Ep 977 ｜ Will All Jewish People Be Saved？ ｜ Guest： Dr. Jeremiah Johnston
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Summary
Dr. Jeremiah Johnston is a New Testament scholar, and he equips Christians to love God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. He is an expert in apologetics, and his book, Body of Proof, is a Bible study on the resurrection of Jesus.
Transcript
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What should Christians think about Israel? Where do they fit into God's plan of redemption?
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Why should we pray if God already knows what's going to happen? And how can we trust that the
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accounts that we read in the Gospels are really trustworthy? Dr. Jeremiah Johnston is a New
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Testament scholar, and he equips Christians to love God with all of our hearts, minds,
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souls, and strength. He is an expert in apologetics. We are going to be diving into these questions and
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more on today's episode of Relatable. It's brought to you, of course, by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Go to goodranchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's goodranchers.com. Code Allie.
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Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, thanks so much for joining us again.
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I'm a related bro. I'm so excited to be back on your show, Allie. So thanks for having me.
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Yes. Thank you so much. And last year, we had you here right around Easter to talk about the
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proof of the resurrection. You wrote a book called Body of Proof, and now we have a Bible study called
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A Study on the Resurrection of Jesus. That's right.
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So tell us, I know that we talked about this last year, but just as a recap, why did you write this?
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I wrote this because unfortunately, and I've done a lot of work since I was with you last. And by the
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way, I love being on your show, Allie Beth, because you ask the best questions. And I think your whole
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audience would agree. Like you take us to the deep end of the pool. That's why I'm a related bro. I love
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to watch. And I like the fact that I'm a better Christian thinker when I'm listening to your
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program. So thanks for asking the good questions. I don't have to go into autopilot mentally when I'm
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on your show, which I really enjoy. The resurrection is understudied. It is underpreached. It's
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undertaught. It's underbelieved. Outside of Easter Sunday and funerals, we never hear the
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resurrection taught. And that is not the faith that we see reflected in the New Testament. Every
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sermon in the book of Acts is on the resurrection. 260 chapters in the New Testament, 300 references to
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the resurrection. I'm doing a lot of work with different research groups. And unfortunately,
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only 33% of Gen Z, huge segment of your audience, you know, both millennials and Gen Z, only 33%
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of believers agree that Jesus's resurrection, believers, is a historical fact. So we've got to
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turn the tide on those numbers. So Lifeway approached me with the way in which God used
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the original black body approved book. And here's another kind of delicious detail. You know, when you
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have the author on your show, you get the delicious details behind the book. Lifeway has done Bible
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studies with authors I'm sure your community is familiar with. They said, Jeremiah, in our hundred year
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history, we've never done a Bible study on the resurrection of Jesus. So Allie, they've covered
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all the squishy middle evangelical stuff really well, the secondary stuff. But we're talking about
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the epicenter of Christianity. I said, I'll do it under one condition. We have to go to Jerusalem,
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and I want to take a film crew with me, and I want to film at the 11 resurrection sites of Jesus.
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Jesus made 11 resurrection appearances. We went to Jerusalem. We filmed. So when you get the body
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approved Bible study, there's a code at the back of the Bible study. There's no extra charge.
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It unlocks all 11 episodes. We filmed inside the garden tomb. I filmed inside the church of the
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Holy Sepulcher, Allie Beth. They stopped a line that looked like it was a Disney Rise of the Resistance
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line of people waiting eight to 12 hours and said, you have five minutes to film inside the eticule,
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which is the tomb of Jesus. So it's strengthened my faith. But here's the goal. The more I understand
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about Jesus's resurrection, the more evidence I have for my own future resurrection. I live,
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John 14, 19. Jesus said, because I live, you will live also. And we need that hope today. That's
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why I'm thankful you're having me on for this conversation. Yes. Okay. We actually have a clip
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of you in Israel at one of these sites. It's Saut 1. Let's play that.
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We're in the very spot in Jerusalem, inside the rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
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where Mary encountered the resurrected Christ. Just over my shoulder, there is a tomb,
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but this isn't like any other tomb that we've been studying in Body of Proof, because this tomb
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is venerated with a shrine, an eticule, because it is the place where Jesus physically, bodily rose
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Muslims have the keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Are you aware of that? Because of
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what they call the status quo, Muslims, this certain Muslim family, opens and closes the Church of the
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Holy Sepulcher, which is the most holy site in all of Christianity. By the way, that would never
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happen in the reverse. I don't see Christians unlocking anything at Mecca or Medina or the
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Dome of the Rock, but I digress. So a Muslim man saw the cover of my book, saw I put the Church of
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the Holy Sepulcher on it, and we had permission. This is kind of funny, Allie Beth. Well, I shouldn't
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say funny, but it is to me. I got permission from His Beatitude. That's how He goes. The Theophilus,
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who is the patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, to film somewhere inside the Church.
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But just because I had permission to film inside the Church doesn't mean I can film in the
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resurrection tomb. And to be like, if I came over to your house, you're not going to necessarily let
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me film in your bedroom. Well, the Muslim guy saw the cover of my book, and he's the one that stopped
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the line and said, you guys can go film inside. And outside of Nat Geo that did an archaeology
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video documentary series, I know of no Christian resource that has footage inside the tomb like
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body of proof. I got to preach John 20, and I preached three sermons. It was the greatest
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ministry experience of my life, and it was on a Sunday. I bet. Let's talk a little bit more about
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Israel. I haven't visited Israel, man. I've wanted to. Come with me on my next tour. I know. We need to.
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Let's go. I know. We really do. Let's bring the related bros with us to Israel.
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And the related gals, related bros, related gals doing the Israel trip. That would be amazing.
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Not every Christian understands the significance of Israel, and obviously that's been in the news
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probably more than ever in recent history, at least. So talk to us a little bit more about the
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biblical significance of Israel, why Christians need to care about it.
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We care about Israel because our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is still a Jewish man. We follow a
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Jewish Savior. And so if we care about Jesus, we should care about Jews. We should care about Israel.
