The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - Best Historical Argument for the Resurrection and Why Scholars Can't Dismiss It ｜ Wesley Huff Ep 232

00:00:00.000 There are other messianic movements in the ancient world, but I bet you couldn't name any of the

00:00:04.800 individuals involved in those. And there's a reason why we're asking questions about Jesus

00:00:08.800 of Nazareth and not Simon Bar-Kolkova. Wesley Huff, welcome to my podcast. It's a pleasure to

00:00:14.000 be here. I am a trained historian. I work primarily in the area of New Testament manuscripts. Oh,

00:00:19.540 that's cool. One of the points that I make when I often do presentations on this is that as time

00:00:23.680 goes on, we're not getting farther away from the original wording of the Bible. We're actually

00:00:27.380 getting closer to it. How does the Bible compare to other ancient documents that we do trust? I

00:00:31.800 think it depends on what we mean when we say trust and compare. Sounds like my dad. Speaking

00:00:37.460 in tongues in the New Testament is almost exclusively an actual language. The English

00:00:43.600 Bible is changed, but it's changed for the sake of clarity, not corruption. You know, if you

00:00:47.620 evaluate what Jesus's claims actually are about himself, he's either lying through his teeth,

00:00:51.980 he's either a lunatic, or he's the Lord of the universe who actually validated the claims that

00:00:56.860 he made about who he is by rising from the dead. The people who rise from the dead have

00:01:00.880 more credibility and authority than people who don't rise from the dead.

00:01:10.540 Wesley Huff, welcome to my podcast.

00:01:12.500 It's a pleasure to be here.

00:01:13.820 I'm really excited to talk to you. I know we just had you film a course for Peterson Academy,

00:01:19.000 which I'm so thrilled about. I think I first saw you, I saw you before you went on Rogan,

00:01:24.600 but i saw some of your stuff on instagram and i was like yes this is the kind of thing that

00:01:29.640 would have helped me uh the like the logical part of my brain uh before i became a christian

00:01:35.660 and i didn't really see a lot of that or really any of that online i probably could have dug deeper

00:01:41.240 but i wasn't a christian so i wasn't digging that deep but uh before we get started for anyone who

00:01:47.600 isn't familiar with you although i'm sure a lot of my audience is can you give a brief background

00:01:52.420 about who you are and what it is you do yeah so i am a trained historian i work primarily in the

00:01:59.000 area of new testament manuscripts although i look at kind of the ancient literary culture more

00:02:04.600 broadly and so i study ancient scribal culture so the ways that scribes wrote and particularly

00:02:12.880 the features that they incorporated into manuscripts that made things like reading

00:02:19.580 publicly easier so oh okay yeah so it's called paratextual features and readers aids is kind of

00:02:25.840 the formal category so i look at a number of christian manuscripts from the second and third

00:02:31.020 centuries and uh really the conclusion i'm drawing is can we differentiate between a manuscript that

00:02:36.880 was produced privately as someone's like personal copy say of the gospel of john or uh that was

00:02:42.960 produced for a public reading liturgical setting in a christian community so i do comparative

00:02:47.740 analysis with a number of ancient literary works but then because my area is it's new testament

00:02:55.320 studies formally but it kind of crosses over into early church history and then kind of broader

00:03:00.600 antiquity in general i i get away with talking about a bunch of different stuff wow okay that's

00:03:06.220 very niche that's cool though did you were you a christian before you went into that yeah so i grew

00:03:12.580 up as a missionary kid my my parents were missionaries both in pakistan and in the in the

00:03:17.200 Middle Eastern country of Jordan when I was very young and then my dad was a pastor for a long

00:03:23.240 long time now retired but so I grew up both a missionary kid and a pastor's kid so very much

00:03:29.340 within a Christian context but it was in my teen years in sifting through some of the things

00:03:35.780 granting that my parents raised me to believe something very specific but kind of figuring out

00:03:42.460 you know sifting through is my parents telling me to believe this a good enough reason to believe

00:03:47.920 it and I don't think it's a bad reason I want my kids to believe things because I tell them

00:03:52.180 but uh going through some of that data and living in a missionary household I'd read the Quran as a

00:03:59.840 teenager I'd read a number of other literature we had a book of Mormon in our house um I read

00:04:05.820 the Bhagavad Gita and so just trying to figure out okay well what's really going on in terms of

00:04:11.540 these big worldview questions and is Christianity really the answer yeah okay and did you come

00:04:19.240 across anything in your findings that surprised you since you've been studying this I mean I think

00:04:25.580 I was definitely solidified in the worldview that I was raised in because I felt like it genuinely

00:04:35.580 answered answers that that fit within categories like logical consistency and empirical adequacy

00:04:44.320 experiential relevance and historical accuracy when i investigated things like say the quran

00:04:50.460 i found that there were more red flags than there weren't even in some of the narratives and some

00:04:56.440 of some of the stories that i was familiar with with the bible the quran would tell similar stories

00:05:01.540 but seemed to get the details wrong.

