehem, the town of David, you know, so that's how I understand those genealogies. Other people have. There's other views as well that are out there on what is going on there. Joseph's name is used twice, but I think only biologically is he being referred to once.

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Number nine. And by the way, genial jewish genealogies. I'll back up. Jewish genealogies are a lot more flexible in the way that they handle things like, they'll skip generations. They'll be like, so and so, beget so and so. And it was really like a grandpa or something. Sometimes they do that too. So that there is a lot more flexibility amongst the way they handle genealogies than what you might be thinking of.

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Number, uh, nine. Paul Rall says, why do christians think there is an afterlife? Why not just look at death as a return to the quantum state like before we were born? Um, I would say there's a few things there, Paul. Uh, interesting question.

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Um, the view that christians have of the afterlife is not like view that we've come up with because we like it. So I don't get to, like, come up with, oh, you know, it'd be cool if we did this when we died. That would be in the realm of, like, fantasy. Um, but instead, our view of the afterlife is based upon revelation. It's the idea that God has told us, this is what it's going to be like. Let me show you. This is what it's going to be like. And so when Jesus is dying on the cross, and he says to this thief on the cross next to him, he goes, today you'll be with me in paradise. And I go, ah. Uh, okay. There's, there's a immediacy upon death of being with God. Paul talks about this in Philippians where he's, he's torn. This might sound weird, he's not suicidal. Don't get me wrong, there's no desire for him to hurt himself, but he's torn between the desire to continue serving and helping people and making a difference in the world and the desire to just go and be with Christ and he'll be with the Lord. In other words, you have to have a personhood. You can't just be in a quantum state. You have to be a person who has awareness to be able to be in relation and with someone else.

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Right. Um, so what I'm saying is Paul has that expectation that when he dies, he'll be with the Lord. At that, at that very next moment when Stephen is being killed in the book of acts and he's being martyred, he looks up and heavens open to him, a vision, and he sees Jesus sitting at the right hand of the father. Standing at the right hand of the father to receive Stephen, this first martyr of the church. So he's going to be with Christ, not a quantum state, but actually with him. Then we have more. That's just the intermediate state, what christians call the intermediate state. There's a time coming where Christ returns and he resurrects all those who've died, giving them new eternal bodies.

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That's very much not a quantum state, but it's so much better in my opinion. Now, I don't believe it because it's better, but I want to acknowledge that it's better. I will live in a body that is perfect, that is without corruption, that is not going to get sick or ill or old or any of that. That is going to be relational. There's gonna be physical, tactile experiences for eternity. It'll be an idealized experience forever. Looking forward to it. So the reason why christians don't believe we'll go to a quantum state is because revelation says the opposite of that. Like God. Not the book of revelation, that too. But the fact that God has revealed to us what's coming. If you're a christian, you believe Jesus. You know, you believe what he says about what's coming.

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Um, but I would also encourage you with this, Paul. Quantum state is not as romantic as you might think. At least consider the possibility. Quantum state is a fancy way of saying nothing.

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It's hard for our brains to imagine quantum things. It's so, so tiny. And what we do is then we watch, like, Avengers movies, and we see the quantum realm is this sort of like, amazing, scientifically wonderful place. And in reality, it's like, probably not like that at all, right? Because all what we see in movies is the quantum realm is a place you can shrink down to and a visit, and it's just a place of endless possibilities and wonder. That is very much a Sci-Fi version of it.

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Quantum, uh, space and quantum, you know, it's very much unknown. It's very confusing, but it's certainly not Avengers version of things. Um, so if you were to go to a quantum state where you die and your particles are broken apart to such a small state that you call it quantum, it seems to me you're effectively saying, I'm gone, but I would like to call that quantum state.

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I maybe am romanticizing annihilation when I say that, and it doesn't seem as attractive as it sounds, I think at first, number ten, Rachel Blue, 73, says, for my twelve year old, if God created everything, why did he create cancer? As a christian mother, I still struggle with this, with these sort of questions. Yeah, um, this is tough to answer for a twelve year old because I want to immediately make categories and say, okay, well, God didn't create cancer. Cancer. Cancer was not created. It's not like it didn't exist. And then God, like, brought it into existence out of nothing. The nature of cancer is it's a corruption, it's a malfunction. So when it comes to creation, God creates Adam and Eve, and they're, and they're ideal, right? There's no cancer there. When man sins, our world becomes corrupt, things go bad, right? So God made a world where people could do actions and live, and live consequences of those actions. And when they sinned, it brought corruption into the world. So that cancer, what cancer is, to my knowledge, is it's a cell that is growing where it shouldn't grow. You know, like there's a kidney cell, and that kidney cell goes over to your lung and tries to build a kidney inside your lung. Um, and it just keeps repopulating itself. Not even a whole kidney, just like a piece of a kidney bloom. And so it's building things that shouldn't be there. That's my understanding of cancer. Forgive me if I get some of the details wrong. I'm not medical guy. Um, although everyone in my family ends up with cancer.