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That's going to be controversial for some people. I've actually had some conversations with people
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recently who want to even contest the fact that Jesus ever was a Jewish man, believe it or not.
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Yeah. And that's just fake news. Jesus is a Jewish man. He is born in the line of Judah. This is one of
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the best established facts of the ancient world. I would say it this way, Allie Beth, if we can't
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believe Jesus is a Jew, don't bother believing anything from history at all. Jesus' death by Roman
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crucifixion, his life, his burial, his death. We can build these facts, which we have about 60 to 65
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facts historically within 100 years of the life of Jesus before I ever opened my Bible. So I'm not just
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waving my Bible around on your program. I'm appealing to Roman historians like Tacitus,
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Suetonius, Lucian, other artifactual remains. Here's a cool one. Did you know that Jesus' name
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is known to have power in his lifetime? Of course, we see this in the Gospels because remember his
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disciples come to him, and I love this, Allie Beth, because you're constantly quoting scripture,
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unlike the other shows. You actually quote scripture on your show. Remember Jesus' disciples said,
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Master, people are casting out demons in your name. Should we stop them? And Jesus said,
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no, let them use my name. And we just, because of our historical distance, cannot overemphasize and
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even understand how important it is, they're using Jesus' name for miracles and for exorcisms
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while Jesus is alive. So if he's not a Jew, then why are Jewish exorcists using his name? And why do
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we have artifacts, even curses, that they might not know the Gospel, but they knew there was power
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with this name Jesus? I mean, we read the genealogy of Jesus in the book of Matthew. We know that he's
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from the line of David. Which are historical documents. Right. And so I don't know, there's
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probably something a little sinister behind any motivations to deny. Well, there's anti-Semitism,
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and it's been around, sadly, for a long time. You actually have a coin that I gave to you,
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if you don't mind holding up the bronze coin, which is the larger one. Allie Beth, I want to just make
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sure our audience knows, Palestine is a word that Hadrian, the Roman emperor in the second century,
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renamed the land of Israel as. I never use the word Palestine when I talk about the land of Israel.
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After the third, which was a bloody Jewish revolt under Simon Bar Kokhba, that's 132 to 135 AD,
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if you're following along with us, Hadrian lost so many in the Roman legions at the hands of the Jews,
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he renames Jerusalem to Alia Capitolina, which is called essentially the capital of Jupiter. And that
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bronze coin, which is very rare, was in circulation in the second century. We didn't have social media in
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the second century. So if you wanted to know what was going on, you looked at your coins. Who won the
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battle? Who was in charge? And we know from that coin that Hadrian renames the city, so it's no longer
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Jerusalem, and he renames the region Palestine. So that is a pejorative term. I never refer to Israel
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Right. And you said that when you were flying there, you noticed that, and I think we have a
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picture of it, that they don't even, the airlines don't even put Israel.
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The anti-Semitism on some of American Airlines' one-world partners is something I want to call out.
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It concerns me. I love American Airlines. I'm an executive platinum. I ride the American
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airline systems to speak. I'm on Qatari Airlines, a one-world partner. And you know how you're sitting,
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you're bored out of your mind, and all you can do is sit and look at the map in front of you?
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And I kind of like jostled. I said, wait a minute. It says we're flying over the Palestinian
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territories. And if you look at this image, it doesn't even say the land of Israel, as if
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Israel doesn't even even exist. And there's over a hundred airlines.
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From the river to the sea. That's what the Palestinian activists say. From the river to
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They won't stop until that happens. So we see that anti-Semitism creeping in. And this is why,
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back to your original question, every believer in Jesus Christ should support Israel. Does that
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mean I agree with everything in the modern state of Israel? Absolutely not. I don't agree with
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everything in the modern United States government, do we? We certainly don't. But I do support the
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Jewish right to exist. The Christian worldview, and again, you teach us how to have a Christian
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worldview, would stand against any kind of systematic oppression or genocide. Ali Beth,
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I wrote a book on Islam a few years back. Do you remember when ISIS was killing
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all the Yazidis? Do you remember that back when ISIS was really, really doing their bloody
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murders? They were killing this group called the Yazidis. And even in that time, I stood up and said,
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this is wrong. We don't agree with any worldview that exterminates other people groups. So I'm not being
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inconsistent. I'm being consistent. And so God loves Israel. Our Savior is Jewish. The Bible says in
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Romans 9 through 11, eventually all Israel will be saved. Now that doesn't mean they get saved in a
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way that we, in a different way than we get saved. Anyone who gets saved has to repent of their sins
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and place their faith in Yeshua, Messiah, Jesus. Now in my Jewish evangelism, I've actually been taught
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by some Messianic rabbis, I should always say Yeshua, Jesus, Jesus the Messiah. Faith in Yeshua,
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Jesus is the only way for Jews to be saved. And so I'm not talking about a different path or way or
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mechanism of salvation. But when we study Romans 9 through 11 seriously, we cannot be anti-Semitic.
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We would never come to the conclusion that the Church has replaced Israel, that somehow God has
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turned His back on Israel. The promises of God in Romans 9 through 11 are irrevocable. I love that
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passage. He literally says the gifts and the promises of God are without repentance. God doesn't
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forget. He doesn't turn His back on His Word. And this is why Paul said, look, if all Israel—but it's
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a mystery. Paul said, if all Israel could be saved, I myself would be accursed if they could. There's
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always going to be a remnant. And so Romans 9 through 11 is Paul's theology of salvation for the
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nations with the Jew first, there'll be a hardening, and then a return to Christ.
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So I have some questions about that. I was just—I mentioned Romans 9 through 11 just the other day
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when we were talking about the whole Christ is king controversy.
