Best of the Program ｜ Guests： Greg Koukl & Gary Habermas ｜ 3⧸29⧸24
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
163.64615
Summary
On today's show, Glenn Beck is joined by Stu from the "On The View" to talk about the crucifixion of Jesus and what it means to be pro-life on Good Friday. Also, Glenn and Stu talk about colorblindness and why it's a good idea.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hey, it's Good Friday. There is a lot of great stuff on today's program. A lot of it revolves
00:00:06.000
around redemption and the crucifixion. You'll learn things about crucifixion that you didn't
00:00:12.120
know before, and also what the skeptic scholars say about resurrection. All of it is part of our
00:00:19.480
Good Friday podcast, and it's coming up right after this. I want to talk to you about being
00:00:24.580
pro-life, really getting into the battle here for life. We have a spiritual and moral mandate
00:00:31.800
as citizens of this country and citizens of a higher kingdom, as Christians. That mandate
00:00:37.600
is to bring about an end to the senseless slaughter. And there's two ways to go. We could start
00:00:47.140
a revolution. We could hate people that are engaged in abortion. Or we can just love the
00:00:54.900
mothers and the babies and help them. Most of these moms feel trapped and they have no other
00:01:01.360
place to go. And so they easily buy into the lie that it's not really a baby. That's why
00:01:06.160
$28 will buy an ultrasound for a mom coming in just to see, you know, maybe talk about an
00:01:12.140
abortion. They give them a free ultrasound that doubles the chance of baby's life. So
00:01:17.340
pound 250, say the keyword baby. Please give pound 250, keyword baby. Preborn.com slash Glenn.
00:01:24.860
You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Easter is all about forgiveness and
00:01:44.860
practicing forgiveness. Stu, I want you to know, I forgive you.
00:01:51.460
Oh, thank you, Glenn. You're welcome. What are you, what are you forgiving me for exactly?
00:01:58.060
Oh my gosh. Well, see, this is a good, this is good to point out. See,
00:02:02.060
he's pretending he doesn't know his trespasses against me, but I forgive him of his trespasses
00:02:10.820
and, but he doesn't have to, it doesn't change my forgiveness, Stu. It doesn't. I still forgive you.
00:02:16.800
All right. Oh, it's an important lesson on an important day.
00:02:20.160
Yeah. I got another important lesson. You're, let's say, put yourself in this scenario. Okay.
00:02:25.420
You're on the view. All right. Okay. Yes. And you've been on the view, right? You've gone through
00:02:30.860
this. I have been on the view. I have, I have. So you're on the view and it's Easter Friday. You
00:02:38.700
know, it's good Friday. What, you know, joy says something to you. Your response is shut up, joy.
00:02:47.480
You fat witch. No, no, no, that would not. No, it's again, good Friday. So. Okay. And whoopie,
00:02:56.040
you too, you old hag. Okay. No, that's not, not the way to do it. No, that's not. We shouldn't do it
00:03:01.700
that way on Good Friday. That's what we're trying to tell people. We probably shouldn't do it on
00:03:06.160
average Wednesday. You know what I mean? No, it's true. He's probably shouldn't do that. I will say
00:03:10.840
my response was somewhat close to what you said when you were on the, when you, when you were actually on
00:03:17.740
the view. I think I was complete. No. Well, maybe in the aftermath. Wasn't I? Maybe that was. Yeah.
00:03:23.520
The aftermath. I think I tried to be nice the whole time. Yeah. I certainly off the air. I feel
00:03:28.900
like I heard that type of response at one point or another. Yeah. Well, I don't know about that.
00:03:34.140
That would be wrong of me. There was a guy though on the view that I think we should play that does
00:03:40.180
demonstrate how people better than us actually respond. Yeah. This is Coleman Hughes who, uh,
00:03:47.540
who is, he wrote a book recently, which is a great book. It's about basically in defense of
00:03:52.100
colorblindness. Uh, Hey, maybe we shouldn't abandon the idea that colorblindness is the goal here,
00:03:58.060
guys. Like I can't believe you need to write even a book about this, but he did. And it's very good.
