Can we trust the Bible? Are the eyewitness accounts of the disciples reliable? Did Jesus even really exist? We will talk about it.
So I used to think as an atheist that the resurrection was a legend and that took a long time to develop in the ancient world. But what I learned is that we have preserved for us a creed of the earliest Christian church. A creed that is an eyewitness-based report of the resurrection of Jesus. Welcome to Understanding the Times Radio with Pastor Josh Schwartz and Ken Michael, brought to you by Olive Tree Ministries, the ministry founded by Jan Markell. In our program, Pastor Josh and Ken talk to J.
Warner Wallace of Cold Case Christianity. He is a cold case detective and follower of Jesus. Who puts the facts and evidence together to show the trustworthiness of the scriptures? This is part one of a multi-week series. Be sure to tune in next week as well.
In the extended version, Pastor Josh and Ken continue the conversation with J. Warner Wallace. You won't want to miss it. If you are listening on radio, you can find the extended version ad-free on our website, olivetreeviews.org. or on our YouTube and Rumble channels.
One thing appears certain. For much of history, Humans have nearly universally believed in gods of one kind or another, inserting these gods into their myths and folklores. At first glance, Many of these gods seem similar to one another. Many share similar backgrounds, similar teaching, and even similar life events.
Some even share characteristics with Jesus. The reason that we believe Christianity is true is because the answer to four questions is yes. How about the first question? Does truth exist? When somebody says there is no truth, you ought to ask that person a question.
You ought to say, Is that true? Question number two: Does God exist? There are several arguments for the existence of God. Let me just give you one. Even atheists today are admitting.
That space, matter, and time had a beginning out of nothing. If Genesis 1:1 is true, every other verse in the Bible is at least possible. Because if there's a being that can create the universe out of nothing, can he do whatever he wants inside the universe? If he can create the whole show out of nothing, of course.
So, the final question, the fourth question, which gets us all the way to the Christian God, is, is the New Testament reliable enough to show us that Jesus rose from the dead? Jesus possessed all 15 divine expectations of non-Jewish cultures. He also personified all the attributes of Israel's ancient leaders. Yeah. If God truly exists and He wanted to make Himself known in a way that would be recognized by humans across the globe, It seemed reasonable that he would meet the expectations of the humans he created.
This is Understanding the Times. I'm Ken Michael along with my co-host Pastor Josh Schwartz.
Well, who is your God and who do you idolize and how do you spend your time, talents, and treasure? And who is the person of Jesus Christ to you personally? We'll find out today from our guest. He's an author and speaker, and he's a senior fellow and columnist at Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He's also the professor of Christian apologetics at Talbot School of Theology.
And this is part one of two parts with our guest today.
So make sure you tune in next week for part two. We'd like to welcome to the program Jay Werner Wallace. Jim, thank you so much for joining us today. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Well, you have a fascinating background, and I'm looking forward to this conversation. For those that don't know you, give us a little brief history of your background.
Well, I was not raised in a Christian setting. I was here in Los Angeles County, born and raised here. My dad was a police officer. I ended up becoming a detective also. And I was probably on the job about eight years when my wife decided, hey, we should probably think about why we consider at least raising our kids with some kind of structured teaching, moral teaching.
And so we went to church for the first time. I remember sitting there and the pastor pitched Jesus in a way that I could catch him. He said that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived. And that really was what started the whole journey for me. I purchased a Bible.
I started reading through the Gospels to see what was so smart about Jesus. And over the years, as an investigator, I began working these cases that were open in our agency. They're just murders that were unsolved. And so those are called cold cases because there's no statute of limitations on a murder. And so we this I had a certain skill set.
Basically, I was working cases where you have a set of reports that are delivered to me for which I have no access to the witnesses. They died years ago. These are 35-year-old cases.
So the witnesses are dead. I've got a report though, what they said. Unfortunately, sometimes the report taker, the detective who took the report back 30 years ago, he's also dead.