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And thank you. And what God thinks of Israel, and certainly Romans 9 through 11,
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they're not for the faint of heart. There is so much there. I mean, you could spend your entire life
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studying these passages and understanding what they mean. And so I have questions. I have questions
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about that. So Paul says that not all Israel is Israel, but it has always been by faith that
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salvation has come to the Jews, that salvation has come to anyone. And so when you say all Israel is
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going to be saved versus Paul saying that there is going to be a remnant that is going to be saved by
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grace through faith, what exactly does that mean? Is there a difference? Is there a difference there,
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Right. And this is—that is such a great question. Again, thank you for asking the really good
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When Paul says—and by the way, Jeremiah didn't say it. St. Paul did. All Israel will be saved. It's in
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that wonderful book of Romans. It's almost as if Paul's saying, for God so loved the nations. And remember,
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when I—this is a great hermeneutical method. When I do exegesis,
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Allie Beth, it's so important that I never lift a passage or two out of its context. I read it within
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its context. To be a heretic—and I like that you call out the heretics—all I need is the Bible in
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no context or Jesus in no context, and then I become a heretic. Unfortunately, it happens every
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Sunday in a lot of churches. When people do free fall Bible study, let me tell you what it feels and
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means to me. But when you read it in context—and again, this is a whole show we need to do at some
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point to unpack. But the spiritual hardening that Paul is in a quandary about and that he is
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living in that tension is, is both partial and temporary. It's almost, he says, it's almost like
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Paul saying, for God so loved the nations that He chose Israel to be His instrument that both Jew
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and Gentile might come to the knowledge of His Son. And he points out that the current hardening of
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Israel is partial, so there's still a believing remnant, and it's temporary. Someday in the
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future, Paul believes all Israel will be saved through faith in the Messiah.
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And that's Romans 11, 26. And in this way, all Israel will be saved. As it is written,
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the Deliverer will come from Zion. He will banish the ungodliness from Jacob. People can read the
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entire chapter to see that context, but that's what you are referencing. Okay, I so appreciate you
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explaining that distinction, because I could see how someone like me would read those chapters and
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say, okay, well, I'm a little confused about the remnant versus all of Israel. So that makes a lot
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of sense. And talk a little bit more about this, what people refer to as replacement theology versus
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what you've said, that the church does not replace Israel. Because again, I could see just by reading
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these few chapters how it almost seems like Paul is saying two different things. On the one hand,
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he says, look, we've got these original branches that have been cut off, and then you've got new
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branches grafted on. But then it also seems like he's saying, well, both Israel and these Gentiles
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are going to be saved through Christ. And so, yeah, I don't know, parse that out for me,
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help me understand. And we're doing this fast. First, the lostness of the Jews is the same. It's
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a universal condition. That's Romans 3.23. Second, God has always restricted his mercy,
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Alibeth, and his compassion to those whom he chooses. God chooses whom he chooses. That's Romans
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9.6-29. Third, they are culpable, for though they heard and understood the good news, they've rejected
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God's righteousness, which comes by faith, and they've sought their own righteousness instead.
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This is what Paul says, which is based upon performance. If you're following at home,
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that's Romans 9, verses 30-33, chapter 10, verse 3. The fourth and final reason for Israel's
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unbelief is the spiritual blindness and hardness that Paul mentions in Romans 9.18, which he deals
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with more fully, as you say, in Romans 11.7-10. In the midst of all of this unbelief,
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God still stands with outstretched arms, longing for the day that all Israel will return to him.
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That's the book of Romans. That's theology in a nutshell from Romans 9-11.
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So obviously, any attitude of the Christian of, like, arrogance towards Jews or hatred towards
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Jews, I mean, it really is just completely incongruent with what we see in God's word. Our
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attitude should really be more like Paul's, just eagerness, earnestness for them to know Christ,
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Yes, and to preach the gospel to them, to share the gospel of Messiah Jesus. When you're in a
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Jewish community, pray in the name of Yeshua Jesus. I've really learned this. I've been doing
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so much ministry since I returned from filming Body of Proof in Jerusalem around the modern state
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of Israel, around God's plan for Israel, and I've learned so much. And I've been heartened by the
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fact that there is still a remnant of believing Jews, and they're strong in the Lord. They're
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strong in the faith. And so never forget, Jesus is a Jew. He's still a Jew. He didn't cease becoming
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a Jew. In the resurrection, we follow a Jewish Savior who is both fully God and fully man. So you
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better believe I'm going to love the Jewish people.
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Yes. Yes and amen. Yes and amen. I think some people also make the mistake on the other end of it to
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read something like Romans 11-26 that says, all Israel will be saved, and think, well,
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I don't need to share the gospel with them. God's got that. They're fine. But that's not
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the means through which God has ordained, or that while sharing the gospel is the means
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through which God has ordained that people come to know Him.
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That's exactly right. And that's why Jesus even had to preach the gospel when He did His descent
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into hell. We see the gospel is always being preached. It is always through faith in the Messiah
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that we are saved. The mode of salvation has never changed from Genesis 3 to now. And I think that's
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a very important point that we need to herald as careful Christian thinkers, and we need to take the
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opportunity to be conversant on these issues. We need to make sure we read the Bible. We don't let
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other, you know, learn from everyone, but don't let anyone think for you. Be a good Bible-based
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Christian. Form your worldview from what the Scripture actually says.
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Yes, and amen. All right. Let's talk about the Scriptures and the reliability of the Scriptures,
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because I got some questions from my relatable audience on Instagram, and a lot of them were
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very fundamental questions. Great questions, though. Questions that I think a lot of people,
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even those who grew up in the church, really didn't get answers. It was just because we said so,
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because this is what your parents believed, this is what you were taught at Sunday school,
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which might work for a period of time when you're young, but as you grow up, you graduate from the
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milk, and you need spiritual meat. You need the answers to these questions. So let's go to the
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beginning, kind of, at least when it comes to the Scriptures that we rely on. Can you tell us why we
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should rely on these 66 books of the Bible? Why not the other books, like the Book of Thomas,
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or the Apocrypha? Why do we have this canon, and why should we trust it?
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Now, you may not be aware, but I have a PhD, so that means I know a lot about a little. And my area
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of specialty, Allie Beth, that I know a lot about the little N, is the second century, what some kind
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of call apocryphal, what I call the extra-canonical gospel. So my area of specialty is actually all those
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books that didn't make it into the canon. I spent three years of my life reading them. So here's a
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A lot of Catholic friends, both in the room, and who listen to this. So I'm excited about this.
