This is the Truth Network. He's one of my favorite Bible scholars, and I actually got a chance to sit down with him. In Indiana. And I call this a sacred place because a lot of books have been written here. Jerry Pattingale, now there's folks that haven't heard of you, brother, but More than likely.
They've read your books because I'm looking at a stack of books in front of me. including the new book of Christian Martyrs, the heroes of our faith from the first century. To the 21st century. You wrote this with Johnny Moore. There's an hour-long movie, a documentary about this book, the world's greatest book, which is the best-selling book at the Museum of the Bible.
You're one of the original scholars there. Jerry, it's an honor to sit down with you. I got to ask you out of the gate. Who is? Jerry Pattingale.
How do you answer that question? Jerry Pangill is a friend of Stu Epperson. Yeah, I'm someone who I'm thankful to be alive and thankful for the different things I get to do. And I have spent the last 40 years of my life to Recruiting people smarter than I. And I think God's called me to do that and to be the best I can be.
Not trying to be self-effacing. But I'm someone who loves the Lord and I... I'd love to see arguments that actually are rational. A lot of stuff in the world today just is totally irrational. And so I hope that when people read Jerry Pattengel or watch me on whatever shows, Um That they see someone who is appreciative of life and respectful of others.
But mainly, and first of all, respectful of the truth. And you know the Thomas Aquinas talks about the Uh You know, the virtues, and one of them is the intellectual virtue of humility, and that is. Entering discussions, thinking the other person might actually have something for you to learn. Wow. But then, after you're respectful, It's okay to disagree with them.
And there's a lot of people teaching a lot of vacuous stuff today, both in the church and the polit and in politics especially. Yeah, it's so important that as believers that someone may lean more Pentecostal over here.
Someone may lean more non-Pentecostal.
Someone may Whatever variation, but within the pale of Christianity, the essentials of the faith that we're unified on. But it's easy to shout each other down, or it's easy to attack each other with ad hominem attacks. From looking at your work and from following your ministry all these years, Jerry. It seems like you're just trying to get. People to have conversations, and you've had conversations.
In fact, you've written books with people you don't necessarily agree with. Yeah, and there's actually a joy in that. You know, I have several books in a series with InterVarsity Press where. You know, those chapter authors are written by some real heavy lifters, and I don't always agree with them. James K.
Smith, for example. Has a chapter in the state of the evangelical mind. And I hosted the conference. And had to stand up after he presented his manuscript, which was a chapter in the book in front of everyone. Uh you know in Indianapolis at a Pac Sagamore Institute, where I'm a senior fellow, and thanks be to God for that.
And how to tell it? Tell him that I disagreed with his chapter. And that's okay. Yeah, I think we're still friends, and he's a good thinker, and he's got a lot of energy. He's a Calvin College, great, great scholar.
But I just disagreed with the vitriolic nature. He was as vitriolic as people claim Trump is, and it was about Trump. Oh, wow.
Okay. Yeah, so that's okay. You can agree to disagree. I'm on the board of Christianity today. And not everyone voted the same on the Christianity A board.
And so someone asks if I'm the token conservative on that board. And I said, you know, there's other conservatives on the board, conservatives politically, but we're all 100% conservative in scripture. We all Have a sound belief in the orthodoxy of the scriptures. And so you have to learn to be able to survive in those environments. And you've been a key scholar and advocate for the veracity of scripture.
You've done tons of research. You've collected things. You've worked with the Greene family at the Museum of the Bible. Just some remarkable stuff. I'm looking at all these books.
We could spend all night. Talking about these books. We're hearing your study in Indiana, a special place, but didn't start here in Marion, Indiana. Home to Indiana Wesleyan University, near and dear to your heart, because you were one of the first ever professors when Indiana Wesleyan became that. You were a student, you were a graduate of that school.
Before that, we got to go back to Buck Creek. Yeah, you know, a lot of people asked me what I started writing, and it was funny because I was turned down for 10 years.
So, when people want to talk about the numbers of books and this and that, they don't realize how hard it was to get started. And you know what really helped? I started writing these columns for Gannett News. On growing up poor in Buck Creek Mm. And one night, you know, someone told me my first one was pretty good.
And I thought, well, if it's good, I'm going to send one cold turkey to the Chicago Tribune.