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So one day I'll know it very well, I'm sure. Um, uh, the nature of that is that it's corruption, it's not creation. Does that make sense? So if your twelve year old builds a really cool tower and then populates it with little toys and things that come alive, and they're living little beings crawling all over this tower, and some of those beings start messing with the tower and hurting the tower, and the tower starts falling and they're like, why did the, why did you make this falling tower? And you're like, well, I mean, uh, it always had the potential to fall, but, but really it's falling as a result of the work of the stuff you guys are doing. The Bible traces the corruption that is going on in nature to rebellion against God. And that corruption is temporary, right? Because God is good. All that sin, all that suffering is very much temporary.

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When God remakes the new heaven and new earth we read about in one Peter three, I think it's one Peter three. Then there will be no cancer, there'll be no pain, there'll be no sickness, there'll be none of that stuff. So we have temporary damage done to God's created world, which includes cancer, disease and all that, right? And then there is eventual perfection that's coming. So, um, I, uh, hope that that helps answer the question. And it's always okay to simply say, if you ask questions. I don't know. That's a good question. I'll think about it. And, um.

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But my understanding is I would, I would say, uh, the only other thing I'd say is this. If you can't get past the idea and you ever like, no, I still feel like God's somehow responsible. And then I'll stop arguing with you about that and I'll just say the following.

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It's temporary and God will use it for good. These are things you should know. It will be used for bad. Don't get me wrong, cancer is bad, but God will use it for good. In the end, he'll bring something good out of what has gone on. When my mom got cancer, it did cause her to be a lot more serious about God. And that was a good moment. That was a good thing. You know, we had, we had the first like really serious open conversation in years, um, because of it. And, um, God used it for good. And so I'm grateful for that, at least. Okay. Number eleven, Nana has a question. Why do you, what do you think is the best evidence argument I, that there is a God? Um, I think that, that I don't have a solid one time answer for that. Um, so the answers depend.

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I think that there's a lot of really good arguments for God's existence. So, um, the fine tuning argument from the nature of the universe, uh, the fine tuning, that's not a biology argument, but the fine tuning of the universe, that's a really good one. Um, the design argument from biological design, especially coupled with fine tuning, that's super powerful to me. But guess what? It's also really complicated and it's about science and things like that that some people will be super interested in and other people will just tune out and zone out. So I use it selectively. Fine tuning. Great argument for the more scientifically inclined. How about the moral argument? You have people who you know that are very much about justice and about what's right and what's wrong and they care a lot about that stuff. I think if you can use the moral argument, you can show them that the morals they already believe in are pointing to a moral law giver, that without the giver of these moral truths, you would have nothing. If there was no God, these morals that they hold so dear wouldn't exist. The fact that they believe them is evidence for God. I think that's a really powerful argument for some people. Some people just roll their eyes and move on. Maybe I try a different argument for others. I think common sense is actually the best. I think probably for the majority of people in the world. And it's common sense that God exists. And the best argument is common sense. He's looking around and be like, you really think this all just happened? Look at the hills, look at the sky, look at the stars, look at the beach, listen to the seagulls. You think this all just happened with no creator? And they go, yeah, you're right. Is that like a theological philosophical argument? Well, in a sense it is. It's just not presented in the theological philosophical way. I think common sense is the strongest argument for God's existence. And for those who reject that common sense, more careful, thoughtful philosophical arguments are the things that I would probably move towards. So, yeah, there isn't maybe one best argument. Maybe depends on the person. Um, fulfilled prophecy is a great argument. If people have a lot of time and are willing to listen to you talk for a long time, um, then you have evidence for Jesus. Because with that argument, you get not only God, but you get Jesus and the Bible along with it. And so that's like a really powerful thing to do if successful. So maybe that helps. Number twelve, anonymous question.

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It says here, if you have to believe first in order to experience the reality of Christianity, if the proof only comes alive when one chooses to trust, isn't that truth make believe?

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Um, I don't think so, but let me grant you're hypothetical. Let's say that the only people that know that Christianity is true is those who first choose to believe it, and then they experience something that confirms that it's true. That wouldn't make their belief make believe, because in the hypothetical it's true and they're just not able to confirm it until they choose to trust it. What it would do is it would make the belief difficult to access or the knowledge of the truth of Christ difficult to access because the unbeliever would never access it.