00:04:02.940
And he went on the view. And of course, I mean, they had to give him the ad hominem, uh, charlatan
00:04:10.960
question, which is what you'd expect a hundred percent from the view when just praising the idea that we
00:04:17.200
should be colorblind. This is the question he got. Your argument for colorblindness, I think,
00:04:23.000
is something that the right has co-opted. And so many in the black community, if I'm being honest
00:04:29.480
with you, cause I want to be, believe that you are being used as a pawn by the right and that you're
00:04:35.220
a charlatan of sorts. He's not a Republican. So how do you, you've said that you're a conservative.
00:04:40.920
No, no, no, no, you did. You actually said that, uh, podcast that you did two weeks ago.
00:04:46.280
I said I was a conservative. Yes, you did. So, but my question to you, my question to you is how do
00:04:52.640
you respond to those critics? Stop, stop, stop, stop right here. Okay. Stop right there.
00:05:02.060
You're shut up. You fat, which does seem to be calling out to me for his response. And that wasn't
00:05:12.620
even joy. That would be what I would be. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. But just, just buried deep inside
00:05:17.600
of me, hearing that question, phrase that way, shut up. You fat, which does seem to be an option.
00:05:26.400
That's what we're trying to say on this day is that's the wrong option. That's not what you should
00:05:32.260
do. It would feel good in the moment. You're only human. Yeah. Right. You're only human. I don't think
00:05:36.860
even though Jesus was part human, I don't think that was an option that he felt, but you, me,
00:05:43.400
probably would feel that way. But here's how he responded. I think it's very important. The quote
00:05:50.980
that you just pointed out about doing something special for the Negro. That's from the book Why
00:05:56.720
We Can't Wait that I just mentioned. Yes. A couple paragraphs later, he lays out exactly what that
00:06:01.680
something special was. Yes. And it was the Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, a broad class-based
00:06:06.920
policy. But he also says you must include race. No, he didn't. He says it's a... Yes, he does. Okay.
00:06:12.760
Well, everyone can go, everyone should go read the book Why We Can't Wait. Let's not get sidetracked by
00:06:16.520
that. Yeah. I don't think I've been co-opted by anyone. I've only voted twice, both for Democrats,
00:06:21.760
although I'm an independent. I would vote for a Republican, probably a non-Trump Republican,
00:06:25.880
if they were compelling. I don't think there's any evidence I've been co-opted by anyone. And I think
00:06:30.680
that that's an ad hominem tactic people use to not address really the important conversations we're
00:06:37.040
having here. And I think it's better and it would be better for everyone if we stuck to the topics
00:06:42.340
rather than make it about me. It's not about you, but I want to give you the opportunity to
00:06:47.460
respond to the criticism. I appreciate it. There's no evidence that I've been co-opted by
00:06:52.380
anyone. I have an independent podcast. I work for CNN as an analyst. I write for the free press.
00:06:59.140
I'm independent in all of these endeavors and no one is paying me to say what I'm saying. I'm saying
00:07:03.720
it because I feel it. So what he's saying there is, shut up, you fat witch. I think that's what I
00:07:13.040
heard. I think that's what I heard. Just in a very nice way. Yeah. And it's like, he's good at just
00:07:18.980
dismantling it with reason, right? Like there's no evidence that this guy has been co-opted by the
00:07:24.780
right. These are arguments that we all used to agree on. They were, I mean, outside of the KKK,
00:07:30.620
if you were not wearing a white hood, most people would say, Hey, we shouldn't focus on skin color
00:07:35.340
as much. And now 50% of the population, or at least 50% of our major political parties have
00:07:42.620
embraced an idea that we should only focus on race or, and gender and other unreadable characteristics.
00:07:49.520
Yeah. Like, it's, it's, it's horrific that that has happened under all of our watch. At least if
00:07:57.440
you're on the left, you've let this happen and you should be on the side of Coleman Hughes and
00:08:02.520
pushing back against it. And there are very few that are, you know, it's amazing to me that the,
00:08:08.040
the Democrats get stuck in about 1968. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like they just stopped
00:08:16.840
seeing new things. You know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, well, you know what?