Well, you know, they get hundreds of unsolicited things they don't ever read, I'm sure, like every other major magazine. And so I found out who the secretary was, the main editor, and I sent it to the secretary's email on a Sunday. I figured if I sent it Sunday around supper, maybe she would open it up and read it. I was at a coffee shop at Tree of Life, which is now Abbey Coffee here in Marion, the next day. They go, Dr.
Pancake, you've got a fax. It looks like a contract from Chicago Tribune. She had handed it to the editor. They got a hold of me. They published it the next day as a full feature.
And the title, and it's now the beginning article in a major book of mine with McGraw-Hill. And the article starts. When she answered the door naked, it was an awkward moment for my younger brother and me. She was over 80. True story.
and then she pulled us in and served us ice cream naked while she was getting dressed. And so that's a funny story. It's a true story. I'm not making anything up. I'd never seen a naked woman before then.
She was buck naked in Buck Creek. There you go. Yeah. And because my brother could testify to this, there's eight of us kids, we were so poor. And, but what she did is a whole time stew, and this is how God helped me to start writing.
And I got more contracts than I could have ever signed after this. She kept bringing in a picture while she's serving us ice cream. Of this gorgeous gal in a business suit with two people in suits around her and the Empire State Building behind her. And she was holding a beautiful leather case. I realized with a gap in her teeth, a David Letterman gap.
That beautiful gal was her. And I realized there's a young guy. That before I start serving ice cream naked, to people and I'm I'm go slipping into dementia. I need to give my first rate energies to first rate causes. And as a Christian, whatever that is, it needs to bring glory to God and help the kingdom.
And so that's how I started. I mean, Buck Creek, I had a lot of stories. I wrote 300 of those articles, and God's blessed. You know, I was fortunate to get some awards for those. But, but, yeah, I.
And they're all true. And it's just that we were so poor. We drove across a creek to get to our house, had no indoor plumbing or electricity, and two or three different houses. And I, you know. And then finally, I one day found myself a 16-year-old high school graduate and homeless.
And let me end this part of this question with this, right where you're seated. I was seated not long ago. Here in this, it's a hundred-year-old chicken coop where we're seated, restored. And um I had helped with a movie for the museum of the Bible. It was called The Road to Emmaus, with the, not the chosen, but their sister group, Mystery Box.
And the key funder was a family, wonderful two sisters and their husbands, and they were the inheritors of Holiday Inn. As we get started, my friend Harry Hargrave, who was CEO of Museum of the Bible, said, Jerry, Before we get started. Uh, talking about this movie, because it was done. It was pretty well done. Could you tell them your connection with Holiday Inn?
And I said. I wasn't ready for that question. And I said, yeah. And I started telling them that when I was 15, I got a job at Holiday Inn. By sixteen I was homeless.
And I lived in a holiday inn when I was homeless. And I got radically saved two weeks before it's time to start college at a holiness camp. I went there to date the girls. And I remember driving back that holiday in an old beat-up gremlin, thinking, I don't know. where I'm going, but I know I'm going somewhere.
And that changed my life. And here I am today. I told him I'm sitting here looking at the owners of all the holiday inns. And God knew when I was 15. And I put my arm on that desk to arm wrestle the guy who wouldn't hire me because he thought I was too small.
And he hired me when I did that. It was at Holiday Inn, and he knew. that fifty years later I'd be sitting across in Zoom from the very people that owned all of them. And I, you know, and we, they started crying. I started, you know, the West and the Moors.
Just wonderful people. Today we text all the time.
Now we're really good.
So God had his hand on me in my life. And I remember my first Bible, I didn't know the difference between Old and New Testament. My first Bible. Uh was a King James red-letter edition. I mean, I still have it.
I've memorized most of my scripture. I love the King James parlots. It's hard to read in some places, but other places, the Tyndall quotes in it are great. I remember when I I was given a full ride right away to Indiana Western University. And of course, I took it because I had a place to live and eat, you know.
I remember standing in the dorm. The week before classes started, you came early in those days. I remember reading through the red letters. I had never read the passage. of the Sermon on the Mount.
I had never read Go ye therefore into all the world and teach the gospels. I can remember running out in the hallway. stopping people and saying, have you ever heard this before? I mean, they knew right away I was pretty green as a Christian. It's like, have you ever read the Sermon on the Mount before?
