What are apologetics? Should the Christian be well versed in apologetics? We will talk about it. Jesus died by crucifixion. His disciples had experiences that they believed were appearances of the risen Jesus.
Because of their belief that he was raised, it is the event. That has turned the world upside down religiously. In fact, a recent book on non-believing Jews and the resurrection, they even acknowledge, not being Christians, that Christianity is a resurrection religion. It was the resurrection that powered the religion, powered the teachings, even to the point. I'll be willing to die.
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 continue their conversation with 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 two of a multi-week series. If you missed last week, you can find it on our website at olivetreeviews.org. In the extended version, Pastor Josh and Can 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. I thought about the way in which other religions have recognized Jesus when I was reading one of Jesus' most significant claims. In John 14, 6. Jesus said, no one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus didn't make room for other religions, other gods, or paths to salvation. He didn't accommodate them in any way. He never even referred to them. While the person of Jesus infiltrated other religious worldviews, none of the gods, prophets, mystics, or leaders of these other systems managed to penetrate the worldview taught by Jesus. The religions of the world made room for Jesus.
But Jesus never budged. This is Part two of Understanding the Times. I'm Ken Michael, along with my co-host, Pastor Josh Schwartz. In this week's episode, we're talking again with Jay Warner Wallace, and we're going to cover the area of apologetics. Should Christians study it?
Should we be equipped? Do we have to give a defense? I'd encourage you, if you missed out last week, tune in to that as well. Jay Warner Wallace. Welcome back to the program.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
So, Jim, in part one, we talked about a lot of things: the eyewitness accounts, Bible prophecy, archaeology. But People try to compare Jesus to other people, and I saw a video that you had where you talked about the similarities between Moses, Joseph, Joshua, David, and Jonah. Maybe talk a little bit about some of those similarities and why they couldn't be God and why Jesus is God. Yeah, well, a lot of this comes back to an objection that when I was a youth pastor years ago, my students would sometimes encounter through movies like Zeitgeist and other movies and make this claim that Jesus is not a real deity. He's just another reinvention of the dying and rising savior that you see in everyone else's mythology.
Jesus is just an updated version of this mythology. And what they'll typically do is they'll cite similarities between Jesus and other ancient, more ancient mythologies that are out there.
Now, it's what's interesting about that, of course, in order to do that, you have to really ignore the true nature of everyone else's gods to nitpick out the things that seem similar to Jesus. But what it does reveal. is something that C.S. Lewis wrote about years ago. Is that all of us as humans, we have an expectation of what God should be?
If you're just thinking about God, you don't know anything about God, and you're just thinking deeply about what God would be like, you'd probably be thinking about his power, all the attributes of God, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence, all of these things that we typically attribute to God's.
Well, that's don't be surprised then. If I created God, that's basically a work of fiction. I'd probably get some of the things accurately because I'm imagining what God would be like.
Well, this is very. Paul knew this on Mars Hill. He stood there on Mars Hill. He said, You people are very religious. I've even got a temple here to the unknown God.
You've been thinking deeply about God, but I'm here to tell you we saw him. We know who God is. And some things we're right about, because all of us as humans can anticipate some things. We know from Romans 1 that some things can be known. You should know there's a God, for example, from just looking at creation.
Psalm 19, you should have looked at the heavens that there's a God, but you've imagined the wrong kind of God. We're here to tell you who he really is. And so, to me, the idea that there would be any similarity between ancient ideas about God. Even if you found a people group right now. that was isolated from culture.
And they've been thinking about is there a God? And if you ask them, well, what do you think God is like? They're going to have some similarities to all the other ideas people have about God. Here's what Jesus does. It turns out all these robust ideas that people have about God.
Well, some I collected what I could consider 15. Common ideas people have about God. And they're represented in some of these ancient mythologies. But no one's got all 15.
Some will have 10, some will have 6, and there are a different 10 or a different 6. But one person comes who contain who actually represents all 15 robust ideas about God. Only one, only one in all the history of all of the ideas about God. Jesus. Jesus has every single claim you might think about the nature of God.