00:08:26.440
That's why black should be able to go to school with whites. And you're like, yeah. Okay. We've
00:08:33.160
believed that for now 40, 50 years, maybe even longer. We've been on that. Yeah. We've been on
00:08:39.900
that, uh, train, you know, white, white people. Again, there are still some clan members out there
00:08:45.900
that don't agree, but there's also joy read. Yeah. So yeah, but that's the thing. Like they have
00:08:52.500
decided when we like the, Oh, in the 1960s, Hey, black should be able to go to school with whites.
00:08:58.100
The left has reversed that. They now say they should have safe spaces away from whites.
00:09:03.340
I know. They've legitimately gone the opposite way. And they're acting as if we're the crazy ones.
00:09:09.440
I know. I know. And we learned that my generation, I am the last of the boomer generation last year.
00:09:18.160
And I grew up in a time where I didn't see color. We didn't do that. You know, I mean, it's not.
00:09:27.460
Yes. There were, when you're in a bad section of town, bad section of town, you might look over your
00:09:35.800
shoulder. Oh, does that because it's black? Why? Because I said a bad section of town, you all of a
00:09:44.280
sudden assume that it's a black neighborhood. Who's the racist here? Who's the racist here?
00:09:52.720
Um, uh, you know, you, you just don't do that. We have gotten to a place or we were at a place
00:10:01.660
to where we wanted to see people for the content of their character thought that was right. And in
00:10:07.500
many cases, that's the way we judged the world. And it's as if all of these radicals, as if 1970,
00:10:16.720
1980, 1990, 2000, 2000, well, 2008, I think was the end of that. I mean, it's like none of those
00:10:26.160
years happened. Like all of the things, all the progress we made didn't happen. We're still in
00:10:32.920
1965. In what world? In what world? Yeah, no, it's true. And you see the way that these people
00:10:39.980
retreated. There was another interview that happened. It was a speech, I think happened recently. It was
00:10:45.340
part of the free press, which, uh, Coleman Hughes also mentioned in that clip, um, where they
00:10:50.080
interviewed a guy who, who did a study, an academic who did a study on police violence against blacks.
00:10:56.900
And the study, uh, came out, uh, in an interesting way, not the way the media would have believed it
00:11:04.940
would come out. Now the man who's speaking is, uh, I don't have his, I misplaced his name, but he,
00:11:09.660
he, uh, he's an African-American gentleman who is describing a study he did in academic circles
00:11:15.920
to talk about violence against African-Americans by the police. Listen.
00:11:20.280
I collected a lot of data. We collected millions of observations on, uh, everyday use of force that
00:11:26.460
wasn't lethal. We collected thousands of observations on lethal force. And, and it was in this moment in
00:11:33.480
2016 that I realized people lose their minds when they don't like the result. So what my paper showed,
00:11:40.100
you'll see tomorrow, uh, like some of you, uh, was that, yes, we saw some bias in the low level uses
00:11:45.920
of force every day, pushing up against cars and things like that. People seem to like that result,
00:11:51.300
but we didn't find any, um, uh, racial bias in police shootings. Now that was really surprising to me
00:12:00.800
because I expected to see it. The little known fact is I had eight full-time RAs that it took to do this
00:12:07.020
over nearly a year. When I found the surprising result, I hired eight fresh ones and redid it
00:12:15.440
to make sure. They came up with the same exact answer and I thought it was robust and then I went to
00:12:22.280
go give it and my God, all hell broke loose. It was a hundred and four page dense academic
00:12:30.520
economics paper with 150 page appendix. Okay. Jeez. It was posted for four minutes when I got my
00:12:39.860
first email. This is full of. Doesn't make any sense. And I wrote back, how'd you read it that fast?
00:12:48.240
That's amazing. You are a genius. And I had colleagues take me into, to the side and say,
00:12:56.640
don't publish this. You'll ruin your career. I said, what are you talking about? I said,
00:13:06.060
what's wrong with it? Do you believe the first part? Yes. Do you believe the second part?