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Um, but it would still be true. Rationally, it would still be true. I mean, that's the basis of the hypothetical. Um, but the hypothetical, I don't think, represents Christianity. So Jesus himself says that the Holy Spirit, um, will bring conviction of sin, righteousness and judgment to come. Jesus himself uses evidences to prove who he is. In John chapter five, we read about this. He tells the people he's witnessing to, they're Jews, so they've been sitting with the scriptures. He's like, look, you have Moses. Moses spoke of me. I have multiple witnesses. If you lived in the first century, a John the Baptist, who was the forerunner for Christ, and that may not be impressive to you. Well, of course you're 2000 years removed from that culture and that environment. But to the jew in the first century, that that was, that was meaningful. And now in the, in the, in the 21st century, we have things like evidence for the resurrection of Christ. You have the, you do have. Now, this is soft evidence, I admit to some, but it is evidence, the testimony of Christians, the people you know, and maybe you don't, but I hope you do, who, they gave their lives to Christ, and their lives really changed and they really experienced spiritual fulfillment. And they can say, like, man, this was for real. That at least means something, right? It's not without meaning. That's something. And you have, um, evidence for the reliability of the scriptures. You have evidence, uh, for the existence of God using things like, I didn't talk about this today, but the Kalam cosmological argument, k a l a m m. Check that out. Look it up. Think about it. I pray that any skeptic watching you don't just Google skeptic response to the column. You never even read what someone wrote about it. Like a thoughtful explanation. Because guys like, say, William Lane Craig, who's really pushed this particular argument for God's existence from the beginning of the universe.

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He answers objections in his writings, and yet people make rebuttals to him with no awareness that he's already answered those rebuttals. So it's something to, like, go a layer deeper is what I would encourage. So, yeah, let me read your question one more time and then summarize the answer. If you have to believe first in order to experience the reality of Christianity, if the proof only comes alive when one chooses to trust it, isn't that truth, make believe? The, uh, answer is in your hypothetical. No, that's not make believe. It's just inaccessible to the non believer.

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But that hypothetical is not actually representative of Christianity. You may have met christians who said that you got to believe, and then you'll see. Well, you can end up believing and then receiving confirmation, but that doesn't mean you have to. That's the, that's the part I'm stopping them on. Don't say you have to believe before you can see, because the people who witnessed the miracles of Jesus, they saw and still didn't believe.

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So, yeah, you, uh, you can definitely see and not believe. It can go either way.

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Nils, uh, brash says when Jesus said, for the person who would betray him, it would be better not to be born, I assume hell is worse than non existence. How does this match with a good God?

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Um, so the challenge I've had with this. Nils and I taught through the gospels where Jesus says this. My challenge on this has been, um.

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Um.

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Did Jesus mean that literally, or is it a figure of speech better if that man had not existed? Does he mean literally?

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And we even use the word literally. Weird, right? We say literally all the time nowadays when what we mean is not literally.

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We literally use the word literally non literally. It's the weirdest thing in the world that we do all the time.

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Um, so did Jesus mean that literally? And I don't know for sure the answer to this. I think a more careful analysis would involve going into ancient greek texts and papyri and looking for the phrase, you know, better if he'd not been born, and trying to find out, like, is this used in literal ways? Maybe Jesus is just using a phrase to say, and he does this a lot. This is kind of a hebrew thing. They say things like this a lot to say, like, boy, oh, boy, is it going to be bad for that guy. And that may well just be the meaning.

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Um, so you say hell is worse than non existence. Um, if you did take it that way, if you do interpret it the way to say that hell is worse than non existence, it would only be for that man and actually not for everybody else. It was woe to the man who betrays me. For him, it would be better not to be born. This would imply that his unique experience is going to be far worse than somebody else's meaning. Hell is not worse than non existence.

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Um, I think that that's, uh, a, um, a more careful thought for that thought. All right, whatever. Moving on to 14. I'm, uh, sorry. I stopped to read a text and totally distracted myself. Mikey. Larry says if I believe in my heart that Jesus rose from the dead and trust in him alone for salvation, why would God then send me to hell for being actively gay? Am I not saved by my faith instead of my works? Um, yeah, Mikey. Larry, there's a. There's a passage of scripture that is specifically written for you, um, for your question. So it's in. James, let me take you there.

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Um, but I'm warning you, you might not like what I'm going to share with you, because you're obviously very invested in this question.

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But I want to give you truth, because this question matters. Your eternal soul matters. Your eternal life matters, and whether or not you can be actively gay, which means regularly, this is. Adults may want to skip ahead on this. Not for kids. You're regularly engaging in homosexual sex acts between you and other men, or another man. And you might say it's just one guy. We try to be as monogamous as we can or whatever. Of course, the Bible doesn't define marriage as a male and male. It's only male female. So then you know you're doing a thing that the Bible says.

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Um, hold on. Let me first take you to first corinthians six.

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This is what the Bible says, right? Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Meaning what? This is something people can easily be deceived about.

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Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards. Yet drunkards too.

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Uh, you are an active, ongoing alcoholic. Your salvation is at least in question. It's like, are you really saved? You at least have a genuine question about it. I cannot take away what scripture says. I know this is a super unpopular thing to teach. I'm going to have literally have video responses to me saying about how bad I am. But why on earth does Paul say don't be deceived, except that he knows that christians may be deceived about this. These people will not, quote, inherit the kingdom of God.