So now I have a report in which I have no access to the report writer or to the person who's making the claim. And I have to kind of figure out like what really happened back there.
Well, this is very similar to the Gospels, if you think about it. I have no access to the original eyewitness or the person who's taking the report. Like Luke, who's interviewing all these eyewitnesses, he says, well, I have no access to either of them. How do I determine?
Well, it turns out there's a process. There's a way that we determine if a witness is reliable, and there are jury instructions for this in the state of California.
So I just applied those jury's instructions to the Gospels, and that's really how I determined that these Gospels were reliable. And that kind of started me thinking: well, if they're telling me the truth about Jesus. Might the New Testament be telling me the truth about me? And that's what started me to realize that I was indeed a sinner in need of a savior. And there was a savior who was available to me.
And that's really how I became a Christian. Yeah, that is fascinating. In fact, uh, That was one thing that solidified my faith in Christ. I grew up Catholic, but I was aware of Jesus, but I didn't follow him until I got into the Bible and I realized all the evidence was so overwhelming that I couldn't help but come to faith in Christ. Yeah, and it's fascinating.
The Lord, Jesus Christ is his name. He plays out everything for us through his word. And it's fascinating to me, Jim, that in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, God himself says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God. And we've got all of this information here. And I'm so thankful for you and your ministry and your investigative skills.
And here in this Christmas season, I think it's very important to help people understand just how solid the Bible is, how true it is, and how important it is.
So as we walk through this conversation today, the first thing I really think that would be helpful for you to lay out for us is this. How do we know the Bible is true. Yeah, that was my first question.
So, here's what I was expecting: I was expecting the Bible. to be a series of proverbial claims. things smart things that Jesus said. that um would be uh you know Like Buddha, or like any other wise Baha'u'llah, or any other wise person in the past. I rejected the idea that there was anything supernatural.
In the universe, at all. Sure. I was a philosophical naturalist, very much committed to that everything could be explained with space, time, matter, physics, and chemistry. That's it, you don't need anything else.
Now, the problem, of course, is as I read through the scriptures, I realized that, wow, these are. These are testable, and you test them four ways. Were they written early enough to have been written by eyewitnesses? Can they be corroborated in any small way at all? Three, have they changed their story over time?
And four, do they have a reason to lie to us? That's the way we test eyewitness in criminal trials. That's it.
So, I simply applied that structure to the Gospels.
Now, here's what was my barrier. My barrier is that the Gospels contain accounts of miraculous things. And I would have said, well, that's got to be some fantasy that's added later. I can believe some things about Jesus, but not all the things the New Testament claimed about Jesus, because they claimed some supernatural things. But here was the problem: as a philosophical naturalist, as an atheist, And I was a thought poly atheist.
I didn't accept what is the standard cosmological model for the beginning of the universe called Big Bang cosmology. The idea that everything in the universe, all space, time, and matter, came into existence from nothing. Sure. that there was nothing before the universe. That, by the way, there are multiverse theories.
There are people who are string theorists, but the standard cosmological model accepted by most. Atheists Astrophysicists and cosmologists is still Big Bang cosmology. But here's the problem with it. And I was, by the way, in that camp. But the problem with that, of course, is that there's no spatial void before space.
Space is something, it's not nothing.
So the problem is: if there's a creator of everything, if there's a beginning, that means there has to be a beginner. That's the problem with all of this. And that means that I'm looking for a beginner who is not spatial, temporal, or material, because those are the things he's creating. You can't create yourself. It's creating.
It could be an impersonal force. But there's the problem. I accepted there's something outside of space, time, and matter that is the cause of the universe. I'm already extra-natural. I'm already outside of philosophical naturalism.
I at least have to embrace there is one action, one cause that is outside of space, time, and matter.
Now if that is true Then the biggest miracle in all of scripture is Genesis 1: everything from nothing. Amen. And if there is a being, if it's not an impersonal force, it's an actual personal force. I think there are many good reasons to believe that's the case.