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Yes. And I want to make a distinction. There's the Catholic Apocrypha, which is, depending on
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how you count them, 11, 12, maybe 13 books that are intertestamental books. These books are
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excellent books. You should read them. You heard it right. You should read them. They're excellent
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books. Jerome included them in the Latin Vulgate. You know, Jerome put together what became the Bible
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of a thousand years, the Latin Vulgate. He did it in the grotto of the Church of the Nativity in
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Bethlehem. He had a benefactor by the name of Paula, who literally wrote the checks for his ministry,
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so he could continue to do his work. When Jerome includes the intertestamental apocrypha, which is
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different from the Jewish pseudepigrapha, and even more different from the New Testament apocrypha,
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okay? So this is why these distinctions are important. He includes these books. He says
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they're helpful, but not sacred. It's likely that Jesus would have read all of the, what we call the
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Catholic Apocrypha. These are books like 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees. Allie-Beth, these are super
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inspirational texts if you're a Jew in late Second Temple Judaism with the Roman occupiers at hand.
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Exactly. Inspirational, not inspired. So they were included. This might turn some people's
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heads around if you're a KJV-only kind of Christian. The Apocrypha is actually included
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in the original King James Bible. Let's transition now to the 2nd century Gospels, like Thomas. You
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just asked about the Gospel of Peter. These texts, the first thing I share with my students, and always
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pastorally, but have you actually read them before you ask me why they're not included in the library
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called the Bible? That's what the Bible is. The Bible is a library of 66 books. Have you actually
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read any of the quote-unquote Gospels? And I say that with a little g, lowercase g. Have you actually
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read them? Because the Gospel of Peter, which is late 2nd century, it's written in Greek. We only have
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one copy of it. It's been lost. It's called P. Cairo 10759. It was lost in the Cairo Museum. Some believe
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this was the first Gospel, Ali Beth. And here's some of the features. Jesus is a giant, so he's
00:22:51.740
like a member of the Avengers team. He's like the Hulk when he comes out of the tomb. The cross
00:22:55.960
follows him out of the tomb. The cross talks. There's polymorphic Christology and polymorphic
00:23:01.080
angelology. What does that mean? That's kind of a weird big word. It means Christ gets bigger and
00:23:05.320
bigger, and he's even taller than the clouds. You actually have Jews that are spending the night
00:23:11.160
in a cemetery waiting to see what happens at the resurrection tomb. You can see immediately this
00:23:15.320
was a very unsophisticated author who knows nothing of the land of Israel, knows nothing of Jewish
00:23:20.940
customs, and yet the liberals, the skeptical scholars—these are groups that come out of
00:23:26.140
Helmut Kester School at Harvard Divinity College. I wouldn't send my dog to go to school there. I'm
00:23:30.640
sorry to say that on your show, but I'm not sorry, not sorry—they think these reveal something
00:23:35.960
of the historical Jesus. They don't. They are wonderful windows into 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th century
00:23:42.300
Christian communities, but just because they say the Gospel of Thomas, they're not written by Thomas,
00:23:47.900
or the Gospel of Peter, they're not written by Peter. So have you actually read them? Why do we
00:23:53.260
have the Gospels in the Bible, the big G Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Because they exhibit
00:24:00.060
what's called verisimilitude. That's a really cool word. I want your audience to get to know.
00:24:04.600
Veritas, Latin—you've said that word on your show—similitude. It's very similar. How do we
00:24:10.120
know what truth is? Truth corresponds to reality. So when I open up Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
00:24:15.040
everything I read about it from the geographical nature, the names, the places, it's all accurate.
00:24:20.880
Here's a cool thing, Ali Beth. I would summarize it this way. When you go to the land of Israel,
00:24:25.880
there's about 100 archaeological digs. These digs only happen twice a year because you recruit college
00:24:31.460
students who come at their own expense to volunteer. These are very expensive digs,
00:24:36.020
okay? Like, you've got to make sure you're digging in the right spot. And so there I am at one of these
00:24:40.080
digs. And most of the digs are sponsored by secular organizations, so there's no Christian bias. In fact,
00:24:46.480
there's a bias to not believe in the Bible. And yet, I began to notice that the archaeologists,
00:24:52.740
who are Jewish, agnostic, leaning towards atheists, they use six books to make sure they're digging in
00:24:58.360
the right spot. You may have heard of some of these six books. Are you ready for these? Matthew, Mark,
00:25:05.160
Luke, John, the Book of Acts, and Flavius Josephus. So if they're not reliable, why in the world are
00:25:12.640
Jewish atheist archaeologists using them to make sure that they're digging in the right spot because
00:25:18.320
they exhibit verisimilitude with Jesus and Judaica? In other words, they are reliable historical sources.
00:25:25.080
Wow. And as for the canon, can you tell us a little bit about the history?
00:25:33.140
I promise I'll answer shorter from now on. I know you've got a lot of questions.
00:25:36.040
I do have a lot of questions. That's okay. That's okay. As long as it takes to answer it
00:25:40.320
thoroughly, that's fine. But the 66 books of the Bible, can you tell us a little bit about the
00:25:45.300
process of how those were created and why not just the Gospels, but the New Testament was decided
00:25:52.220
to be inspired by God? Yeah. Constantine did not choose the books of the Bible. Let's be very clear
00:25:57.400
about that. People later didn't say Jesus was God. Again, I'm a historian. So right now,
00:26:03.640
Allie Beth and I are not getting in some kind of religious trance, as far as I know. We're just
00:26:07.560
doing history. We're talking like two clear-thinking people. We're not doing this based on emotion or
00:26:13.200
feeling. If I want to know something of history, I want early eyewitness tradition. I want to get as
00:26:19.120
close to the event as I can, and I want to find artifactual remains. Allie, I used to live in
00:26:23.700
Franklin, Tennessee. Battle of Franklin takes place in Tennessee. Five Confederate generals. It's
00:26:29.140
the bloodiest five hours of the Civil War, okay? And guess what we have? We have artifacts all over it.