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Now you can, formerly having engaged in homosexual acts, formerly drunkard and greedy and reviler idolater, sexually immoral adulterer, you could formally do those things. But if you're actively living those lifestyles, you're living the lifestyle of somebody who is not going to inherit the kingdom of God. That's a scary thought. And then your response could be your question. But, Mike, I m believe, but I have faith. I don't know who's ringing my doorbell, but I wish they would stop, um, um, literally tapping on the window of my house. Whoever this is, I've never had someone do that. Um, um, whatever you're selling me, I'm never, never gonna buy it. Okay, so back to what's more important. Um, um. James 214.

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What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? What does this mean? Not that you have faith, but that the person hypothetically claims to have faith, but their works, their lifestyle contradicts their claims. It doesn't mean they're not. This is about earning your way to heaven. This is about, is my faith real? I say I believe in Jesus, but I'm going to, uh, knowingly, intentionally, and actively. These are very important words. Knowingly, intentionally, and actively engage in sinful lifestyles that God has told me are the lifestyles of people who will not inherit the kingdom. But it's okay because I believe.

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I believe so I can continue my active, knowing, ongoing, sinful lifestyle.

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Well, maybe that person's faith isn't really faith. Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food and one of you says to them, go and peace and be warmed and filled without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? Your nice intentions in saying, oh, be warm and filled, you didn't really mean it. Why not? Because you had the ability to help them be warm and filled and you did nothing. So you didn't really mean it, did you? So it was an empty claim. So also, faith as an empty claim by itself does not have, if it doesn't have works, it's dead. Faith works, proves that faith is real, works don't save you, but they demonstrate that your faith is genuine.

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Um, we can go through this. I've read through this passage many times. Just last week I think we went through it. But let me, um, let me just say, read James chapter two. Please read it. Please read it very seriously. Read it very slow. Read it very thoughtfully. And know this, that your question, Mike Leary, which I am so grateful that you asked.

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I'm so grateful that you asked this. I think your question is answered in scripture. And, uh, let me answer you, read your question again and answer you shortly, briefly. If I believe in my heart that Jesus rose from the dead and trust in him alone for salvation, what good? Why would God then send me to hell for being actively gay? Am I not saved by my faith instead of my works? That m is literally the exact situation that James talks about. A person who says, I have the intellectual beliefs.

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I'm just living in a sinful lifestyle.

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Won't God accept me? James is saying, you think you believe, but your belief is lacking something. And the fact that you won't live it out, it shows you that your faith is somehow empty. Your faith is somehow vain. Your faith is somehow lacking. Put true faith and trust in Christ. And there are many of those who are watching today who are thinking about your own lifestyle, and it's, maybe it's not homosexuality, it's something else. And you're like, oh, man, I don't know if I'm saved or not m or maybe I'm just on some borderline. But the point is I'm in a scary situation. I need to get serious about Jesus Christ. I don't need to earn my way to heaven. My works will not save me one iota. I cannot add one good thing to the work that Jesus has done, but one thing I can do is I can have faith that is genuine. And if I have genuine faith and the spirit is really working in my life, then I'm going to see it play out in my life in ways that are tangible. And if it's not, then I got to question that faith. The solution is to get real faith, real, genuine trust and faith in Christ.

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It's not to fix yourself, it's to fully commit yourself. That's the solution. And then you will see it play out ups and downs, failure and success, but you will see it play out with a change of life. Let's go to question 15. This is from bean pie, who says, how are people saved in the Old Testament before Jesus? And if they were saved without believing in Jesus, then why did it change?

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Um, I, uh, think that they were saved by, uh, by faith, believing in God, even though they didn't know all the details about Jesus. Romans chapter four talks about this. I think it's such a cool passage in Romans, it really mattered to Paul, the apostle, that the gospel he preached was consistent with the Old Testament, which is the question you're asking here. So when the question is, how was Abraham saved?

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Was he saved by his works or something like, how was Abraham saved? Before Jesus shows up, he says here in Romans four, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our father, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he's talking about a similar topic as James. James is saying, if your faith really saves you, it will produce works. And Paul is saying, faith is what saves you, and it's not your works that save. So Paul rejects that works are required for salvation, but James makes sure to affirm that works are a result of salvation. Does that make sense? Like, uh, uh. Easy way to put works are the fruit. Faith is the root. If there's no fruit, maybe there ain't no root, but it's the root that makes the fruit.

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Try not to rhyme with two.

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Oops, I did it. For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? How is Abraham saved? This is your question? Old Testament saint Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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That's so cool. Hold on, before we move on, what is it? What did Abraham believe?