Well, then I at least have to open my eyes to the possibilities of everything in scripture. Those are small potato miracles that Jesus is working in scripture. If he is the same being who snapped everything. Into existence from nothing. That's the big potato miracle.
Okay.
So these small potato miracles, I have to stop and ask myself: why am I allowing this? To be the barrier. If everything else I'm checking the box on seems like this is reliable. Why am I restricting myself? By the way, a lot of atheist thinkers now are trying to figure out that there's got to be an open door to some aspect.
Like, how do we account for mind, this immaterial thing we call the mind? if everything has to be based in space-time matter. Because I can account for my brain, but I can't account for my mind.
So you see, the problem here is we have to allow some space for something outside of space, time, and matter. And if that's the case, I think this opens the door. to the scriptures, why you should read them neutrally. And you should test them. Look, I tested them, I didn't trust them.
I don't trust any eyewitness. When a witness comes to me and says something, I'm like, okay, that's great if it's true. How do I know it's true? I don't want him to be tested for the first time by a defense attorney in front of dateline cameras while we're in trial. I don't want that.
I got to test him myself before I ever put him on the stand.
So, my whole background said: no, test these things. and let's see if they stand up to those four criteria. The problem of course I had was that, yeah, if I just Let go of my bias against anything. outside of space-time and matter. They pass the test.
And I think they would for you too, if you'll simply apply yourself to actually investigate. Don't just accept the claims, investigate the claims. Exactly. And that's what we tell people all the time. You don't have to believe what I'm saying.
Do your own investigation. And when you do, you realize that creation screens the glory of God.
So. You and I were in law enforcement and we interviewed Dozens and hundreds of witnesses. And that was one of the things that I found so fascinating about the Bible. Even though the accounts and stories may be different, they all line up and come to the same conclusion. And we know in 2 Peter that.
The disciples were witnesses to what Jesus did.
So maybe delve into that a little bit more about the eyewitness accounts that really solidify the truth of the Bible. Luke is telling us that he is speaking to the eyewitnesses and servants of the word. He was not present for the life of Jesus. I get that. He was present for the ministry of Paul.
And in the book of Acts, he often slips into first person whenever he's with Paul. But he met while he was hanging out with Paul all of those people who knew Jesus personally. And talking to them, he wrote an account. By the way, that is how every single criminal case is developed. We don't just give a piece of paper to the eyewitness and say, hey, tell us wherever you saw.
No, we actually interview them. And then we, as detectives, write a supplemental report about what the witness says.
So, this is very common in criminal investigations. Same thing happens here. Paul is, I mean, Luke is not an eyewitness of the account, but he interviews those who are and he writes his account. That's why we consider Luke's document to be, to contain an eyewitness account. It's not from Luke, he's just the report writer.
And what we typically do when we listen to anyone, suspect, or witness or victim, whatever. is I take a statement and I'm listening carefully. to the kinds of things this witness or victim or suspect is saying. And I'm testing them forensically using what we call forensic statement analysis. I love using this with suspects, especially.
And we have made many cases from the past. Many cases that were called have been made in front of juries by simply showing the jury. Where, in the statement of the suspect 30 years ago, he gave himself away.
Something similar can be done with the Gospels. And that's what I started to do: to read them forensically. And how you do that is you simply ask the question. Test every word. If Jesus says something, why does he say it that way?
Given all the alternatives that he could have used, why did he take that response? When someone asks a question, Does the person answering answer the question? Or say something different altogether. It has nothing to do with the question. If so, why would they do that?
When people speak, do they use alternative words like adjectives and adverbs? You never need to use an adjective or an adverb. When you do, it tells me something. For example, let me give you an example of this. If I told you this is my black clicker.
I'm telling you something. And you know this by identifying the word that's not needed. It's always an adjective or an adverb.
So, if I told you this is my black clicker, do I really need to tell you that? You can see it's my black clicker.
So, why am I telling you, number one, it's my black clicker?
Well, what's the word that's not needed? It's the adjective black. What I've really told you is I have more than one clicker. And the other one's probably not black. And that's how you can get to deeper truths by simply examining statements forensically.