What God does is he comes. And he fits the expectations of everyone who's thinking about God, including the Jews. who, of course, have got several patriarchs. Each of whom have characteristics that, if you were simply to nitpick them, you can make Moses sound a lot like Jesus, you can make David sound a lot like Jesus, you can make Jonah. Joseph sounds a lot like Jesus.
Why? Because you have an expectation that's being developed. Both in non-Jews. And in the Israelites. That is fully met.
And actually exceed your expectations because only Jesus contains all of the expectations of the non-Jews. And all of the imagery. of the Israelite patriarchs. in one person. He meets everyone's expectations.
Praise God. That's amazing to really think through those things that Jesus has proved himself to be who the Bible says he is. And it should blow us away, really, as followers of Jesus, that confirmation of these truths should put us in awe of this great and glorious God who created us and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ is his name.
Now, in last week's program, we dealt with a lot of the nuts and bolts of can we trust the Bible and can we trust the person and the reality of Jesus. We did apologetics, but this week, what I really want to do is explain and help people understand the importance of apologetics.
So, Jim. In this second question, can you simply just answer the question of what are apologetics? Yeah, this is basically just making a case for what it is you believe, being able to defend. Being able to answer questions, like if nothing else. Uh if you've got kids.
They're going to have questions at some point, probably some of the same questions that you had. And did you just at some point ignore your questions?
Now, here's what I'll tell you. We see a movement, we have seen a movement in the last 10 years, off and on, of people who are leaving the church. I think we're seeing right now a a revival of sorts. But but when peop when young people walk away, let me tell you what the statistics show. That shows that people young people walk away not when their questions can't be answered.
by their parents or by their leaders. But when they don't have the liberty to even ask the question. If the environment is such, that that question's out of bounds. We don't ask those kinds of questions. That's when young people for the most part say, okay, then I'm out.
If you're in a household right now where you at least have an open policy about, like, hey, I got questions too. You got, let's find out the answer together. I may not know the answer. You may ask me a question, and I might be like, I don't know how to begin that. I never thought about that.
Yeah, that's a good question. But are you the kind of family? Are you the kind of place where you can ask those kinds of questions and you won't be shouted down or belittled or ignored or told that those questions are out of bounds? And believe it or not, we often will do that. It's like a fight or flight kind of syndrome.
Like the question is: are we so insecure? about what we believe. That we're afraid to look? That we're afraid to seek out an answer because God forbid there's no answer. It turns out this is a defensible, this is defendable.
Here's what I would say to everyone who's listening. Christianity is an evidential worldview from start to finish. There are two forms of evidence, only two forms. There is no such thing as hard evidence. When someone says, Do you have any hard evidence for Christianity?
I always say no, because there's no hard evidence for anything. It's not a category. The only categories are direct and indirect evidence. That's it. There's no third category.
That's it. Direct evidence is simply eyewitness accounts. Indirect evidence is everything else. DNA, indirect evidence. Fingerprints, that's indirect evidence.
Ballistics, material evidence, that's all indirect evidence. If it's not an eyewitness account, it falls in the second category.
Now that second category is also called circumstantial evidence, and that's why I think it's got a pejorative people think, oh, it's just circumstantial. No, no, no, no, no. Do you consider DNA evidence to be good evidence? Yeah, you do. It's circumstantial evidence.
You realize that, right? It's in that category.
So, here's what I would say. Christianity has always been a worldview that has been driven by both direct and indirect evidence. Its leader, Jesus of Nazareth was a committed evidentialist. How do I know this? Because he said it over and over again.
He said, You know, there's a witness here, John the Baptist, he can tell you. What's he doing? He's pointing to direct evidence. When John the Baptist then has Literati's in custody and he sends his own disciples to Jesus. It says, Jesus, John wants to know.
Are you the one? How does Jesus respond? Remember, I always ask the question: what's the question? And then, how are they responding? The question is: John wants to know: are you the one?