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What was it that Abraham believed God about? Let's go to Genesis 15 six. This is the verse. What is he believing the Lord told to Abraham, uh, told Abraham the following, this man shall not be your heir. Right. His servant Eleazar, uh, your very own son shall be your heir.

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And he brought him outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars. If you're able to number them, then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Abraham was righteous by faith. He didn't hear about Jesus, but he did hear about his offspring, meaning he had this like, this embryonic, uh, understanding of the messiah. And he believed this much he knew about God and this much about Jesus. He really believed it. He had accurate knowledge of God, but very narrow. And he believed it and he was saved. As more revelation comes, you have to believe more because more is being revealed. But if Abraham had learned more of Jesus, he would have trusted it as well. They were saved by faith, the same as you and me. They just had less information. But they did respond in faith to God, and the same is true of those who today don't hear the name of Jesus. There may be something they can hear and respond to, that God counts as faith and on behalf of Christ, they can be saved. I know this is a controversial topic. It took me years to figure this out because I thought about it, uh, through the tradition of my church instead of through the lens of verse by verse studying scripture. I did a video called, uh, what about those who never hear the gospel? And I'll link that below at the end of the study here at the message or the q and a here today. You can check that out. I go verse by verse. I talk about specific people, you know, Nahum. I talk about.

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I, uh, forget his name or not. Anyway. I talk about the leper, um, anyway, whatever his name was. Um, and I go through those sorts of things in detail, verse by verse, like examining what Paul says about the Old Testament and specific characters and how much knowledge did they have. And what does that mean for people today? And what does that mean? Mean for people in pagan religions and stuff is that people don't get a free pass for being in a pagan religion just because they don't hear about Jesus. But it's more nuanced than that. So I try to give the answer biblically. All right, uh, link down below. As soon as the q and A is over, Danny Boy says, question from a skeptic. If you are already saved, why do you still ask for forgiveness for your sins? Um.

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Uh, the short answer is, and I'm real quick for these other few answers if I can. The short answer is that while we don't lose our relationship with God when we sin, it's not like I lose my whole salvation. I still want forgiveness because there's relational harm caused. Because I have a living, active relationship with God. I don't just have a ticket to heaven, I have a relationship with my father in heaven. And while I'm not ousted out of heaven when I sin, it hurts that relationship and I am sorry and I want forgiveness. And so I have sinned freshly, so I freshly ask for forgiveness. I think that's a healthy thing to do as a Christian and there's a lot more to it, I'm sure, than that. But that's like the short answer. Uh uh. I like the example of marriage when I blow it with my wife. If I sin against my wife, somehow I don't have to apologize to keep her from divorcing me. I'm not going to lose the marriage, but the relationship is still hurt. And so I still want to come and be like, honey, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. And it restores the health of the relationship, right? I didn't lose the relationship, but I lost some of the health of it.

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So active, actively asking for forgiveness, does that question number 17 theology ponderer says, is Jesus being God and man a contradiction? The Bible says that the Son doesn't know the day or the hour of his coming. Can Jesus know as God and not know as man at the same time?

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Um, my answer to this is yes, and I do. I have a lot more I've done on this in video form, but I'll give you a short answer today.

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Um, you have the power of sight, but if you close your eyes, you can't see anything, right? I have the power of arms to pick things up, but if I tie one arm behind my back, I lack the ability to do the very thing that I could. I'm self limiting in a way that literally makes me incapable in a real way of doing something I normally could do. Jesus is God and man. He has all the powers of goddess. Omniscience, uh, uh, omnipotence. He could do anything, yet he chooses to limit himself. So in a sense, you can close your eyes and this limits your vision. Even though you could see everything, you're going to close yourself off to it. Jesus in his omnipotence could know all things, but he chooses to close himself off to that, like closing his eyes, so to speak, to the knowledge of the day or the hour. This is part of his submission to the father as a son, to come humbly, to think that God limits himself even in his own conscious awareness of things.

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Um, it's staggering to think about this, to think about the reality of the incarnation. But that's how I understand it. Um, I don't see that as a contradiction. I think that it's helping us understand the nature of the incarnation better.

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If there was times where Jesus probably as a human, went to pick something up and the thing was too heavy for him and it was humanly too heavy, and he chose not to use his divine power to just force it up, you can, you can do this. Um, it makes sense. All we're doing is we're not saying Jesus is less powerful because he can close his mind off to knowing certain things that we're saying, no, that's one of his powers. He can close his mind off to knowing certain things, not access them. I think that that makes a lot of sense. I don't see a problem with that view. Number 18, Carvalho says as a Christian, or carvalho, maybe what, um, is an appropriate answer to an atheist claiming the Bible is pure fiction.