00:05:03.880 And was that just comparing it to the Bible or historically?

00:05:07.420 On both ends.

00:05:08.460 I mean, if you, like in my field in New Testament studies,

00:05:12.640 even the most radically skeptical scholars will say,

00:05:15.260 if we can't really even know anything about Jesus,

00:05:17.200 we know that he was crucified under the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

00:05:21.140 And that's something that's fundamentally denied within the Quran.

00:05:24.860 Chapter 4, verse 157 denies the crucifixion outright.

00:05:27.620 And so there are ways that Muslims try to get around that, that Jesus may have survived the crucifixion.

00:05:34.300 And so in that particular passage, when it says that they neither killed him nor did they crucify him, well, maybe they tried to crucify him, but they didn't kill him kind of thing.

00:05:45.620 But I found things that I just didn't think lined up perfectly.

00:05:51.380 And talking with Muslims, not really getting answers that sufficed in terms of my curiosity.

00:05:59.180 And the thing that stood out to me about Jesus in particular was that the Christian worldview hinged on him being a historical character.

00:06:08.700 whereas if you in my investigation of something like buddhism it could have been another character

00:06:16.580 who came up with the philosophical system that eventually was described as buddhism

00:06:21.100 in terms of you know the the path and um the the philosophical categories it didn't have to be

00:06:28.780 gutama siddhartha who event who we refer to as the buddha but it had to be jesus and the historical

00:06:35.180 information around the person of jesus i i've just found sufficient okay fascinating i mean

00:06:43.080 that's good and i suppose i've found it sufficient too otherwise i wouldn't be a christian but um

00:06:47.300 just based on the text like from a historian's perspective uh how does the bible compare to

00:06:52.760 other ancient documents that we do trust yeah i mean i think it depends on what we mean when we

00:06:58.280 say trust and compare like I think sounds like my dad yeah that's right pulling that out here

00:07:04.720 um but but I think you know the definitions matter in the sense of how we're defining

00:07:09.160 those categories uh when we're talking about something like Alexander the Great we're waiting

00:07:14.640 about 450 years between when he lived and when our first kind of comprehensive biographical

00:07:20.080 material comes up so there's a guy named Arian who who wrote our first kind of comprehensive

00:07:25.260 of biography and it's not that we distrust that biographical material there's reasons to believe

00:07:31.760 that Arian got significant details about Alexander the Great's life right but it was 450 years later

00:07:38.420 it was and that's not unusual for the ancient world I think because we live in such a hyper

00:07:42.960 literate culture we assume that people should be writing things down during the lifetimes of

00:07:47.860 individuals yeah right and that's just not how things operated in the ancient world

00:07:52.220 is some of the best biographies we have by individuals like Valleus Paterculus or Tacitus

00:07:59.580 or Suetonius or Cassiodio of the Roman emperors are coming in periods after they actually lived

00:08:06.140 sometimes centuries afterwards right and and this is just the norm and the fact that we're waiting

00:08:13.100 a few decades for Jesus is actually closer in proximity and interestingly enough I would argue

00:08:20.860 within the kind of cultural and literary memory of jesus than the vast majority of the people who

00:08:30.300 we would just kind of assume existed within the ancient world oh that's cool yeah that

00:08:36.260 that's cool okay um i've got a whole bunch of questions that i spent a bit of time on okay

00:08:43.540 and i don't was like sometimes i want to have a conversation but there are a bunch of things i

00:08:46.940 actually want answered so i'm going to run through a few of them okay um how close how close are

00:08:53.540 modern bibles to the original manuscripts and does it matter which translation you read from your

00:08:58.720 perspective yeah that's a great question so interestingly enough one of the points that i

00:09:04.860 make when i have to do presentations on this is that as time goes on we're not getting farther

00:09:08.460 away from the original wording of the bible we're actually getting closer to it okay so though as

00:09:13.380 time chronologically goes on i would argue that because of the evidence that we've actually

00:09:19.260 had the privilege to be available to us mainly the manuscripts although not limited to it

00:09:26.460 we are able to track and trace the chain of custody back to the original wording

00:09:33.360 more accurately so the way i often word this is if you compare say modern translation of the bible

00:09:39.680 to something like the King James Bible.

00:09:41.580 Yeah.

00:09:42.020 So the King James Bible is translated

00:09:43.440 between 1604 and 1611.

00:09:45.220 It's translated not from handwritten manuscripts

00:09:47.760 as much as it's translated from printed editions

00:09:51.100 of the Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament.

00:09:53.720 Okay.

00:09:54.000 So there's a printed edition of the Blomberg Hebrew text.

00:09:57.840 And then there are these seven printed editions

00:10:01.860 of the Greek New Testament.