00:13:13.560
Well, it's the issue is they just don't fit together. We liked the first one, but you should
00:13:19.560
publish the note the second one another time. I said, let me ask this. If the second part about the
00:13:25.580
police shootings, this is a literal conversation. I said to them, if the second part showed bias,
00:13:34.180
do you think I would, should publish it then? And they say, yeah, then it would make sense.
00:13:39.640
And I said, I guarantee you I'll publish it. We'll see what happens. So it was, it was, you know,
00:13:46.400
I lived under, under, um, police protection for about 30 or 40 days. I had a seven day old
00:13:55.560
daughter at the time. I remember going and shopping for it. Cause you know, when you have a newborn,
00:14:00.340
you think you have enough diapers, you don't. So I, I was going to the grocery store to get diapers
00:14:05.380
with the armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy. For just saying the truth and saying,
00:14:12.300
hey, maybe police aren't intentionally trying to commit a genocide on African-Americans. Like
00:14:17.100
something that I think everyone in their heart actually knows, but the evidence showed that it
00:14:23.060
was true. And because he published actual evidence about actual things that go on in our country,
00:14:28.600
he had to live under police protection for months. Let me just leave it at this.
00:14:34.720
Shut up. You fat witch. Let me tell you about relief factor. Debbie wrote in about her husband's
00:14:41.240
experience with relief factor. She says, my husband had aches and pains from hard days work for years.
00:14:46.680
His work required him to walk miles with a 40 pound backpack daily. What do you think?
00:14:54.460
Military guy relief factor changed his life. He doesn't suffer from those aches and pains anymore.
00:15:01.400
Thank you so much. Relief factor. Debbie, thank you for writing in and letting us know about your
00:15:07.460
husband's experience. Sounds like he got his life back. I'm trying to figure out what he did walking,
00:15:12.800
you know, miles and miles and miles with a 40 pound backpack, either military or.
00:15:19.220
Well, it could be like me. My wife just throws some food in a backpack and then drives me out in the
00:15:23.680
middle of a desert and says, find your way home. Anyway, relief factor is, uh, is, uh, not a drug.
00:15:29.900
It is a supplement that is all natural and it helps your body fight pain by reducing inflammation.
00:15:37.320
Get your quick starter kit, take it for three weeks and watch the changes in you.
00:15:42.940
1995 comes with a relief factor. Feel better. Your money back guarantee. Relieffactor.com
00:15:48.060
800-4-RELIEF. 800-4-RELIEF. Relieffactor.com. Now back to the podcast.
00:15:59.900
Okay. You're standing in a bookstore and you're looking at the rack and all kinds of titles are
00:16:07.200
facing you. And one sticks out the story of reality. How do you not pick that book up?
00:16:15.400
The story of reality. It's written by Greg Kuchel. Sorry, Kuchel. It's, uh, it's a story,
00:16:28.980
uh, of really what is meaningful, how we got here, how the world began, how it ends and everything
00:16:40.720
important that happened in between. His author, the author of, uh, the story of reality.
00:16:52.740
Hey, Glenn. It is so great to talk with you today, especially this particular day on this
00:16:59.760
You bet. So I, I, first let's start with, um, the story of reality. How, how, how does it start?
00:17:09.320
Well, the subtitle is how the world began, how it ends and everything important that happens in
00:17:15.900
between. And as a follower of Jesus, I am looking at the way the world is laid out
00:17:22.360
as God describes it in scripture. There is a beginning, there is an end, and there are things
00:17:28.480
that happen in between that are really critical. And they have to do with what happened with human
00:17:34.200
beings in the beginning, the whole problem of evil, how God plans to solve that through his son,
00:17:40.480
Jesus of Nazareth, and the ramifications that have for us at the end of the age. You see,
00:17:47.140
this is a story. Uh, what's really compelling about the story though, and a lot of people don't
00:17:52.700
realize this, Glenn, they, if they look at the Bible or they think of Christianity, they have
00:17:57.340
all these little bits and pieces that are like a pieces to a puzzle, but the puzzle's never been
00:18:02.200
assembled. And what I've tried to do here, and anybody can do this who goes through the account
00:18:07.780
in the scripture is to put that together piece by piece, uh, following the plot line from beginning
00:18:14.200
to end. So people can get a picture of the entire story. But the unique thing about this story,
00:18:20.880
Glenn, is it doesn't start with the words once upon a time. It's not a fiction. It is the true
00:18:28.460
story of reality. And what I've tried to do in this book is to show the elegance of the story,
00:18:34.780
the greatness of the drama from the beginning to the end. So people understand how the world
00:18:41.160
actually works, what reality is really like, so they could live in tune with it, especially
00:18:47.660
in tune with the author of reality, God himself, through his son, Jesus of Nazareth.