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Um, this is challenging because to be honest, and maybe skeptics listening, you'll hopefully hear me out on this. When I hear, uh, uh, somebody claim the Bible is pure fiction or the bible is like Harry Potter. Um, it tell, it informs me about the perspective of the person making the claim, I realized that I might be wasting my time, um, talking about those things like this person is probably better to go get lunch with them and build a relationship with them first, uh, tactfully, because I just think you're not going to get that far on the Internet talking to them.

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Nobody in their right mind thinks the bible is pure fiction.

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Nobody. Right.

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Atheist historians.

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Atheist m total hardened atheist historians will say that the bible is our best source for historical information about Jesus and the early church, the early Christians, the atheists, will say it's our best historical source.

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Even the most non believing Old Testament scholars are going to say that there's a lot of historical factual information in the Old Testament. They're going to look at that and go, yep, there's a lot of historical stuff there. For instance, let me talk about the Hittites. The Bible has all these ites. Hittites is one of them, right? The Hittites are this group, and they're involved in all these different interactions with Israel and some historians, some secular historians, and even who would say they were Christian, many of them said the Hittites never existed. They were fabricated by the Jews in part of their storytelling about their fictional, like, legendary history.

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We have now uncovered so much archaeological confirmation of the reality of the Hittites that you can go and get your degree in hittite studies at university.

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Because. And, uh, catch this, because for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, the only knowledge the world had about this ancient civilization, the Hittites, was the Bible. And doubters of the Bible thought they made that up.

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Archaeological discoveries prove that it was in fact, true. There's other stuff, too. The names of people in the Bible fit the locations and time periods that people had. Those names. If you live a thousand miles away and you're writing about someone 500 years ago from 1000 miles away, you're not going to get the names right, you're just not. It's not modern times where you can go and look up literature from those times easily.

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Um, but the names are correct. There's so much historical evidence for the verification of scripture.

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Um, it means that if somebody says the Bible is pure fiction, they are a pure fiction person when it comes to the Bible. Well, the Bible is just like Harry Potter.

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You don't even know the difference between fiction and the gospels. Are the gospels classed as fiction? The general popular view among scholars is that the four gospels are greco roman biographies, biographies.

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They're actually meant to be the account of a person's life. Um, they're definitely not written as fiction. They don't, they don't class and count as fiction.

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When someone says the Bible's pure fiction, it means that they're so far behind intellectually when it comes to scripture that I genuinely don't know where to start. And so I pray, lord, give me wisdom. I don't want to offend this person. I'm not trying to hurt their feelings. I'm not trying to, um, say bad things about them. But there's a reason why amongst atheist circles, and this is something, atheists, I've never seen them come to reckon with this or, okay, most atheists I've never seen reckon with this. Um, atheists among their circles are, uh, what's called the mythicists, those who believe Jesus never existed. This is considered among historians, not just christian ones, among historians, such a preposterous idea that they don't even like talking about it or writing about it, because the statement that Jesus never existed is laughably bad.

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Laughably bad. And then some atheists respond to this online. They go, well, I'm not saying, look, a first, uh, century jew named Jesus probably existed. Well, like, no, duh. Like, Jesus was one of the most popular first century names for jews. We know from archaeological studies. So, obviously. But you're saying that Jesus of the Bible didn't exist. Not just that. You don't think he did that miracle or you don't think he rose from the dead. He didn't exist.

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He didn't make these son of man statements that you see in the scripture, that the full consensus believe he absolutely did. Even the non believers, these. This is saying something. Skeptic communities can be just as gullible as anybody else.

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That's why they are the forefront of the Jesus mythicist movement. It's irrational. It is not based on good research. It's based on, like, um, conspiratorial versions of history and research where you look at, you go, well, the Bible has all this evidence about Jesus. Yes, but who wrote it? Christians. And I am so bigoted against christians that I completely discount anything they written in history.

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Josephus. Yeah, but that was interpolated. Actually, scholars think that part. Part of it was. But there's a core there that is about Jesus. That's actually. No. Ah. I reject that.

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It's just difficult. Tacitus talks about it. There's others. Many secular sources talk about it.

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Um, gullibility exists on all sides. There's plenty of gullible christians. Plenty of gullible christians, and there are just as many, or at least ratio, as gullible atheists. It goes on every side. Gullibility is a universal human quality that we all have to fight to get ourselves out of. So, um.

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So, yeah, not all atheists are like that. Um, but the ones online that I've interacted with are disproportionately like that. I think a lot of atheists who are prone to fight online tend to be more in that camp, and there's many who are like, I'm more watching. I don't really want to get in the fights. And that's kind of more. The people who. These videos are for. This video. Here's for. Because you're. You're actually, you're nodding your head in agreement and you're like, yeah, man, those. The mythicist things. Pretty embarrassing. And I'm grateful for you. Okay, question number 19.

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This is Landon Metokus, who says, I lost my faith. And I'm so sorry to hear that, Landon. Due to all the mixed messages in the Bible, for example, is salvation faith alone like John 524, or faith plus works like James two. Why doesn't this cause you to doubt.