Well, John, the one who... Risked his life to tell the Jewish leaders that I was the one. He's now asking me if I'm the one. You tell John that he needs to be praying about this because he knows better. No, that's not what Jesus does.
Jesus does miracles in front of John's disciples and says, go back and tell John what you just saw. What is he doing? indirect evidence. Instead of just saying, trust me, He's demonstrating evidentially that yes, I am still the one. Relax.
I'm going to show you evidentially. That's an evidentialist. He spends 40 days in Acts chapter 1 with the disciples after their resurrection, providing them with many more. Convincing proofs, a word in the Greek that means evidence. John says in his gospel, I'm going to show you all the signs that Jesus did so that you will know he is who he said he was.
This is an evidential worldview. If you haven't been looking at it that way and haven't been thinking about it in terms, well, how do I then defend it evidentially? I think you're kind of missing the point. And I think for young people, it's going to become critical that we are able to help them make a case for what we believe. Yeah, those are excellent points.
So There's overwhelming evidence. I mean, you've looked at it, we've all looked at it, but even with all that evidence, there's still people that don't believe in God.
So, if a young person comes up to you, okay, you want me to believe in God, where do I look?
Well, we'll tell them you look to the Bible.
Well, how can we be so sure that the Bible is absolutely true? What do you tell a young person?
Well, I think first of all what keeps us from believing something is often something that's part of our disposition. There are three reasons why anyone rejected truth claim. I call I call it the three reasons why you would shun. a claim. And I use that word shun, shu n in a kind of a play on words because the first one is rational.
Okay, right. You might have a rational objection. You might say, hey, there's not enough evidence for this. Great.
Now we can talk about why the evidence is good. But that's often not what's driving it. I wish that most objectors were simply rational objectors. I think they cloak their objections in rational language, but it's usually something else that's really lying beneath the surface. either emotional objections.
They've had an experience with Christianity they don't like, an experience with Christians often they don't like. And this is why you'll see often the hypocrisy of Christians is cited as one reason why people reject a claim.
Well, you look, everyone's a hypocrite. That's just the nature of who we are as humans. We are all fallen. We are not born and basically good and ruined by systems and by governments and by families. No, in fact, we are born and innately fallen.
We are the ruiner of governments, systems, and families.
So, emotional objections.
So, don't be surprised that you're going to find hypocrites in the church because you're going to find hypocrites everywhere. That's just who we are.
Okay, so to get ready, if you had to remove and disregard every system of thought involving a hypocrite, there'd be no systems of thought.
So, you just have to be realistic about that. But the third thing. volitional It's a matter of will.
So, often people who reject a claim don't want to look at it at all because it would mean a radical change. and how they are living. How they are thinking? and to what they are bending their knee. everyone worships.
Everyone. Everyone worships. Whether you're a Christian or not, we all worship, and here's what we worship. we either worship the God of the universe or the things he's created. That's it.
Now the things he's created always fall into three categories. I talk about this all the time in my books. The only three reasons why anyone is motivated to do a murder there's only three motives for murder is they are wrapped up in the three things we have a tendency to worship if we don't worship God. Sex, money, power. That's it.
There's no fourth object. People say all the time, well, what about rage and vengeance? And okay, what are you feeling rage over? Why do you feel vengeful? It's over one of those first three things.
It's sex, money, and power. That's it. It's in 1 John 2, by the way. But that's, I learned it working murders, okay?
So, what typically happens here is that we are so in love with something in one of those three categories that we don't want to pay attention to who has given us those good things. We take good things that God has given us and we make them the greatest thing. Volitional resistance is typically because. We don't want to give up something in one of those three categories. But remember, everyone worships.
And by the way, those things are deadly. David Foster Wallace is an author. He's not related to me. And he once said this at a commencement speech. That everyone worships.