00:18:53.840
You know, I, I have always been convinced that if, you know, the 10 commandments, 10 commandments
00:18:59.460
were called, you know, today, we're just called, uh, most 10 safety tips. Everybody would do them
00:19:06.360
because it is, it's all common sense. Reality is what it is. And we have completely detached from
00:19:14.480
universal truths. And that, that is God. Everything is, is a pattern. It's math. It's a universal truth.
00:19:24.080
You do this and this will happen. Um, there are things that you just cannot, um, change no matter
00:19:32.520
how much you want to. And we reject it because it's Christianity or it's God or it's church or
00:19:40.160
whatever. Do you see what I mean, Greg? I, I, I do. Uh, I think the biggest reason is, look,
00:19:48.140
everybody wants to do their own thing. Ultimately, what is the slogan of the age? You do you. And that
00:19:55.600
means you don't bend your knee to anyone and certainly not God. And so people are going off doing
00:20:02.020
their own thing. And of course, when you break the rules, when you don't live according to reality,
00:20:06.780
uh, things are going to go south on you because reality has a way of, of bumping into you and
00:20:12.160
injuring you when you don't, right. When you don't write it seriously. One of the things that I've
00:20:18.260
noticed though, I've been a follower of Jesus for 50 years and, uh, and I'm a defender of Christianity
00:20:24.340
that I'm an apologist by trade. Okay. One of the things that I noticed about the story of reality,
00:20:30.120
as it's described in scripture, is that so many points, um, comport with common sense. And this
00:20:37.840
is what you just mentioned a moment ago, Glenn. So many things that we see in scripture, if, if we're
00:20:43.120
willing to acknowledge it, fit the world, the way we actually experience the world. All right. Even
00:20:49.700
the idea that human beings don't want to bend their knee. And by the way, that is the classic
00:20:54.180
definition of truth. When you have a point of view or a belief or an idea that actually fits the way
00:21:00.360
the world is, that means your view is true. And this is one of the things I'm totally convinced
00:21:06.020
about the story of reality. It is true. And there are ramifications to getting it right. And that's
00:21:12.440
why I wrote the book, The Story of Reality. And isn't that what the whole message of the Bible is?
00:21:18.340
Because it's really basically the same story over and over and over and over again. You, you read the
00:21:25.140
stories and you're like, okay, different place, different people, but I'm seeing the same thing.
00:21:30.280
I saw three chapters before. I mean, how are we missing this? You know, people making the same mistakes.
00:21:39.360
Time changes. Human beings don't change. We learned from the very beginning, something very special about
00:21:46.340
human beings. God made human beings to be in friendship with Him, and He made them like Him
00:21:52.140
in a very important way. The story says we are made in the image of God. And that's not our
00:21:58.520
physical bodies. That's our invisible selves. Our souls bear His mark. And Glenn, this is what informs
00:22:06.240
every single moral obligation that we have towards other human beings. We don't have the same moral
00:22:12.560
obligations to, you know, Fifi and Fido that we have to other human beings. Some people have that
00:22:18.460
confused nowadays, but most of us get this. But why is it like that? We realize that's the case,
00:22:24.880
even without the Bible. Yet the story of reality, God's story, tells us why. Because God made us to be
00:22:31.960
in friendship with Him. But you know what? A man got himself in a heap of trouble, didn't he? He didn't
00:22:38.700
want to bend his knee. He rebelled against God, and that is what caused all the problem. People complain
00:22:45.180
about the problem of evil. The story tells where that came from. That's in chapter 3. And the next 66
00:22:51.680
books are meant to explain how God solved that problem. And He solved that problem by coming to
00:23:00.460
earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to rescue us. And this weekend, of course, is one of the most
00:23:08.460
important weekends in our calendar reflecting on exactly what He did to accomplish that end.