That's what I was doing. When I was reading through the scriptures, every time I encountered an adjective or an adverb, you circle it, go back to the original language, see what the alternatives might be, and you're going to learn something deeper. And so, this is the way I was testing through the gospels. If you do that, you're going to be stuck with something. you're going to be stuck with a man who came who claimed to be god who worked miracles who rose from the dead Now the only question is, what are you going to do with them?
Yeah. Now, Jim, thank you for working through that.
Now, if you only had, say, two minutes with a person and the question they asked you is, what's the strongest argument for the trustworthiness of the Bible? What would you say? There is, let's put it this way. If if you were a skeptic, And there were no miracle accounts in the Gospels. These were just four accounts of an ancient preaching rabbi.
who is very smart and said some amazing things. Nobody on planet Earth would doubt the historicity of Jesus because no one has been more documented. Than Jesus of Nazareth. There is no stronger attestation from the manuscript evidence for any ancient in the history of ancients as there is for Jesus of Nazareth. The protection of the documents, the transmission of the documents, the sheer number of documents is astounding for any ancient, okay?
But you insert one miracle. in those ancient accounts. And suddenly everyone's like, ah, it can't be true.
Well, what that tells you is that this skepticism has never been about the manuscript evidence. It has always been about a presupposition against supernaturalism. It has always been a bias. a philosophically natural bias. That has kept people from seeing Jesus for who he really is, because the manuscript evidence is overwhelming.
So, just at least be honest about what's keeping us. It's not that, oh, you know, there's just not enough evidence for this. No, it's that you don't like what the evidence shows, and you have a bias against this. Totally get it. But remember.
everyone who is pondering the universe from an atheist perspective Has open questions that cannot be answered by naturalism. How did the universe begin? Why does it appear to be fine-tuned? How does life originate in the universe? Why does life appear to be designed for a purpose?
How do we explain consciousness? How do we explain the free agency that is dependent upon consciousness if the entire universe is predetermined by physical events? How do we explain objective moral truths that govern the universe if there is no personal objective moral truth given? And finally, how do we even account for something we would call evil? If there is no objective standard of good, Of righteousness by which to compare these acts that we want to call evil.
If there's no objective standard, then evil is just a matter of personal opinion. And if you wanted to eliminate all evil in the world, you can simply do it by changing your mind. that doesn't work why because you've got a question that cannot be answered By space, time, and by the way. Physics and chemistry and science could tell you what is, but it could never tell you what ought to be. Those kinds of moral dimensions require a mind and a moral law giver.
Look. You're going to have more questions that are unanswered under your philosophical naturalism than you would if you simply read the Bible and you allowed that bias you have. Just put it down for a minute. Read through the scriptures, see where they lead you. Yeah, those are fascinating points, and I couldn't agree more.
And when you talk about the New Testament eyewitnesses and all that coming together, even though they're not exactly the same, they come to the same conclusion. That's what we find in the Old Testament, too. The Old Testament fits in so well with the New Testament, even though some of most all those events came hundreds of years earlier.
So, my question is, then, Jim, why should Christians be well-versed in apologetics concerning the trustworthiness of the Bible? We all have this problem as humans with idolatry. That we put things in our lives that end up being the most important thing to us, and they often are not God. And if you ask yourself, well, no, I'm a Christian, and so therefore my identity is in Christ, and He is the most important thing to my life. Really?
Well, ask yourself. Is it really the most important thing in your life? I mean, if you wanted me to identify my idols, if you want to know what's really important to me. Ask me to reveal to you all of my receipts after I pay my bills. After I pay for living, what am I spending my discretionary income on?
my disposable income on what am I spending my money on that's going to tell you what I value Two, ask yourself, if you were to go in my head, what am I thinking about? how much time a day is spent on any given topic. But here's another one. What am I most readily able to defend? Probably what matters most to me.