The only question is what you worship. If you worship your, you know, your worship money, then you're never going to have enough. You're never going to experience enough. If you worship sex or allure or your sexual prowess or how beautiful you are, then at some point as you age, you're going to be destroyed by your aging process because you worship something you can't hold on to. If you worship power, then you're going to wield power over everyone like a tyrant because it's so important to you.
It turns out if you don't put your worship in the God of everything, And you put your worship in something that he has created. it will eventually destroy you. And so, if you're going, if one worships, everyone worships. The only question is: are you worshiping the right thing? Wow.
And that's why I would say that there's actually a practical advantage. A practical, and that should be the case, right? If God is true, if the Bible is true, if Jesus really is God. then it turns out it should describe us the way we really are. And the Bible does.
That we are fallen creatures who are usually led to worship things that are in our sphere. Rather than the God who created those things. And that's why we have to, I think, really recenter our worship. Yeah, Josh, those are great points. And one other thing I want to add is we have to have faith in there also.
It's by grace through faith that we're saved by Jesus. Yeah, and I think let's talk about that though, Josh, for a second, the idea of what faith is.
So, this is what we always tell people. In every criminal trial, I always say this to me: I get the luxury sometimes of helping craft the opening and closing statements because I do it all visually.
Okay, now let me just show you what we typically tell the jurors. We'll tell them: we're going to give you all the evidence you need. I'm going to tell you everything you need to know, but I can't tell you everything that could be known because I don't know everything that could be known. I don't know often why he did it, exactly how, I know that he did it. And I can demonstrate that evidentially, but I can't get into the mind of the killer unless he confesses to me and he hasn't done that yet.
So I'm going to give you an evidence trail that's going to lead you right up to. the point of decision. And there's going to be a gap. The evidence trail is going to point right to him, but it's not going to lead right up to him. There's going to be a gap.
What's in that gap? Your unanswered questions. If you're the kind of person who cannot make a decision when you still have open, unanswered questions, we will not put you on a jury. That is to be, that means you're somebody who thinks it has to be beyond a possible doubt. That's not the standard.
The standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a lower standard. What's in the gap? your unanswered questions. Every juror who makes a decision on a criminal trial comes to the end of the evidence trail and then says, Yeah, I've got enough.
I still have open questions, but I can step across the opening. And render a verdict. The same is true for us as Christians. God is not asking you to take a step of blind faith. No, He's giving you an evidence trail.
Is He going to answer every question you have about Jesus or God? No. Like anything else, you're going to have open questions. There is nothing for which I could not level an open question. The question here is: Do you have enough?
It's pointing right to Jesus. Can you step across the end of the evidence trail and make a decision for Jesus? Yes, you could. You would call that a verdict in a criminal trial. Here, we're going to call that a step of faith.
But is not uninformed. It is desperately informed by the evidence, and that's the way that Jesus wanted it. That's why he provided so much of the both direct and indirect evidence. But that spinal step will be a step across your unanswered questions. And that's where faith comes in.
But it's a forensic faith. It is not a blind faith. No, that's a great explanation. I think it's so important to bring people to that point because all the evidence points to Jesus.
Now, what are you going to do with him? How are you going to follow him faithfully and believe that he is who he's proved himself to be?
Now, I think that that's why, as we've talked about, apologetics are so important. These are defensible things that the reality of the scriptures are all defensible. They are all things that we can know, that we can see, and that point to the reality of Jesus himself. Thank you so much, Jim, for all of that explanation. How can I use apologetics to witness?
Well, first of all, we need to understand what the word apologetics means. In 1 Peter 3.15, We read in God's Word that we all should be prepared to give an answer or defense. To everyone who asks us for the reason of the hope that is within us, with meekness and fear, in other words, with gentleness. But answer or defense is translated from the Greek word apologia, from which we get a word apologetics, which means to give a logical reason defense of the faith. In other words, we should always be ready to give answers to people when they question us about our faith.
We should be able to defend the Christian faith. You know, as an analogy, I like to use... the event of Jesus coming to the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus came to the tomb of Lazarus. Lazarus was dead, and he said to people there, You roll the stone away.