00:23:15.060
You know, I'm struck now by the biggest problem that I think we have. And it's really simple.
00:23:26.860
We will not recognize or bend our knee to truth. We want it our way. We want to do it our way.
00:23:36.380
And as a former, you know, a recovering alcoholic, I have to tell you, it doesn't end well. It never
00:23:43.380
ends well. And this weekend is all about forgiveness, forgiving yourself, forgiving others, and humbling
00:23:52.520
yourself just as Christ did. I mean, there was no more humiliating death at the time than being nailed
00:24:02.320
to a cross. It was the most humiliating thing a man could go through in that culture at that time.
00:24:11.320
He humbled himself. Our country would be fixed if we could humble ourselves, ask for forgiveness,
00:24:19.840
make a list of all the things we in the country have done, and just say, you know what, we don't want to
00:24:24.920
live like that anymore. Help us. We'll do it the way you want us to do it. And our country would be
00:24:30.620
fixed overnight. But people think that's too easy.
00:24:33.920
Mm-hmm. Well, it's not too easy when you think about human nature, Glenn. And you're right.
00:24:42.420
Jesus humbled himself. He came down from heaven. That's an act of humility right there.
00:24:46.780
And then he served human beings. That's another act of humility. And then he died, as one translator
00:24:52.800
puts it, Philippians chapter 2, where Paul's writing, the death of a common criminal. So Jesus
00:24:59.580
is the model of humility, okay? And I think you're right. What happens with humility, though, is it
00:25:08.740
doesn't happen on a national scale. It happens when individuals do it. Now, when a lot of individuals do
00:25:15.480
the same thing, then something happens nationally. That's what's called revival. But the humiliation,
00:25:23.340
the humility that we're to observe is the precise thing that is necessary before God,
00:25:29.740
who's the first one we've offended. You know, in Psalm 51, David's great prayer of contrition,
00:25:36.120
he said, God against you and you only have I sinned. Now, of course, he sinned against Bathsheba.
00:25:42.980
You know, he sinned against her husband, Uriah, but he saw that the sin was against God. And when we
00:25:49.120
individually come before God and beat our breast, and we say, as Jesus described in the parable,
00:25:57.340
Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner, that's when it changes for every single one of us individually.
00:26:05.360
And the more we do that as a community, the more that transforms the community, which, like it did
00:26:11.520
in the Mediterranean region, the whole known world at the time, when Christianity slowly began to take
00:26:17.540
over that region, as people did exactly what we're talking about. You're listening to the best of
00:26:22.960
Glenn Beck. Check out the full show podcast to listen to the rest of this interview.