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So, Landon, uh, my heart breaks to hear you say that. Um, uh, I've studied James two very, very carefully in a lot of detail, and I don't think it teaches that faith plus works saves you. I think he's saying faith that works saves you. And here's the big difference, right? Faith that works means that the faith is I have, uh, confidence and trust in Christ. And when you combine that confidence in Jesus with the work of the Holy Spirit in your life, your life starts to change.

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But imagine that this faith you have in Jesus isn't genuine. It's kind of like intellectual, only that's why james goes. Even the demons believe and they tremble because they don't have confidence in Christ. They just know he's true. Um, that is an empty faith that doesn't produce any works.

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James is not teaching you that faith plus works is what gets you saved. He's teaching you that faith plus works is how you demonstrate that you really are saved, or faith that results in works. So Paul, in Romans, he's teaching you how to get saved. James is explaining how you can prove that you really are saved to other people and yourself. One is about how you get there, one is about how you show it to others. How did I get the job? I applied and they hired me. That's very different than how I proved I had the job. That is, I went to work and there you watched me in my uniform doing the job. I proved it to you in a very different way than I got it. Romans, how you get saved, James, how you prove it to others. I don't see a contradiction there, Landon. I really don't. And I'm so sorry that you do and that it's hurt your faith. I hope you'll be open to listening to other explanations, um, and hopefully slowly working through your biggest concerns. And it brings you back to a place of saying, I trust in Christ. I didn't realize this is all consistent. It's just sometimes challenging.

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Question 20. We're almost done here. But this is extra long skeptics version. Look, because I have a heart for skeptics, as many as other skeptics online who maybe don't realize that about me is like, I really care about you.

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I, um, desire you to know the hope and the grace and the love and the truth of Christ that there is. I desire to know that the Bible is true. I want you to have that joy and that truth and that forgiveness that you can have. That's there. And, um, the debates often feel animostic. Is, uh, that a word? There's a lot of animosity that's felt that's there. And, um, you know, I'm not looking to fight people as much as evangelize, but, uh, but sometimes that gets into the back and forth. All right? So smack dab says, is God holy and sinless? Can God do things which if we did them, would be considered sin? One example, killing the firstborn of Egypt. Does the concept of sin or being sinless even apply to God?

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Well, um, the Bible, if you're going to affirm biblical Christianity, which I will, the Bible clearly teaches that God is holy, that he is sinless, that he is always right, that he is just, and he is always doing things that are morally good. Everything he does is morally good. It also affirms that he killed the firstborn of Egypt, which people imagine them all being babies. Uh, I'm the firstborn son of my father. I'm not a baby.

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Um, so I'm just saying let's have clarity. It doesn't mean there weren't any children involved. That's a very harsh judgment. That's a very harsh, strong judgment. It was avoidable, right? They were able to enter into the jewish homes and say, hey, look, I want to avoid this judgment before it comes from God. And they would absolutely have been delivered from it. So if all they had to have was faith in the God of Israel, and they've been demonstrated through many plagues that God was the real God and that their gods were false, and all this. But the judgment came if you went around doing that, you would be in sin. I agree. So your question is reasonably, can God do things which, if we did them, would be considered sin? And my answer is yes, but they're not sin when he does them. That's how I would qualify it. And I'll give you a parallel. I cannot drive down the road at 90 miles an hour, but a cop can.

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And all of a sudden you go, I see where you're going with this, Mike.

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Um, how can a cop go over 90 miles an hour down the road, sirens blazing? Whereas if I drove 90 miles an hour down the road, honking my horn really loud, I would get multiple tickets and all sorts of problems, because a cop has a position that I do not have.

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He is law enforcement, and I'm not.

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Let me give you another example. This is a judge example. Am I allowed to take a man and throw him into a cage for, say, six months? I'm pretty sure that'd be called kidnapping, right?

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That would be very illegal. Throwing people in cages for six months. Can a judge throw down a verdict or get a verdict from, uh, the jury, I suppose, and then throw down a judgment? Okay, you've been judged guilty by the jury. I sentence you to six months in prison or jail, probably. Six month sentence. Very likely. In California, you're very likely to be in jail, so you go to jail.