Now, Jesus could have rolled the stone away. But What humans can do, he gets humans to do. Your responsibility is to roll the stone away. They roll the stone away. But what humans couldn't do, Jesus did.
He raised them from the dead. You're listening to Understanding the Times. Our guest today is Jay Warner Wallace. And make sure you check out our website at olivetreeviews.org. You can watch this podcast and listen to this program for free.
Also check us out on Spotify, OnePlace, and Apple.
So, Jim. We're talking about apologetics. We're continuing our conversation. How do apologetics strengthen our faith in Jesus?
Well, I try to use an analogy that will hopefully be helpful to anyone who hears it. When you've worked in homicides in Los Angeles County, at least in our agency, I also Pressed into service to work officer-involved shootings, OISs.
So I've got this officer-involved shooting one day, and I go in, and of course, you're there to interview the officers who are involved in the shooting. And I get there, and this guy tells me his story. He was working patrol. And he pulls over a drunk driver and he gets the drunk driver out of the car because he's clearly, you can smell the alcohol, he's clearly drunk the way he was driving. But when he gets him out of the car, he realizes, ah, this guy looks a little like I'm a little bit concerned for my own safety.
I want to do a Pat Mount search. before I do the FST, the field sobriety test.
So he asked the guy to turn away from him.
Now, this guy, he was right to be concerned because this guy was a parolee. He had a gun in his waistband. And back in those days, if you were parolee with a gun, you would do a year in state prison just for having the gun.
So, this guy just made a decision that night. He was like, huh, should I go to jail for having this gun? He's going to find it if he does a pat-down search. Or should I just kill this officer? And he decided that night he was going to kill the officer.
So he turned around and he pointed the gun right at the officer. The officer's only maybe five feet away.
Now, this officer, interestingly, had been used on our department to select the newest ballistic vest. that we were all going to wear on patrol. He had to interview a bunch of different companies who made ballistic vests, and he had to test them in the range. And the vest he was wearing that night was the new ballistic vest that he had tested in the range. He had seen it stop bullets in the range because they had shot at the vest, and he could see that the vest could stop bullets.
So now he finds himself face to face with the guy who's got the drop on him. He's got the gun out, facing it, and pointing it at the officer who just thinks he's going to do a field sobriety test. And he's like, what do I do here?
Now clearly I'm interviewing him, so he's going to survive this shooting, okay? but he says i thought to myself i don't have time i can't do a takeaway I just decided to. tense up my stomach muscles because I knew I was wearing this new vest. and just take the first round while I get my gun out.
So rather than jump to the side, try to jump behind the car, try to tackle this guy, he just decided to trust the vest. Hmm.
Now he survived it.
Now what's interesting about this Is that what, first of all? In that moment, He moved from what I call belief that to believe in.
Okay. He believed that the vest could save his life. But in that moment, he was determined to trust it. He moved from belief that to belief in in a millisecond. What caused him to do that?
Well, evidential certainty. He had seen the bullet. Yeah, seen the best. Stop bullets. And because he had seen the best stop bullets, He had faith in it.
He could trust it. The more you know, that something is evidentially true. the more you are willing to stand in it in a gunfight. Basically. And so, why is it important for us to know what the evidence is here and to actually master it?
If not, if you're nobody else, if nobody ever asks you, why do you believe it's true? You ought to know. With evidential certainty is true. Why? Because.
Something in life is coming that is going to be your your gunfight. It might be cancer diagnosis. It might be. Kids who are walking away from the faith. It might, who knows what it'll be.
We're in a culture right now that seems like it's coming loose on both ends.
So a time is coming when you're going to have to have evidential certainty that this is true so that you can not so much, you might hold on to your faith, but you will respond differently. You will respond with a certain level of calm. and certainty. If your faith is grounded in the evidence rather than Faith without evidence. There's two kinds of faith here.