00:26:27.460
Gary Habermas is with us, Liberty University apologetics and philosophy professor. Gary,
00:26:35.820
welcome to the program. Glad to be with you on such a wonderful day that deserves some celebration,
00:26:42.580
as you've already noted. Yeah, you know, I mean, I don't, I guess today does as well, because
00:26:48.800
this is the atonement. But Sunday is the real celebratory day. I don't think we take enough
00:26:56.700
time on Good Friday to really understand what this man went through. Yeah, absolutely. He was,
00:27:05.800
you know, the movie The Passion, people, it was called all kinds of things by people who didn't
00:27:11.480
like it. Pornographic of violence was one of the phrases I remember. But there is a reference in
00:27:18.060
ancient history to people being beaten for punishments. And the ancient source says that
00:27:25.800
they whipped the men until their organs fell out. And that even surpasses The Passion. But all I'm
00:27:36.980
saying is that that was only the prequel to the crucifixion. So it's a very serious event. And what we
00:27:42.740
portray is not overdone. And when they crucified people, they weren't on big, tall crosses like we
00:27:51.860
see. It was, they were street level and almost eye level. So people coming into the town would know
00:27:58.440
this is what happens to people if you do these things, right? Correct. Because they, the men were
00:28:04.900
talking to each other. And if you remember the scene at the end where Jesus is pierced with the
00:28:09.600
spear, now he's already dead. And by the way, I'll just add, we have a Roman reference that says the
00:28:18.040
same thing, that the centurion could allow the family to take the dead body of the crucified person
00:28:25.660
when they were taken down, they were dead, and they were given one last blow. And the Latin word
00:28:31.900
that's used means, it's a military term, for using an axe, a spear, or a sword. And, but anyway, my point
00:28:38.960
is, if you're low enough that a person could stab you with a Roman short spear, yes, you're closer to
00:28:45.380
the ground than a lot of the depictions. So I thought that it was unusual to take the body and bury it,
00:28:52.960
because from what I learned about crucifixion, part of it was the dogs would come and eat some
00:29:02.340
of the flesh, and it just made it more grisly for visitors. Hey, come to our town, don't end up like
00:29:08.500
this. Yeah, and birds too, but of course your point about the dogs, that shows you how much closer they
00:29:14.000
are to the ground. Correct. By the way, Romans often did leave victims on the cross. Thousands were
00:29:20.740
crucified outside Jerusalem in the Jewish war, 66 to 70 AD. However, Josephus, the Jewish historian,
00:29:28.900
tells us that Jews had such respect for bodies that even crucifix victims, I mean, criminals,
00:29:38.360
if they were, even criminals' bodies were taken down and buried. So Jewish tradition is an exception
00:29:44.820
to the stain on the cross. Do you have any idea when they started
00:29:50.220
crucifixion? How it started, when it started? Yeah, it goes way back, before the Romans, back to the
00:29:56.880
Assyrians. And even before that, it was practiced around the eastern end of the Mediterranean. But
00:30:04.060
all the way up in Italy, you remember the story of Spartacus and the slaves, and crucifying the people
00:30:11.760
down the Appian Way near Rome. And they were talking about lighting people on fire, and being,
00:30:21.840
in particular, Nero, lighting them to be torches in the night. So that's just kind of how,
00:30:28.160
you know, it's not enough to be beaten up, it's not enough to be hung, and then burned. So I can't think
00:30:36.480
of a worse way to die. Is there anything in particular that you read in the scriptures about
00:30:44.040
this day that really, you can really truly show the evidence in the scriptures and go,
00:30:52.180
that we know is absolutely true because of X, Y, and Z? Yeah, there's actually a couple. I co-authored
00:31:00.820
an article in 2021, four years ago, three years ago, with two other people, one a neurologist,
00:31:09.720
MD, PhD, and another researcher. And what we did was, we didn't try to prove how Jesus died. We simply
00:31:16.220
did a head count of medical views. And by far, the most common view, double all the other views put
00:31:23.720
together, was that in crucifixion, the victims asphyxiate. And what happens is, when you stretch
00:31:32.140
out in that condition, and by the way, the closer your hands are to your head, the closer your arms
00:31:38.640
are brought up, the faster you asphyxiate. And of course, when someone starts asphyxiating,
00:31:46.060
you say, well then, how soon is it over? Well, believe it or not, medical doctors, even in Nazi
00:31:52.660
Germany, in the Middle East, crucifixion is still performed. And they did experiments where they
00:31:59.160
didn't hurt the person, they didn't use nails, but they did it. And the men in one experiment lost
00:32:05.160
consciousness in a maximum of 12 minutes. They lost consciousness. They say, well then,
00:32:10.200
how about explain the three hours? It would be over fast. Well, the issue is, you could push down
00:32:15.640
on those nails in your feet. And when you push up, anti-gravity, but you had push up to breathe,
00:32:23.840
and that allows you to unfreeze the muscles, the intercostal pectoral deltoid muscles that you work
00:32:28.900
out in a gym, the ones around your lungs, you can free them. And so you can stay alive on a cross for
00:32:37.020
more than a day by pushing up, sinking down, pushing up, sinking down, and that relieves the asphyxiation
00:32:43.300
process. That's really why they break their legs, right? When they want them to die,
00:32:48.180
they just break their legs. You're exactly right. And that's not the only blow. And by the way,
00:32:53.100
not just the Gospels. I just wrote a huge, almost 1,100 pages, work on crucifixion and resurrection,
00:32:59.560
and I assembled a number of secular examples of people all the way up into Rome and Italy,
00:33:06.300
where ankles were broken. Now, there's almost no reason to break an ankle. I mean, if you can beat the
00:33:11.500
guy up, hit him with a board, shoot him, one guy was threatened with an arrow, one guy had a skull
00:33:16.140
crushed with the mallet. All kinds of things happen, but why break ankles? And of course,
00:33:22.200
it can cause shock. But it seems the main reason is to make the person go down low. We're done. We
00:33:28.580
want to go back to the barracks and play cards or something. And they break the ankles, and it's
00:33:33.840
over. Now it's over quickly if the person can't push up. By the way, the other reason is the spear
00:33:40.520
wound in the side, but I already said, where the Roman source says, this guy is already dead.