So, for example, if you're watching football last weekend and your team is, I don't know, let's say it's the Los Angeles, say it's the Rams. And you think the Rams are the best team in the NFC West right now. And, you know, they're not undefeated, but you're going to make a case. I can make a 10-point case for why I'm telling you, the Rams are the best team, and they're going to win the Super Bowl. That's going to be my case.
And I'm going to go through these 10 points.
Okay, what am I just revealing to you? I'm revealing to you that the Rams are pretty important to me if I've thought deeply enough about it to make a 10-point case for why they should win the Super Bowl. I mean, really? Yeah, it turns out whatever we can defend is probably revealing to the people we're defending it to. What is our priority?
If you're telling me. That your priority is Jesus of Nazareth, yet you are not prepared to defend in any way. The kinds of complaints that are made against Christianity and against the gospels.
Well, you just told me that and by the way, I know there's probably something else you could defend. There's probably some other area of your life that you're so geeked out about that you can actually make a case for it.
Well, there is your God. It's lying right there at the bullseye of what you can defend.
So, why should we as Christians be able to defend what we believe? Because it reveals what our gods and who our gods are. What prophecies have brought you to the realization that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah?
Well, A lot of religious Jews don't like to hear about this one, but Isaiah 53 is like the king of all prophecies, starting in Isaiah 52. going through Isaiah 53, back in the Biblical days there weren't Chapters. And versus But, you know, Isaiah 52 and 53, where it talks about the servant of the Lord as a singular human being who will be high and lifted up. And those terms in Hebrew are only used for In the book of Isaiah, for God Himself.
So 52 talks about the suffering and glory of the servant. See, my servant will act wisely. He will be raised and lifted up, highly exalted. And those, like I said before, those are the terms that are used specifically for God Himself in the book of Isaiah. And so that's kind of telling right there that the.
You couldn't use that terminology for the people of Israel because at that time the people of Israel were in sin and they were exiled for their transgressions against God. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him. And by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
Each of us has turned our own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way. Is talking about the people of Israel here. Who have gone their own way and turned against God and worship idols.
And the Lord laid on him a separate identity. Yeah, the iniquity of us all. You're listening to Understanding the Times, the program founded by Jan Markell. We'd encourage you to check out our website. That's olivetreeviews.org, olivetreeviews.org.
On our website, you can see all of our previously recorded shows. You can see all of articles that Jan has put forth. And you can also check out our store. And on our store, we have all kinds of different resources that we have hand-selected for you that we think would be extremely important for you to check out.
So please go to our website, olivetreeviews.org. Today, we got with us J. Warner Wallace, and we're continuing our conversation about the. Validity, the historicity, the trustworthiness of the Bible, but I want to dig a little bit deeper. What about the person of Jesus?
Jim. When it comes to Bible prophecy and everything being literally fulfilled, that points to Jesus' first coming. Is there legitimacy in taking God's word? At face value in that?
Well, yeah, a lot of it. Look, I'll just tell you because I was a skeptic. You know, I didn't have any Christians growing up. My parents were not somebody who never took me to church. It was just not part of my life.
So I was 35 years old before I ever opened a Bible. I went and bought my first Bible. It was a Pew Bible. I wasn't going to spend a lot of money on this.
So I spent six or seven dollars to get a Pew Bible. And it started this journey for me. I was not somebody who would have told you that this is something you should embrace without testing. I knew that I wasn't going to come into the system, wasn't going to believe any of this unless I could test it in some way. And I think God honors that.
This is why you'll see in scripture always the use of eyewitnesses. He didn't have to do it that way. He tells Thomas, you know, blessed are those who will believe, but yet have not seen. But how are they going to know about me? Through you, Thomas.
You're the eyewitness that'll go out, and that's called direct evidence, eyewitness testimony.
So, I think you see that God actually encourages this evidential approach.
Now, the person of Jesus matters. Not just that he fulfills prophecy. And by the way, I think it's so fascinating in the Gospel of John what Jesus uses as the first Old Testament prophecies or Old Testament stories that the li he uses Daniel 7 a lot, the Son of Man passage. He uses the Genesis account where the ladder, Jacob's ladder. Right away in the first two chapters.