And then I thought, why didn't I know about this? How could I not know at 16 years old? What the Sermon on the Mount was. How could it... I read all this literature in high school.
I'd never read these passages. And so that's how I began my Christianity. The amazing grace of God taking a young man who's homeless, dirt poor. To becoming an amazing, remarkable Bible scholar. More with Jerry Patton Gill.
We're going to take a quick break. And talk about the impact of God's Word. On our world, going way, way back to present day with Jerry Pattio. Hang on, don't touch that dial. I'll back right after this.
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civilizations turn over Things change. There's war. There's devastation. But one. Book has withstood the time The Bible, God's Holy Word, I was sitting with a man of God who's dedicated his life to writing about the Bible, to studying the Bible, to being a Bible scholar, to looking at Bible relics, looking at the original languages, Jerry Pattingale.
You've got this book, the new book of Christian Martyrs. You've got this book, the world's greatest book: The Story of How the Bible Came to Be. Why is this so important? And why have you dedicated your life this entire? I'm in this beautiful study, the chicken coop here in Marion and Indiana.
Everything in this in this room is centered around You're writing and studying. About God's Word.
Well, first of all, I feel really blessed to have you sitting here. You know, we've had Jeanette Oak here, we've had Andy Chrisman here, we've had Dr. David Anderson, and many others.
So it's just been great. The world's greatest book. This is a special book to me, and I'll tell you why. First of all, I think everyone needs to have a basic history of the Bible. They need to know where it came from, why you can trust it.
And you need to have it from You need to have it from a balance of people that are giving you good scholarship, seasoned scholarship. You don't have to have degrees and pedigrees for you to be correct. But you have to have those to have a standing of. Of citation and so forth, you know, that people will call on, you know, whether that's good or bad, I don't know.
So my dad died young. He was an alcoholic, but he was a very smart guy.
So The degrees don't make it alone, but they normally say that the person certified.
So, anyway, when I was asked to write this book, So the publishing house came to me and said, We'd like for you to do this. We'd like for you to do it with the Museum of the Bible. And I said, to write a book on where the Bible came from. And that was their title, The World's Greatest Book. I said, I'll write if I can write it with my friend Larry Schufman.
Larry is one of the top Jewish scholars in the country. He's at New York University. And so what we did is we decided to to sit At New York University for a couple of days, and we had the editorial staff around us. I think Hudson Bible, Worthy Publishing, both had reps there. Can you imagine for all day, I think two days.
So we taught this for 20, 30 years. He's probably taught it for more than that. And from memory, you know, we were able to sit there, and you could do it too, and we went through. Topic by topic from memory, these are the key things. And so we just sat for two days.
And an editor, Lynn Wood, sat there, he took notes, he had his tape recorders, you know, everything. And about two months later, we had a manuscript. And it was an amazing capture of that. Because we figured if we sat and did it in a flowing way, and what it does. You can walk through here and it'll tell you the key aspects of what the Masoretic texts are and where the New Testament came from.
And you have an Orthodox Jew and an evangelical Christian. Both trained in the languages and the fields to be able to talk together.
So that's where this came from. And one thing that we talked about a little earlier, when October 7th hit, I pulled this off my shelf. and just wept because Because I wrote this with my friend, who's an Orthodox Jew, it was even more special. He decided he would like to start it with the story of Kristallnacht. And you remember that story.
And, you know, it's the start of the Holocaust when they, you know, they broke all the glass and they raided the synagogues and they burnt the scrolls in the streets. And he wanted to start it that way because he said throughout time people have tried to destroy God's Word. And here it is today, the best-selling book of all times, the most debated book. And I just cried because it wouldn't be in that book if I hadn't sat down with him to do that.
So this is a special book for me, and I think it's been really helpful. And Eric Stackelback did an hour special. on a couple of these books and you can find a lot of other Other videos on the history of the Bible. Yeah, his name is Jerry Pattingal. He's an esteemed scholar.
He's one of the original Museum of the Bible scholars. He's influenced a lot of work, a lot of great books.
Now, Jerry, one thing that All these critics across the world have in common is they attack one book. It's interesting, a lot of Religions have popped up and they've claimed holy books. But there's one book that's never been more attacked, more scrutinized. It's that book, you know, that's written over about 1,500 years, you know, time by 44 or so plus authors, three different languages, and it spans all kinds of things. And it touches on archaeology, it touches on biology, it touches on, you know, from science to history.