Right, there's actually three kinds of belief: one that is without any evidence at all. Right? One that is despite evidence to the contrary, you don't want either one of those. You want the one that's based on the evidence, but still requires a step. That's what this guy had.
I'm telling you, evidence matters because it changes the way we respond to the world around us. Wow, that's a great analogy. Exactly. And it reminds me of the scriptures. It points me right back to Romans chapter 8, where Jesus is who he says to be, he is our Savior.
And Paul's conclusion, after he explains how great a salvation Jesus has purchased for us, is this: in Romans 8, verse 31 and following, he says, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
It is God who justifies. Who's to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. And then he goes into how nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That is the reality.
That is the evidence. When we hit hard parts in our life, are we going to know God's word and trust in it fully and completely as true?
So, thank you for bringing that illustration forth. That is so important for us.
Well, Josh, think about this for a second. God could have used Paul by simply having someone like Peter. Preach the gospel to him like Cornelius, right? And then Paul would have said, okay, great. And then Paul would have gone on to change.
You know why Paul went on to change the world? And what he suffered, he talks about this and how many things he suffered, right? In order to preach the gospel.
Well, because he had evidential certainty. He saw Jesus. on the road to Damascus. It changed everything. And when you have evidential certainty, you know, okay, where am I going to go?
There isn't Christ. Is what gave that bold certainty to all of the disciples who then changed the world.
Now, did he have to do it that way? No. Do I think that the disciples would have had the certain? No, I don't think they would have. I think what.
Why do any of that? Why spend 40 days with disciples after the resurrection? to show them more convincing proofs. Really? Really, why would you do that?
Because it turns out there's a connection. Jesus knew what they were about to face. You know, while he's doing all those convincing proofs, I'm thinking he's probably saying to himself. I'm sure he's probably telling them, you're all going to die for this, you know. Yeah.
And I'm going to give you enough evidence right now so that won't feel like it's a big ask. Wow. Because it's going to feel like it's a big ask if you don't know it's evidential certainty. But it turns out if you know If you've seen what the other side of death looks like, you won't be afraid of your own. And this is why evidence matters.
That's just a phenomenal argument. Evidence matters because we can know. without a shadow of a doubt that these things are true. This is why I think, friends, that apologetics matter, why we need to be able to give a defense for the things in which we believe, because we believe them. And the truth is, friend, if you are questioning any of this, if you're questioning the historicity, the validity of the scriptures, if you're questioning the existence of Jesus, we beg you.
Simply read what the Bible says, and Jesus will prove himself faithful. He will show you that he is who the Bible explains him to be. This week we've had on with us Jay Warner Wallace. Jim, can you give our listeners just some information on how they can follow you and get in touch with you? Yep, you can find all of our work at coldcasechristianity.com.
We've got a lot of free materials there, so that's where you can find me. You're watching Understanding the Times. I'm Ken Michael, along with my co-host, Pastor Josh Schwartz. This is the extended version of part two with our interview with Jay Warner Wallace.
So Jim, we talked a little bit about this in the first part of the program, but maybe give us three or four or five key points about apologetics that all Christians have to know. You know, I think, first of all, it's our duty. It's our duty. We were all called to be Christian case makers. If you've been living your life as a Christian, but you haven't yet taken a step to be able to defend it, you're living an abbreviated Christian life.
Look, Paul says that some of us are called to be pastors, some of us are called to be evangelists, some of us, some of us, some of us.
Okay, that means that if you feel like I'm not a very good evangelist, okay.
Some people are called to do that and some people aren't.
So, you can relax a little bit, okay? You have a duty, of course. We want to share the gospel. But if you don't feel like this is really who I am, I'm better at this other thing, I get it. But here's what Peter does not do.
He doesn't say, some of you. Are called to give a reason for the hope you have in Christ.
Now, he says, all of us.
So, this is not an option. This is not one of those things where we say, well, yeah, if I need an apologist, I'll just go get an apologist. I'll read an apologetics book. There are these people out there we call Christian apologists.