But then when he meets Nicodemus, he uses Numbers 21, the serpent lifted on the stake. I mean, you'll see over and over again that Jesus also used the Old Testament. Too, because he's the author of the Old Testament who is telling you about his own predictions of his own coming.
Now, I will tell people all the time. And I get this on our web platforms all the time, where people will say, I'm a Christian, but I don't believe that Jesus is God. I don't believe in the Trinity.
Well, the triune nature of God is not an invention of Christianity. trying to make it more difficult for you. It actually solves a problem. The problem it solves is that Jesus is given all of the attributes of God. Yet the Father has all the attributes of God, and so does the Spirit.
all the attributes of God. How do we reconcile all that? And if you want to make a case for the deity of Jesus, that he is God come to us incarnate. Read the first chapter of three books. John chapter one.
Colossians chapter one. Hebrews chapter 1. And you tell me. If Jesus could be he's only two categories of things. Creator created.
John tells us that Jesus is the Creator of all things.
So of the two categories he could fit in. He's not one of the created things. He's the creator of all things. Amen. There's the problem, he's in the creator category.
So, this idea that Jesus, and this is what's so brilliant: is that we know in the Old Testament that no one could stand before God. You would be destroyed in his presence. His holiness is that overpowering. Moses could not look at God. But when Jesus comes, he allows us for the first time to actually look upon God.
Because we can look upon God incarnate. and not be destroyed. And so I think this is an opportunity for all of us. If you're curious, if you're with that boy, what would it be like to look at him? If there is a God, what would it be like to look upon him, to look at him?
What would he look like?
Well, I've got some news for you. He is Jesus. And you can actually, this is why when people say, oh, this is so exclusive, this idea that the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus. Doesn't that seem exclusive?
Well, it's because the claims that Jesus is making are very, very interesting. He's not saying I'm a wise person who can help you get to God. He comes as God. Why would you be surprised that the only way to get to God is through God? Right?
I mean, if you wanted to see Jim, you'd have to be in front of Jim.
So the only way to see Jim is to be standing in front of me. It's not as though Jesus is making a claim that I can show you how to get to Jim. No, he's saying he is. He is the father you're trying to get to.
So, see, he is now. How do we resolve that? That's why, as Christians, we believe that God is triune in nature. And by the way, that triune formulation is helpful because have you ever noticed how relational we are, how important relationships are to us, even atheists, the highest value they would say they have in the world is the value of love. loving others well we know from scripture that god is love it's in first john God is love.
Not that God can love or God creates love. Know that God is love. Can Allah? Be loved? No, he has to learn to love after he creates the first thing he can love.
He doesn't know what it is to love something until he creates something he can love. But our God. Is in a love relationship between the lover, the beloved, and the spirit of love between them from all eternity. You could say about Yahweh. the triune nature of our God, That he is love because he doesn't have to learn how to do it.
He's always done it, he's always been in that relational state, and that's why we created in his image. seek and value the same things. That are part of his nature. That's why the Trinity is not a problem, it's a solution to a problem. That's a great point, Jim.
However, time is failing us. Remember, this is just part one of two interviews. Make sure you tune in next week to join us as we interview Jay Warner Wallace. If you want to hear more of this conversation with Jay Warner Wallace, tune in this weekend on radio and all of our social media platforms. You're watching Understanding the Times, the program founded by Jan Markell.
I'm Ken Michael, along with my co-host, Pastor Josh Schwartz. And in our extended version today, we're interviewing Jay Warner Wallace.
So, Jim, there's three things that I want to cover because they were, it hit me like a sledgehammer when I was reading the Bible. And we talked about that earlier, and that's the witness accounts of Christ. and we talked about a little bit about Bible prophecy. When I realized that all the prophecies up to this time have been fulfilled literally, I was blown away because that's mathematically, scientifically impossible. But what about the extra biblical and archaeological proof for the life of Jesus?