Prophecy, theology, all these things, the Bible, the forbidden book, as our friend Brother Green calls it. Why is the Bible under such attack all the time? What does that tell us about the truth of Scripture? And what about that invigorates you to do what you're doing as a lead apologist for this sacred book?
Well You know, a lot of people like to read the Bible and the easy parts, and, you know, some of the fun stories or the powerful stories like the Good Samaritan. They don't like to read Daniel. Mm. They don't like to read about this cosmic fight between good and evil. And I have a friend who's a powerful scholar, Fulbyte scholar.
And I told him one day, I said, he was talking about all the rationalization of how things are true in the Bible and how he can do the natural thing. And I just called him by name. And he's at one of the leading universities. And I said, you either believe in the virgin birth or you don't. You either believe in a resurrection or you don't.
No matter what natural things happen, no matter what alignment of the constellations happen for the star of Bethlehem in your mind, no matter what happened with fault lines, you know, for the flood in your mind, or for the Exodus and the fire by day, you know, the fire by night and cloud by day. A lot of people think that's Krakatoa and the eruption. But I said, At some point. God either entered into time and space or he didn't. There's either a miracle, there's not.
And what's happened is, we also know in this same book. There is a battle between good and evil to the present Do you know what's very interesting? is that we have a battle. in Iran right now as I'm talking. You and I both listened at 8 o'clock.
to hear that Iran had accepted the Americans request in order to stop the war.
So whether that still stands by the time of this, we don't know. One of the things we do know There are evil people involved in this war. evil, assassinating people on the streets. Evil bombing schools and bombing apartments at random. you know, sending terrorist gangs into neighborhoods.
October 7th, funding that. We know that there's evil, and there will continue to be evil until the Lord returns. And the Bible is the one thing that we have that makes sense of all this. And so, you know, what I know is that if you read Moses, you know, Moses fought all these battles. He's trying to figure things out.
He doesn't understand all that God's done. Maybe he thinks that the punishment's a little too hard, but here's what he knows in Deuteronomy 34. And you can go back to Deuteronomy 3. Moses knew, and I'm speaking on this at the Miami University campus here in a few days. He could back into the future.
He could look back at all the things that he had he had seen some miracles And he could back into the future because he could look back at all the great things God had done. All of the powerful things God had done. that at the time he may not have understood, but now he could look back. And back into the future in faith, knowing that God's gonna take care of him in the future. You know, we all have our Jordan Rivers, we've all made mistakes, we've all done things that, in his case, It was.
It was sin in his life that kept him from crossing the Jordan. But ultimately, we all come to that place and what we can do until that time. It is to use the gifts we have and the skills. And we need to spend our life in the gifts that God's given us, not the skills. People make that mistake.
A lot of colleges, they'll learn how to be a good typist, but they really have skills in helping people personally or whatever. And we can do that, but Ultimately, there's going to come a day where we don't cross the Jordan, and it could be our age. You know, I'm 67. And there are things I've had quadruple bypass, had a heart attack right in front of an emergency room entrance. after I had just come back from speaking on a book in Australia.
God gracious. And so I knew God was giving me more time. Like Hezekiah, I hope it's more than 14 years. It's 10 years, 10 years, about four days ago. And so I know God spared me for that, and I do know that as long as I live.
There will be evil in the book that you have in front of you. The new book of Christian Martyrs that Johnny Moore and I wrote, I cried so many times reading about what men and women had done to other men and women simply because they believed in God. And I mean, I cried so, you know, sitting at that desk for seven years. I many times would turn my hands up and say, Lord, I'm not capable of writing this without you to represent them. It's beyond me.
It's something that's so powerful. And so I spent seven years looking. I wrote other books during that time because I just couldn't. It was so depressing. And And so when you're talking about what's going on in the world, and I'll just close with one thing.
I was sitting in the Cambridge University Library. I had several original editions out of books, and including, I think, three different versions of Fox's Book of Martyrs. And I'd spent a lot of time there, and it was a couple, three years in the pro. Process, I get a call, and someone says, Jerry, you know, silence is opening tonight in Cambridge. This is a call from the United States.
And I said, wow. You know, um Scorzizi's famous movie Silence on the Japanese Martyrs. And I thought, wow.