00:33:46.060
We took him down. We laid him on the ground. His family wanted the body. And so we pierced
00:33:51.680
him one more time. And you go, where? In the thigh? No, Roman soldiers didn't have anatomy
00:33:56.440
lessons, but they knew where to stab a person to drop them the quickest in battle. And it makes
00:34:03.860
sense. They would stab them in the chest. You know, you don't stab the skull. So where are you
00:34:09.140
going to go? Probably the heart, lung region would be normal. And that's stabbing the chest
00:34:13.740
of Jesus is there. So you've got asphyxiation as being a possible way of dying. You've got
00:34:19.940
the broken ankles that you pointed out and is backed up in archaeology. And you've got
00:34:23.740
the spirit wound. There's three right there to make sure that Jesus was dead.
00:34:30.240
So there's also something else, the humiliation of it all. I mean, this is why I had a guest
00:34:36.240
earlier this week that was saying, you know, if this is all made up, they were really bad
00:34:42.000
at making this up because in the ancient world, the worst thing that could happen to somebody
00:34:47.780
and certainly not the Messiah, if you're telling a story and making it up, is to nail them to
00:34:53.400
a tree. That is the most humiliating thing you can do. And then they mocked him. Now, I'm
00:35:01.680
sure the mocking was usual, but the crown of thorns was unique to him.
00:35:09.440
Yes. Believed to be a criminal. He was crucified as a criminal. And I will add this. This is
00:35:14.580
not always true, but crucifixion victims were all often crucified nude. So if you want to
00:35:22.180
add to the humiliation and the point you're making there, that wasn't always done. But
00:35:32.440
Do we think that that's the way he was crucified?
00:35:36.240
We have no idea. There's an in-between view, you know, and that's what's often in the paintings.
00:35:42.640
They would have a garment put around their waist, almost like when you go to play football or
00:35:48.960
something, you've got too many clothes on, you take the sweatshirt off and you tie it around
00:35:52.540
your waist. Jesus could have had one of those deals where they just tied a modesty cloth. We
00:35:58.500
don't really know if that portion was done or not done or how much he was. He wasn't clothed
00:36:04.600
totally. I mean, he was either clothed with a modesty cloth or not clothed at all, most likely.
00:36:10.880
When he was crucified, you know, we always see him up on Golgotha, and he's up at the top of a
00:36:17.800
hill, and it's just the three of them. Is that likely to be that way, or was he with
00:36:27.580
No, it seems like the three is historical. I've done so much reading on this and studied
00:36:32.780
it for decades, and I don't even see, let's put it this way, I don't think scholars even
00:36:39.200
bring it up. I don't remember if I've ever seen the question of whether there were more
00:36:43.900
than three crosses. And I think they generally think that, just like the Gospel said, it
00:36:48.680
makes sense that two guys were thieves, Jesus was in the middle, and they talked to each
00:36:53.660
other, and one of them says, remember me when, you know, when you come into your kingdom, and
00:36:58.180
Jesus said, today you'll be with me in paradise. I mean, that is good historical material.
00:37:07.880
Na na na na na na na na nauuu animal na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na