Can you cover that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, I think part of it, when you have somebody who you are taking into custody for something, and they'll kind of give you a little bit of the truth, but not all of it. For example, they'll say, look, I'll say, I know you were in the bank. I have a video of you in the bank. I know you did the robbery.
Well, no, I was in the bank, but I didn't do a robbery. I was just there to make a deposit.
Well, I can see you walking over here and yelling at the teller. And they'll say, well, yeah, but I was just upset because she was so rude to me.
Okay, he has not admitted to doing a bank robbery, but he has put himself in. the actual bank at the time of the robbery doing many of the things that the witnesses said the bank robber did okay great so what those admissions we will use in trial even though they're not a confession we call those reluctant admissions we use those in trial they can help us piece together what happened even according to somebody who says he didn't do a crime he's at least going to reluctantly admit a bunch of things that make him look guilty well the same kind of thing happens in the first century with non-christians who make admissions reluctantly about the nature of jesus while they're trying to deny him And you can look at the writing of Tacitus and Thallus and Marbar Serpayon and And a bunch of other flag on, and you can keep on going with people who are closest to the within 50 to 60 years of the action. who are describing the truth about Christianity, about Jesus. And you can make a list then of all the things that these non-Christian historians and sources that are antagonistic to Jesus will say while trying to deny Jesus.
So when Thallas says, yeah, there was no supernatural earthquake or darkness at the crucifixion. That was simply the result of a solar eclipse.
Okay, well, he's just admitted to us. That he believes there was a Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified on a cross. And at the crucifixion, there was darkness. He's just attributing it to a different, it's not supernatural, he says, it's just a solar eclipse.
Okay, he's just given us several reluctant truths about Jesus. And if you simply can start to reconstruct the reluctant admissions of non-Christians, In the first century, you're gonna find yourself with a lot of data about Jesus that matches what the gospels say about Jesus. And that was one of the things that I'm looking for. Do I expect every detail? No.
Because corroborative evidence doesn't work that way. It doesn't, for example, if I said this guy jumped the counter. And he put his hand right there when he jumped.
Well, I'm going to have a palm print probably of this him jumping the counter. But does that tell me what he was wearing or what he said or if he had a gun? No, it just gives me a small piece. Would I consider that palm print corroborative? Of course.
But it's a touch point corroboration. All corroborative evidence is simply touchpoint corroboration. Corroboration. If you look at the archaeology, if you look at the non-Christian accounts in the first century, you'll see a bunch of this touchpoint evidence that builds a strong cumulative case for the reliability of scripture. Yeah, Josh.
And it's like when the Pharisees realized that Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, they were like, even though they didn't believe he was the Son of God, they said, well, that's a deal breaker. We've got to kill this guy. He's taken over everything we're talking about. Yeah, in essence, he's proving himself to be who he says he is. And that's what we see not only in the scriptures, but now in the extra-biblical evidence and the archaeological evidence.
All of this evidence is culminating to the point of what are you going to do with Jesus? Who is he? And is the Bible true? Has it pointed you to the reality that Jesus is who he's proved himself to be? Jim, thank you so much for this conversation.
I pray that it is a blessing and an encouragement to our listeners and to you. We really appreciate your time this week. Jay Warner Wallace, how can people get in touch with you? Yeah, you can find more information about what we're trying to do at coldcasechristianity.com. We've got everything there that points you, and a ton of free material there.
Thank you so much for joining us today. Make sure you get a hold of us at olivetreeviews.org. You can watch this for free on our website. Jim, thank you so much and God bless you and your ministry. Thanks so much for having me.
Contact us through our website, olivetreeviews.org. That's olivetreeviews.org. Call us Central Time at 763-559-4444. That's 763-559-4444. We get our mail when you write to Olive Tree Ministries in Jan Markell.
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or on our YouTube and Rumble channels. Be sure to tune in next week for part two. The Word of God is trustworthy. We must cling to it because all things are falling into place. There we go.
Be unto your name Be unto your name.