So I went and I wasn't really thinking, you know, I spent, you know. All these days, especially that particular day, reading all these stories of martyrs. And then I go across town to a modern theater. to watch a movie of one of the most horrific Martyrdoms that there was in our history. I mean, you know, the tar pit, the crucifixions, and hanging them upside down.
But while I was sitting in there, I looked around, and this is a famous producer, one of the most famous producers. And, you know, there's only a few that we have at that age. Lucas Foster would be another one that we could look at, a good man. But I sat there, and it was me, one guy, I think, and a family.
So there's three different that's it. And some of the kids, as they're burning the Christians in the tar pits on crosses. They're saying, can we have some candy? And they're bringing popcorn in and there's Popcorn smell. you know, wafting through the air and I thought.
What a sharp contrast to the very topic that we're discussing. And people, you know, Corey Timboom, I heard her personally say, When we become insensitive to sin, we've lost our defense. And so, yeah, it's. We're in a battle, and we will be until the Lord comes.
Some people say, Well, what can we do about it? My first response is: read screw tape letters. That's right. There's the whole enemy's plan. I'm looking at a stack of books here.
I'm looking at a study. I'm looking at how God's inspired you. He's put a DNA in you, brother, that's just amazing. And you have. you've collected other scholars to really aggregate A collaborative effort of advancing the truth of God's word.
What would you say? You got grandkids, you got a whole lot of young folks out there, you've poured your heart into Christian education at Indiana Wesleyan, you've lectured at schools all over the world, you know, from Cambridge, Oxford, all over. What would you say your legacy is? What do you want to leave behind, folks, to remember you by? As you Continue to write, you know, as a collective of all this, kind of what's the driving passion?
I think I heard it in your voice just a second ago, but how would you. How would you kind of summarize that to folks that may listen to this recording 100 years from now? Yeah, that is true. That's possible today. God gave me a mantra that actually helped tremendously sell a lot of the McGraw-Hill books, and it's based on a lot of research, but.
Really on his word, the dream needs to be stronger than the struggle. Oh. And it's been put on t-shirts. It's been in many of my books. But the dream needs to be stronger than the struggle.
And my friends. We need to have mature dreams. And we need to know the difference between what's noble and what's ignoble, or what's evil and what's good. And so that would be my challenge. I got a call a few years ago.
Michelle Obama had just been to London. And she just happened to visit a school, and I think right next to that school is where the three ISIS brides were taken. three three high school kids left to become ISIS brides. Horrendous. And this the country was obviously in an uproar.
And so they passed from Parliament. Yeah. They passed a rule that In the one Bible credit that was required in all schools, that they had to teach, it was on one religion credit. They had to teach that ISIS was evil.
So they called me Lat Blaylock over RE Today. It's a curriculum company for teachers of all the schools in England. And they asked if they could use my research if I'd write an article that could help them do that. And And and it's it's a very simple process where you have the students read many different historical accounts or novels and they do a self-rating of what's noble and what's ignoble. And have them go through that.
And, you know, in the end. There's some outliers of people that don't take it, but very few. They're the same moral They line up morally with the Bible. If students are Uh are are Clear-headed, just what they're reading, and they start looking at these stories like Elie Weisel. If you read night.
I mean, how could you read that and not come to conclusions of what's evil in the killing of Jews? Unlike the. You know the the the podcaster that's on the news today about You know, um Saying it was okay for what happened on October 7th and so forth. You know, I don't remember all the players in that today, but. It's it's either Wrong or not, Michelle Magawaldi.
The one podcast I really like with him, he wrote the book that Changed Your World. And I know Vichelle, he's spoken for us in the museum. But Michelle was on a podcast with Jordan Peterson. It's one of the best podcasts ever with Jordan. Vichelle shares about when he realized he had to stand up against some of the Indian culture.
And he and his wife were in a remote village and they would let children they didn't want die. At the gates of the city, like the Romans, I think, in a pot. And Vichelle Michaeldi said at some point. At some point in no culture To use culturally appropriate is inappropriate. When there are things that are evil, no matter where they happen in the world, and the Bible remains a foundation for that.
So the dream needs to be stronger than the struggle. And I would just encourage you to have mature dreams and know the difference between what is good and what is evil. And the Bible helps us do that. True to the