Okay, well, that's not a category when Paul's talking about it. There are some pastors and are some evangelists, but all of us are called, according to Peter. To be casemakers, Christian casemakers, to be able to give a reason for the hope you have in Jesus.
So I don't want to live an abbreviated Christian life. I want to live a life that is robust as a Christian. And again, I want to show what my priorities are. I don't want to be able to defend my hobbies. at a higher level than I'm able to defend my God.
I don't want to be able to defend people I love at a higher level. If this is the most look, it's a matter of worship, right? What is worship? It's giving the highest. Claim the highest glory to something above all other things.
Who is worthy of that? It's God. But you know, we are giving away. If I could, I could ask, I think in my own mind, I wrote a chapter in a book called The Truth and True Crime about this, where I talk about 12 ways to measure what you really worship. One of those is simply where you're spending your money, where you spend your thought life.
But what is that angers you? Like, what is the thing that if I say it's going to get you so upset right now? It seems to be politics. There's a lot of cultural, political, worldview stuff that if I make a case, I get.
Sometimes I see people who are Christ followers who are more interested in kind of nichey, non-essential theological issues. That's the stuff they'll fight about. They can defend their one niche theological issue. More than they can defend to a non-believer the entire Christian worldview.
So we can get make idols out of almost anything. We think Calvin is the one who said that we are, by essence, just the best. Idol makers possible. Everyone does it. That's our go-to thing: is rather than put our worship in the God of the universe, we put our worship in the things that He's created.
So, ask yourself, what is it that you can't even question? For example, some things you can't even, if I question this, I'm going to get really upset.
Well, there's your God. Where are you spending your money? There's your God. What are you obsessed about? There's your God.
What do you most look forward to? There's your God. I mean, sometimes you'll say, well, yeah, I look forward to church. But I'm really looking forward to this concert in two weeks. As a matter of fact, there are times when I see people who will skip church to do a sporting event or to do it.
Okay, so clearly, whatever it is that you think you're looking forward to more than anything else, those are your gods. And so we want to be the kind of people who say who speak the truth. If I say that Jesus is my God, then I want to align all those other things.
So it demonstrates that if there, if nobody knew your statements, but they could watch your life and had access to your thought life. They would know who your gods are. And so I want to be consistent in that way. Great points. In fact, Josh and I were talking earlier.
You have people that spend more time planning their vacation than where they're going to spend eternity. Yeah, exactly. And I think we have to understand what the truth of the scriptures are so that we have a deeper love for Jesus and he becomes the one that we worship. And all these other things fade away as temporal and unimportant when we come to the reality of who we're going to spend our eternity with. Yeah, so true.
And that's really the challenge for us. And you can understand why. We are physical beings in a physical environment, so we have a tendency to obsess over physical things. I get it. But this is the whole point of the the natural man.
And the spiritual man. Yes. Where's our focus? Is it on the things of nature or the things of God?
So, I talked about last week where my faith was strengthened because of three things. We talked about Bible prophecy, witnesses, and archaeology as being my foundation. When I saw that, I said, this book has to absolutely be true. There's no way it can't be.
So, as we conclude here. Give our listeners some encouragement. Why is Jesus worthy to be trusted and followed? Yeah, let me just give you a weird... way of looking at this.
We've talked a little bit about the evidence for this. But it turns out there's a kind of a hidden aspect of the evidence. that I think is fascinating. And when secular social scientists study what helps humans to flourish. They come up with principles.
Rules for life.
Well, I've looked at all those rules for life. Fifteen of those rules for life I actually assembled in a book. And what I thought was interesting about them is that they're ancient. These are things that social scientists think we're discovering today. Like we discovered him for the first time.
But it turns out they've been on the pages of Scripture forever. If you read your Bible, you don't need anyone's book on rules for life because it turns out if Christianity is true, It ought to describe us the way we really are. And it does. One example of this. The one human attribute that'll lead to the highest level of human flourishing, if you simply will embrace it, is something that's mysterious.