00:26:34.240
We have musket balls. We have letters. We have uniforms. We have all kinds of artifacts that help
00:26:40.060
us understand about the Battle of Franklin. What do we have when we open up the Gospels? The very same
00:26:44.440
thing. Within 50 years, we have letters that are circulating. Remember, the letters of Paul
00:26:49.600
antedate. They predate the Gospels. We have Thessalonians. It's probably the first book written
00:26:56.180
in the New Testament, probably in the 40s. I read a peer-reviewed article this week, the time that we're
00:27:01.760
recording Holy Week, that Mark might be dated as early as the 40s or 50s. I'm not saying I agree with
00:27:08.160
that, but can you believe that? One of the most authoritative World War II books that's ever been
00:27:13.480
written was published in the 90s by an eyewitness. That's 50 years after World War II, right? Why do
00:27:19.660
we second-guess the books of the Bible? Because we have this hyper-skepticism towards them. And so
00:27:26.900
when you study the 5,800 Greek fragments of the New Testament, as I have—you can go to Mount Athos,
00:27:33.440
by the way. There's a thousand Greek fragments there. You'll see that the Gospels begin traveling
00:27:39.680
together at the earliest stages. You mean we have fragments, Jeremiah, like the Chester Beattie
00:27:44.960
papyrus that are in Dublin, Ireland? You can go see it. Second century, these books are already
00:27:50.680
traveling together. By the way, that's long before Constantine. So again, if I just, as my grandpa
00:27:56.200
taught me, bother to learn these things, we see that we have an embarrassment of riches when we look
00:28:01.580
at the historicity of Jesus. And I often say this, and I say it. That's why I hope you'll encourage
00:28:05.920
people to get my body-approved Bible study, because I really want people to know this.
00:28:09.580
If I can't believe in Jesus of Nazareth from the historical documents that we call the Bible,
00:28:15.200
I shouldn't believe in the Roman Empire. I shouldn't believe in Alexander the Great.
00:28:18.940
Here's a great comparison. Alexander the Great's two primary sources. He's never questioned over here
00:28:24.780
at our state universities. Arian and Plutarch. Allie Beth, they're writing 400 years later,
00:28:31.720
after the fact. What do we have with the witnesses who write about Jesus? We have a hostile witness,
00:28:37.480
Paul, who is killing Christians until the resurrection, and he writes the earliest letters
00:28:55.500
There are a lot of resources out there, too, just talking about the early church, and
00:29:00.340
Polycarp, and Ignatius, and all of the church councils, and the process that they went through
00:29:06.980
to decide upon, through the power of the Holy Spirit, on these 66 books.
00:29:11.740
They were eyewitnesses. They were authoritative. They had the gospel. It's very clear. And this is
00:29:17.080
why we need to know this. And I can't talk to you if you don't accept the Bible as a historical
00:29:22.040
document, because that means you don't know how to do history. We do history of the Bible the same
00:29:26.680
way we do history of any other subject. I don't do Christian history. I do normal history.
00:29:32.820
And is it true, would you agree, that the Bible does not contain any discrepancies or any errors?
00:29:41.280
Because sometimes people will say, well, it's infallible, but not inerrant. Or it's inerrant,
00:29:49.880
They're equivocators. I know I'm going to a liberal church that I need to leave. If my pastor stands up
00:29:56.080
and says the following, I believe the Bible contains the Word of God, but it's not all the
00:30:01.080
Word of God. That's a catchphrase, which, hey, I'm a woke progressive, and that's your cue to get out
00:30:05.940
of that church. Make sure, make no mistake. The Bible is true. It is not only infallible, it is
00:30:13.080
inerrant. So I agree with the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy. Please Google that if you want to know
00:30:18.140
what inerrancy means. It means it's inerrant without error. Now, let me give you a footnote to that
00:30:23.580
answer. Every manuscript that we have before Gutenberg—you can get on a plane right now if
00:30:29.100
you want. It would be fun to do this—and go to Frankfurt, Germany. And right near the Frankfurt
00:30:34.860
airport is the little German town of Mainz, Germany, where the Gutenberg Press is located. Now,
00:30:39.880
Audrey and I made the mistake of going to the German tour. We don't speak German, so that was my bad.
00:30:45.520
But they do have English tours, and we were picking up a little bit, because I know some theological
00:30:50.420
German. Until the invention of the printing press—and let me use an example here—until books
00:30:57.560
came out—we have a nice copy book here, we have my book—until books were printed, no two manuscripts
00:31:04.340
were exactly the same. So what does that mean? If I wrote a letter and I wanted to keep a copy of the
00:31:10.580
letter, I might shorthand a little bit of it to you. If I was writing you a love letter, I might—I'm
00:31:15.520
going to keep a copy of that. In other words, there's more than one copy of the Book of Romans. There's not
00:31:19.600
just one copy of the Book of Romans. Paul didn't write the greatest document ever written, give it
00:31:25.160
to Phoebe to bring to the Church of Rome, and then just, like, not have his own copy, okay? Now, they
00:31:30.680
would be very, very similar, but they might have a few shorthand differences. A difference in a
00:31:36.840
handwritten manuscript is not automatically an error. Allie Beth, if I tell you right now, you're a very
00:31:43.420
smart person, praise God or praise the Lord. Am I making an error if I said God the first time and
00:31:50.280
Lord the second time? If I pray here in a minute in Jesus' name, but then you said, well, he prayed
00:31:56.040
in Christ's name, is there a question of whose name I'm praying in? No. So when you have over
00:32:02.120
500—when you have over 5,800 handwritten copies, pretend this is the Bible, you're going to have
00:32:10.280
some differences in those manuscripts. None of them affect any Bible doctrine. Does that make sense,
00:32:16.900
Not until the invention of the printing press do you have camera-ready copy, as it were,
00:32:22.160
with pages that don't have differences in them. I have a Torah scroll. I'd encourage you to check out
00:32:27.520
my social media because I love having artifacts. I have a Torah scroll that's 1,000 years old. It
00:32:33.940
reflects an 800 to 1,000-year scribal hand, and it was smuggled out of Iraq during the pogroms of
00:32:38.780
Saddam Hussein in a military tire. It has a very interesting provenance. But there's even an error,
00:32:45.580
I say this, a typo in the—my man, the scribe, does four lines of numbers 30 to 33. At the very end,
00:32:53.640
he forgets to write, of the land. And so he literally corrects it on the top, of the land,
00:32:58.840
which would be right to left if you're reading Hebrew. So does that make sense? Does that help people?