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Is that judge sinning? Now, some of you are anti government or anti jail. That's a separate issue. Like, pretend it's a judgment that you are approved of or whatever. Um, the point is, the judge does actually have a different set of rights in his function as judge than I do as a citizen. The police have a different set of rights than I do as a citizen. Now, they can't do whatever they want, but there are some things that they can do that I can't do. God, how much more? Creator of all mankind. Judge of all mankind. Exalted, eternal, omnipotent, um, omnipresent, um, transcendent. God almighty has more rights to do things to his creatures than I do as one of his creatures. That makes total sense to me. I don't think it's a, uh, irrational. I think we do it all the time. A parent can ground a kid, but a kid can't ground a parent. If a kid tried to ground their parent, it would be disrespectful, slightly funny, but actually very inappropriate, and very much a rebellion against their parents rightful authority. If a parent grounds a kid, it's considered like, no big deal. Like, you know, hopefully they did it wisely and with good reason and stuff, but it's not a big deal. This is. Every layer of our society has this. Bosses have rights that employees don't. Um, cops have rights that citizens don't. Judges have rights that plaintiffs don't. In courtrooms, lawyers have rights that they're, the people they represent, don't have. This is all very normal. And, uh, we don't talk about nerd culture because I feel like we're sort of allergic to the nuance of understanding these types of things. We don't like authority in general, we don't like authority. But, uh, authority is good. It's just easily abused. But it's a good thing. God absolutely can do things that if I did them, it would be a sin. But if God does them, it's not. And that's entirely appropriate because a judge does it and a cop does it and a parent does it, and a teacher does it and a boss does it and everybody else does it. We understand this. And then when it comes to God, the most exalted, authoritative being in all of reality were, like, not you. You don't get any special rights over your creation. That would seem to be irrational. All right, last question. This is a bonus question from Daniel Morales. Um, and just for those of you who don't know, maybe you're joining for the first time. I don't get to read these questions ahead of time. The first question, I know what's coming. Okay. I prepare that question. Everything else, all the other nine or 20 that come in, I answer them all off the cuff. I'll give you my best. Off the cuff, off the top of my head. Thoughts? Um, surely if I spent more time, I'd give better answers. But I'm hoping this points you towards Christ. Points you towards God, leads you a little closer to the eternal life that there is in Jesus Christ and to learning how. This is the goal of my channel. To think biblically about everything. To think biblically about everything.

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So Daniel Morales says, I'm a Bible believing non Christian. That hurt myself from absorbing bad charismatic teachings. I have always had trouble trusting and accepting Christ. How would one begin to, as a skeptic, Daniel, um, you're in a tough spot because I feel like a lot of pastors might not be well equipped to help you, and I would want to counsel you. Like, hey, man, I can tell just from reading your question you need more one on one help than just an answer from me. But you got to find, like, an apologetic minded leader or Christian, someone who, like, thinks about skeptical questions. They don't get offended when you ask a hard question. That's a really important thing. But also, who perhaps understands some of the hurt that you receive from charismatic circles. And I. I'm, um. This sounds weird for me to say this. I'm a little bit like that because I've seen some stuff, and I've told you guys a little bit, some stories over the years, but I've seen some stuff where I thought that was not charismatic. Like, I'm a continuationist. I believe that. I believe in the gifts of the spirit. I'm hopeful and desiring for things like prophecy in the church. But I, um, want to be discerning and not gullible. And I only want what's authentic and real, and I absolutely reject any fakeness in the name of Christ. 100% reject it. Not interested whatsoever. Um, and I'm also. I care about apologetics, and so I find somebody like me. That sounds so weird to say that. Um. Um. But I hope you'll find someone, Daniel, to talk to. Um, you probably have a lot of questions and a lot of topics and a lot of issues. Let me say this one thing.

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Um.

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It's easy to get hurt and to overreact.

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This happens a lot. Um, I feel like I had a faith that was a little bit gullible, that was a little bit sort of anti intellectual. And then I sort of realized, wow, my understanding of scripture was kind of shallow. My belief about faith and about God and about a lot of things was really shallow. My apologetics, defenses of the Bible and all this were really shallow. And so I'm going to reject confidence in all those things when I should really only reject the shallow confidence I used to have. And you can overreact.

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My experience has been, um, going deep into apologetics and deep into theology has been very rewarding. It has stripped away some shallowness in my christian faith, but it has replaced it with anchored deeper, greater confidence, just with more nuance, more thought, more care, more consideration. I believe the Bible is reliable. I still believe that there's sometimes a verse where you're like, wait, is it. Does it read this way or the way it is in the footnote? That's an open discussion, and I'm okay with that, because I don't have this sort of wooden, shallow apologetic in my christian faith.

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Daniel, I hope that that helps. Don't overreact to the mistakes of the past by just making the opposite mistakes today.

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You. You can well have confidence in scripture. Maybe this will help. Check out my series evidence for the Bible. I will link it down below. Um. Um. I'm about to click off this video or close it. Close it down and everything. Check out that series. I hope you do. I think you'll find it very rewarding. All right, let's, uh. Uh. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for Daniel, for everybody else, skeptics who watch today, who are struggling, who have questions, we pray that you would help them work through them and reason through these issues in ways that bring them the light of Jesus Christ, that bring them confidence in the truth of scripture, that bring them closer to the knowledge of God, that they would become skeptical of their skepticisms, that they would have as much critical processing and thought about unbelief as they have in the past about belief in Jesus name. Amen.