It has been discovered in the last 35 years of studies. is called humility. But only one worldview advances humility because a worldview that's about doing. simply advances pride because how do you know if you're doing enough compared to him?
So, secularism, which is a worldview of doing, you do this to get the job, you do this to get the degree, you do this to get the promotion, it simply advances pride. But every other religious worldview also is about doing the Ten Commandments, the karma yoga, the eightfold, you know, the four noble eight noble truths, the fourfold path, the five pillars of faith, whatever the, you know, whatever it is. You're having to do it. In order to attain what that spiritual worldview offers as its highest goal. Except for one.
Only one worldview is not a doing worldview. It's a done worldview, and that is what Jesus did for us on the cross. And it's the done worldview that advances humility. Paul says, you are saved by faith. By grace.
It's not of your own doing, he says.
So that no one can boast. It removes the pride issue. This is a worldview that requires humility to start. And then it advances humility as you continue. Because Jesus is the sheerest, is the epitome of an example of humility.
And this is why Paul tells us in Philippians to have this attitude that was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed. In the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something that he wanted to grasp. He humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, Paul says.
Well, that act of humility. is if we would simply embrace the teaching of Christianity, you would thrive because it's the one worldview that advances the attribute that now even secular social scientists say advances human flourishing.
So, if you're somebody who's just very practical, I don't like Christianity, I don't want to be a Christian. You would still be wise to live as though Christianity is true. 'Cause if the bullseye you're trying to hit is human flourishing, Throw that dart because you know where it's going to land you? It's going to land you in the bullseye called Christianity. Christianity is true because it can be demonstrated evidentially.
And it's good. Because it has a positive impact on human flourishing. It's not just true. It's true and beautiful. We ought to advance both of those as Christian case makers.
You're absolutely right. Jay Warner Wallace, Jim, thank you so much for your time the last couple of weeks. Do you have any specific resources for young people, for families, as they help to prepare their children in the act of and the study of apologetics?
Well, and I haven't wanted to say much about this, but look, we're not a 501c3. We're not a ministry in that sense. I'm just a retired detective who started writing books. And the books we've written, we've had a purpose in those. All of the adult books, you know, Cold Case Christianity, Forensic Faith, God's Crime, Scene, Person of Interest, Truth and True Crime, they're written for high schoolers and above.
I think high schoolers are the most important demographic right now in the church. They're the future of the church. If you've got young people, we wrote to that level. But we've also written a graphic novel and three kids' books for 8 to 12 year olds. And you can learn more about those at coldcasechristianity.com.
You'll see a book tab, but I just, I always tell people: look, my goal is not, I have a pension. I live on my pension. It's very simple. I'm not in this because I want to make money from you.
So I would say, exhaust the free stuff that's offered on our website before you ever pay for anything. We've got a ton of free stuff there that I hope will push forward your ability to make a case. And again, that's really the goal. All of us have a duty to be Christian casemakers. It shouldn't just be, I say it this way: you don't need another million-dollar apologist.
You need a million $1 apologists. All of us have to become a $1 apologist. Amen. Jay Werner Wallace, I want to thank you for joining us today. God bless you.
Keep up the good fight, my friend, and we'll talk soon. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Contact us through our website, olivetreeviews.org. That's olivetreeviews.org. Call us Central Time at 763-559-4444. That's 763-559-4444. Yeah.
You get our mail when you write to Olive Tree Ministries in Jan Markell, Box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. That's box 1452, Maple Grove, Minnesota, 55311. All gifts are tax-deductible. Make sure you visit our web store at olivetreeviews.org to purchase Amir Sarfati and Pastor Barry Stagner's new devotional Until He Comes. Tune in to the extended version of this week's program on our website adfree at olivetreeviews.org or on our YouTube and Rumble channels.
The Word of God is trustworthy. We must be willing to give a defense for why we believe. The days are growing dark, but we are to be a light because all things are falling into place. It's all in love. There we go.
Be unto your name Be unto your name.