00:33:02.520
Yeah, distinction without a difference. There's going to be those things when you are copying a text
00:33:07.900
by hand before there was copy and paste, before you could do the things that you could do after
00:33:12.960
the printing press and, of course, today. Okay, let's move on to a different kind of question.
00:33:17.500
Someone asked, how to explain the Trinity to someone who thinks that that means that Christianity
00:33:27.300
Absolutely. So important. We have to be careful with this. And again, thank you for pointing this
00:33:31.260
out. The Trinity is a fascinating subject. God reveals himself as one what and three who's. One
00:33:38.620
God, one God in essence, who has revealed himself in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in
00:33:45.560
inseparability of operations of the Trinity. My good friend Adonis Vidu, V-I-D-U, has done a
00:33:52.260
phenomenal book on the Trinity, if you just want to geek out on this, on the inseparability of
00:33:56.620
operations. Because as I was growing in the Lord, Allie Beth, I would have really sincere questions.
00:34:01.180
Like, if Jesus does something, does that mean God the Father and the Holy Spirit did it too?
00:34:05.560
If I pray to Jesus, am I also praying to God the Father and the Holy Spirit at the same time? And the
00:34:10.260
answer is yes. What the one does, the other two do automatically. So the Trinity,
00:34:15.260
that's perichorusus, the one indwells the other. We see this from John's gospel very clearly,
00:34:21.560
John 17, I in you, you and me, and then us in Christ. And so the Trinity is a fascinating subject.
00:34:30.220
I think the more you study it, the more wonderful it becomes. If I could explain it to you, though,
00:34:35.680
in five minutes on this show, it would be impossible to do. So I would just encourage you to...
00:34:41.560
So one what, three who's is a great place to start. All analogies eventually break down. Some
00:34:47.860
people use ice, water, different modes of moisture, but they're all the same thing at the same time as
00:34:54.240
well. And just watch out for modalism, watch out for false teachers out there that say, well, he was
00:35:00.440
God the Father in the Old Testament, then he was Jesus, and now he's just the Holy Spirit. There's some
00:35:06.140
very famous preachers who ascribe to that. Watch out as well for the Jesus-only cult movements,
00:35:12.600
oneness Pentecostal. They believe that God is just Jesus right now, like there's nothing else.
00:35:17.680
Again, I allow the Bible to inform my theology. I don't inform the Bible with my theology. And so
00:35:23.520
Scripture constantly refers to one what, that is God, three who's, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
00:35:29.500
They're not divided. They never act indifference with one another, one mind. And listen, that's how
00:35:36.560
God should be. God is, we only know what he's revealed about himself, and that's how it should be.
00:35:42.520
Yeah, it is, of course, can be confusing. But if you go back to something that you said,
00:35:47.640
if we keep this in mind, that Scripture has to interpret Scripture. So we can't read any verse
00:35:53.040
in isolation. When we read, when Jesus says, you know, it's better for you that I go,
00:35:57.520
because the Holy Spirit's going to come, he's going to be your helper. That might seem like,
00:36:01.700
okay, these are two different people doing two different things. Jesus is going there. The
00:36:05.060
Holy Spirit is going there. It is confusing by itself. But you read that in light of John 1,
00:36:10.260
you read that in light of the rest of the New Testament, how in the beginning was the Word,
00:36:14.880
the Word was God, and then the Word came down and dwelt among us. Okay, right there, we at least get
00:36:20.740
some sense of the Trinity. And yes, the Bible doesn't say the word the Trinity. That is the
00:36:27.140
name of the concept, though, that we read. Tertullian said the name Trinity.
00:36:31.000
Yes, that we read it. And there's a lot of things and a lot of terms that we might not read in
00:36:35.420
Scripture, but we see the definition of that in Scripture. So yeah, that was very helpful. But it's
00:36:41.520
okay if you don't fully understand the Trinity. You're going to struggle with it. It's all right,
00:36:44.980
no one really fully understands. We can fully understand how to explain it, but we're finite.
00:36:50.120
God is infinite. We're doing the best that we can.
00:36:52.140
Yeah. And again, I can't emphasize enough, too, that when you pray, you never pray alone. This
00:36:57.100
is a great application of what we're saying. Read Romans 8. The searcher of hearts is who we're
00:37:02.240
praying to. When I pray, the Holy Spirit prays on my behalf with groanings which cannot be uttered.
00:37:07.460
That's Romans 8. Hebrews tells us that when I pray, Jesus is praying as well. And so isn't it great,
00:37:12.460
no matter what I'm going through right now, Allie Beth, no matter what I'm facing, when I pray,
00:37:17.900
I don't pray alone because Jesus prays with me and for me when I pray. The Holy Spirit prays with
00:37:22.360
me and for me when I pray. And God is called the searcher of our hearts. And so when it comes to
00:37:26.380
the Trinity, pay attention to the terms through which God reveals Himself in Scripture. He's not
00:37:32.520
just called God or Lord. He is called Lord 6,000 times in the Bible, but He's also called the
00:37:37.340
searcher of our hearts. Call on the searcher of your heart. Use those same names that
00:37:42.300
appear in Scripture that help us have a better understanding of who God is.
00:37:47.020
Yes. Okay. Speaking of prayer, this is another question that we received. Why do we pray if
00:37:52.620
God is totally sovereign? He already knows what's going to happen. What's the point of us praying?
00:37:58.220
Absolutely. That's a great question. I want to thank the person who asked this, Unrelatable.
00:38:02.820
Well, the point of prayer is to have a relationship with God. Could you imagine being married to your
00:38:07.960
husband and never speaking to him? I couldn't imagine being married to my wife, Audrey, and
00:38:12.480
never talking to her. I want to talk to her all the time. She gets tired of how much I want to talk
00:38:15.720
to her. I want to just talk to her all the time because I love her so much. Prayer is not about
00:38:20.780
me getting things from God, Allie Beth. Prayer is about me communing with God relationally.
00:38:26.340
I'm praying right now while I'm talking to you. I'm asking the Holy Spirit to use me and to let me not
00:38:30.840
forget things, even as I'm talking to you right now. Isn't that the beauty of prayer? Prayer is not about
00:38:35.720
getting things from God. And yes, God is sovereign. Yes, He designed the world in such a way He knew
00:38:42.840
the things we would ask in prayer before we even asked Him. That's what Jesus said. Don't pray like
00:38:47.960
those pagan jabberers. Don't keep saying the same word over and over again. I just preached at
00:38:53.800
Prestonwood Baptist Church not long ago. And I said, would you please stop praying long prayers? Because
00:38:59.220
there's no long prayers in the Bible. Did you know the longest prayer in the Bible takes about three
00:39:03.340
minutes? Most prayers in the Bible are short and to the point. They don't say Father God 50 times.
00:39:10.140
They get to the point. I want to pray short prayers. I want to pray Bible prayers. And I want
00:39:15.420
to pray like that public and God be merciful to me a sinner. Jesus said your Father knows what you need
00:39:20.900
even before you ask Him. So don't feel like you need to pray something over and over again. This
00:39:24.820
doesn't mean that we don't intercede for healing. You know, since I was on your show last year,
00:39:30.200
my dad has been healed of terminal cancer. I was with my dad in a cancer ward where he was given a
00:39:36.840
death sentence. So I believe in the power of collective prayer. But I can tell you a lot of
00:39:41.960
those prayers in the critical cancer ward where, God, I need you now. God, I don't even know what
00:39:48.340
to say. Help. Help. Did you know that's a prayer? So I pray because I love Jesus Christ. I want to be
00:39:55.860
close to Him. He already knows what I'm going to ask. And I think that is just all the more
00:40:00.020
assuring to pray. We shouldn't think about God like we're trying to hail a cab. I know no one
00:40:05.000
does that anymore because of the rideshare apps. But a lot of us feel like we need to call down God
00:40:09.160
like we're trying to signal a taxi to listen to us. God is more eager to hear your prayers than you
00:40:15.100
are to pray. And that's a great assurance to me in prayer today when I pray. He's more eager to hear
00:40:20.780
me than I'm even eager to talk to Him. He never tires of my voice. He never tires of my requests.
00:40:25.460
But let's pray like the Bible. And here's a little thing. I don't like to say amen when I pray during
00:40:29.400
the day because I'm just in a constant conversation with the Lord. And we are to pray without ceasing.
00:40:35.600
And I do think it's cool that God has ordained prayer to be, just like evangelism, a means by
00:40:55.720
which He works. Because we do read in the book of James that the prayer of a righteous person,
00:41:00.640
which of course all Christians are made righteous because of Christ's righteousness,
00:41:05.880
has much power as it is working, which I just love. So prayer actually does something. And maybe
00:41:14.420
we don't ever fully understand how God, who is in the eternal now, so He's not suspended by time the
00:41:20.320
way that we are, and who knows everything that we need before we ask it, and the Holy Spirit is
00:41:25.340
interceding for us. We might not ever understand exactly how that is working itself out. All I know,
00:41:33.520
all I can trust is that yes, God knows everyone who's going to be saved. Yes, God knows everything
00:41:37.820
that's going to happen, and He's totally sovereign. And yet He has commanded me to pray. He's commanded
00:41:42.800
me to share the gospel. And so in some method that I don't fully understand, God has ordained before
00:41:49.660
the beginning of time, that those would be two means by which He accomplishes His will. And it's
00:41:56.000
not really my responsibility to understand exactly why or how that works, but just to trust that,
00:42:04.240
just like we see throughout Scripture, there are a lot of things that God could have done
00:42:07.500
automatically. Like, why did they have to circle seven times before the walls of Jericho fell?
00:42:15.840
God didn't need them to do that. It's not like He was waiting on that to happen before His power
00:42:21.660
could work. Like you said, it's not hailing a cab. It's not rubbing a genie in a bottle. And yet,
00:42:26.900
I think sometimes He implements those processes for our sanctification, because obedience is good for
00:42:33.860
us, and it glorifies Him. And I don't know exactly why they had to circle seven times. I don't know why
00:42:41.200
Noah had to follow all of those rules to build this great big ark when God could have plopped it out of
00:42:47.040
the sky, except for that our faith and faithfulness does something for us, in us, and also to bring
00:42:56.060
God glory. And that, I think, sometimes just has to be enough for us as an answer, too.
00:43:00.760
And that's huge. And it's obedience, isn't it? Like, why did Naam and the Syrian have to go dip
00:43:04.360
in the water that many times? He didn't want to do it at first. Prayer is an act of obedience as
00:43:09.860
well. It's an act of humility. It's an act of surrender. And if you don't mind, could I share
00:43:14.080
a personal story, Allie? So I've been in prayer for my kids, and I'm a dad of five. And as I
00:43:20.000
mentioned a year ago, I still haven't slept. My triplets are seven years old now, so I haven't
00:43:23.760
slept in seven years, ladies and gentlemen. They are nonstop, 24-7, eight days a week. But they've
00:43:29.520
been asking my wife, Audrey, so many questions about the spiritual life lately. And I want to
00:43:35.180
just share this with you. Audrey and I talk about God in our home like other people talk about golf
00:43:39.540
and football. God is the harmonizing factor of our life. We talk about Jesus like He's in the room all
00:43:44.860
the time. We talk about Him naturally. We don't get into holy mode when we talk about God. And Monday
00:43:50.080
night, just this past Monday, we were having a wonderful salmon dinner my wife had made. I was
00:43:55.060
starving, kind of not really there, just starving, eating. I don't really need to say much when you
00:44:02.440
have seven people eating dinner every night at your dinner table. And all of a sudden, Abel,
00:44:07.000
who is one of our triplets, said, Dad, we want to get saved. And then Ryder said, I do too, Dad.
00:44:12.500
And then Jackson said, yes, I do too. And then leave it to my theologian son, Justin. He's like,
00:44:18.320
well, you're not saved. You have to accept Jesus into your heart to be saved for the forgiveness of
00:44:22.980
your sins. You have to believe He rose from the dead for you. Abel goes, I believe that, Justin.
00:44:27.660
And I thought, oh, well, we'll do that in a minute. And then Abel said, no, Dad, we want to
00:44:31.460
do it right now. In the course of our dinner conversation, we began to pray. And I led all
00:44:39.400
three of my boys at the same moment, Abel, Ryder, and Jackson, to Jesus Christ. And I don't mind saying
00:44:45.380
the date, March 24, 2024. And they wrote it in their Bibles. And I want to tell you, that's the
00:44:51.700
power of prayer. That's the power of talking to God. And you can do that in your own home. You can
00:44:56.100
talk about God like you talk about your golf game. He's the constant reality. He's everything we need
00:45:00.260
in every moment. And so this isn't just an academic exercise that we're doing right now,
00:45:04.620
Ali Beth. This is real. And it makes a difference. And now we're on the road to sanctification. The
00:45:10.240
Johnston triplets now need to learn sanctification. We knew that immediately. They got saved. Now it's
00:45:16.700
Right, right, right. Yes, that's amazing. You know, I saw Kanye West recently. He was in
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some, doing some interview, and he said something along the lines of, I have my issues with Jesus
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because I have asked him to do some things. I've asked him to show up sometimes, and he doesn't. And
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you know, I'm like, yeah, you're in pretty good company, Kanye, in that there have been plenty of
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times where we have all prayed for something, expected something, even out of good desires. We wanted
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something good. And we wanted God to do this for us. And we believed that he could, and he did it.
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He showed up in a different way. Or maybe at the time, we felt like he wasn't showing up at all,
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or he answered no. And that can rock people's faith. It's like, okay, I asked for this good thing,
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and you didn't do it. You didn't heal my dad. You didn't provide a husband. You didn't allow us to
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get pregnant. You didn't help me, you know, save my job, whatever it is. So walk us through that.
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Like, why would God not answer even good prayers? I have a word for Kanye West. You need to listen
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to more country music, Kanye, because this guy named Garth Brooks wrote an awesome song once,
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and he sang it, and it was the top of the billboard chart. It was called Thank God for Unanswered
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Prayers. And some of us need a little Garth Brooks theology right now. I thank God he doesn't answer all
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my prayers, because I wouldn't be married to the redhead for 20 years. Thank God he didn't answer
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my prayers before I met Audrey. Thank God I married the right person. Thank God that he said no to some
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of my prayers. Thank God he said wait to some of my prayers. My word is God knows better, and thank God
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he doesn't answer all our prayers, because sometimes we just don't know. In week four of my Body Approved
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Bible Study, Allie Beth, I point out the dejection of Cleopas, and we know his wife's name,
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Mary, from John's Gospel. They're walking seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus. And I know this
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is Easter Monday. We're thinking about this. It's been in our mind. And they felt like they had had
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an unanswered prayer as well. Their Messiah had just been massacred on the cross. And in Luke 24,
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21, Cleopas says to this stranger who's walking the road to Emmaus, we had hoped he was the Messiah,
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but he wasn't. He was just killed. Haven't you heard what's gone on in Israel? Now, by the way,
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we filmed at the very spot with two drones and four cameras. Had to take a Hummer there. I got
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car sick, like literally off-roading to the road to Emmaus. And they're talking to Jesus. They're
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praying. They don't even know it. They thought that he didn't answer their prayers. They invite Jesus
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into their home. This is the 13th meal scene in the Gospel of Luke. I can't wait to meet Luke. The
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guy loved to eat dinner with people. That gives me hope. This is the final meal scene in the Gospel of
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Luke. And it's only when Jesus takes the bread and he breaks it, and he gives thanks for it.
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And here's that power verse, Luke 24, 32. They realized he had answered their prayer when they
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thought he hadn't. Were not our hearts burning within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?
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And so, here's the application. If I feel like God's not answering my prayer, just go back to the Bible,
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go back to the Scriptures, pray the Scriptures, and then just keep praying the Scriptures,
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and then trust the Lord. Yes and amen. Man, well, we've got about 100 other questions that we could
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ask you that we don't have time, that we don't have time to answer. Is there any last word that
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you want to give everyone? The last word that I want to give you is the promise of hope. Hope is a
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power word. And the reason that I'm a regular watcher of Allie Beth Stuckey is because you give me
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hope when I watch you, Allie Beth. Legacy Media, one thing I learned going through COVID was I wanted to
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just get into a depression watching Legacy Media because they learned that body counts meant
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greater ratings. And so, I had to turn that off. That was part of my personal peace plan.
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And I had to start turning into thinkers like you regularly, tuning into thinkers like you,
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because you speak truth and truth gives me hope. I have no hope without truth. Everything outside of
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truth is a lie. So, I want to encourage more people to watch your show because you give us hope.
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I want to encourage people to share this broadcast because we've covered so much ground. But I also
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want to encourage you to go through the Body of Proof Bible study for one reason and one reason only.
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It will give you hope. The Bible promises us a living hope in 1 Peter 1.3. Not because I feel
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like being hopeful today. I've been trying to memorize this verse. I don't have it perfectly,
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but let me try. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has brought us into a
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living hope because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's something like that.
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That's about 90% accuracy. The point is, we have a living hope because Jesus rose from the grave.
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And so, I can have a living hope. Romans says, we've been in Romans this whole time. The book of Romans
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says we have a hope that never disappoints. The book of Hebrews says we have a better hope. Hope is
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mentioned a hundred times in the New Testament, and it's always tied to the resurrection of Jesus. So,
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have hope today. He's alive. Yes, and amen. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.