00:10:04.400 Five by a guy named Desiderius Erasmus,

00:10:06.920 who was this great dutch scholar in the middle ages and then updates by a guy named stefanus

00:10:13.760 and a guy named beza and that kind of sits like is the center that like the base for what the

00:10:20.080 king james translators are primarily using okay the main texts that are being used are the editions

00:10:26.800 of Erasmus. Those are primarily built on 31 approximate manuscripts that go back to approximately

00:10:38.640 the 11th century. So there's a bit of a blurriness to that. Erasmus consulted an individual named

00:10:48.360 Bombasius in Rome to check a manuscript that existed in the Vatican known as Codex Vaticanus,

00:10:54.800 which is actually from the fourth century but if we skip ahead like 2026 today we're not only aware

00:11:01.220 of those 31 approximate manuscripts that the king james translation's base text was relied upon

00:11:06.120 but we have close just over 5 000 more greek manuscripts that have been dug up and have been

00:11:13.260 analyzed and have been transcribed and translated and so on and so forth and so that's not to cast

00:11:19.540 dispersion on the king james bible which i think is a very well done translation especially before

00:11:24.380 its time we just have more information in the 19th century we just dug out more that that

00:11:29.540 definitely makes sense so when people are reading on like esv that doesn't necessarily mean it's

00:11:35.960 like the dumbed down version of the king james no definitely not um because modern translations

00:11:42.080 take into account the breadth of the evidence so the vast majority of the manuscript evidence that

00:11:47.980 we have in terms of something like the earliest copies of the papyri there's the you know the

00:11:53.820 documents written between the second and fourth centuries on papyrus we're just not we didn't even

00:12:02.280 know of them yeah uh in in the 17th century when the king james translation now the king james

00:12:08.160 translators would have utilized that if they had it they just didn't have it um and so

00:12:13.460 in in regards to that yeah an esv is taking into consideration the breadth of the material

00:12:21.240 cool and something like the dead sea scrolls right it did you know those were discovered

00:12:26.060 between 1946 and 1957 and so we just know more now so that's why i say you know as time goes on

00:12:32.980 even though chronologically the 17th century is closer to the first century than we are

00:12:39.940 the available data that we've been able to analyze and study uh is just far more in the

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00:14:37.480 i grew up like with my dad telling me the psychological significance behind some of

00:14:46.600 these old testament stories he was always reading in the king james version and as a kid i was like

00:14:51.480 oh my gosh this is a lot i'm not really sure what's going on but then i felt like when i first

00:14:56.060 became a christian i felt like i was cheating using using the esv because i was like i get it

00:15:01.800 it resonates it feels good but like am i am i doing things i don't know yeah the easy way or

00:15:08.420 something yeah i mean if you want to read a king james version i have no problem with that but i

00:15:12.340 think there is aspects of the language that is archaic there there's language and this isn't

00:15:17.120 the fault of the king james translators there are certain wordages my friend mark ward has an

00:15:22.860 excellent book uh titled the use and abuse of the king james bible and in it he has lists of words

00:15:28.820 that are either outdated or have actually changed their meaning.

00:15:32.880 Oh, yeah, of course.

00:15:34.820 You're going to run into words.

00:15:36.120 So the key example that my friend Mark uses is Halt.

00:15:40.820 So in the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal,

00:15:45.480 you have this kind of grand narrative.

00:15:47.340 Elijah's in this competition.

00:15:50.120 At my house for our kids, we have this book that's called The God Contest.

00:15:54.460 And it's the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal, right?

00:15:57.380 the prophets of Baal they come and they're challenged by Elijah you know if Baal is the

00:16:01.660 god that exists you you try to sacrifice you put some put the bulls on the altar and see if

00:16:06.580 Baal can call down fire to burn things up then it doesn't work so then Elijah gets them to pour

00:16:11.520 all this water on the altar you know really soak it and then he calls down fire from Yahweh from

00:16:16.880 God and then he burns up and there's nothing left and in the meantime he's mocking the prophets of

00:16:22.000 Baal you know maybe Baal's on the toilet maybe Baal's gone for gone for a vacation kind of thing

00:16:26.420 um but in the midst of that the king james translation has this this terminology where

00:16:34.500 it says he's he's talking to israel and he says how long will the halt and so you think okay well

00:16:43.100 what does that word mean halt well if i asked you you know michaela what does the word halt mean

00:16:48.220 like stop suddenly yeah exactly right halt who goes there kind of thing right but if you look

00:16:54.640 at like an esv um it says something like how long will you go back and forth oh yeah that's not the

00:17:00.580 same thing and you're like wait wait a minute what's what where's the what's happening here

00:17:05.180 right that's a way different yeah until you go to the new testament and you find out that jesus

00:17:09.680 does things like he cures he heals the halt and the blind and halt in elizabethan king james

00:17:17.940 language means to to be like physically disabled to to stumble like and so when elijah says how

00:17:27.660 long will you halt thee it's like how long will you you kind of limp in in regards to this decision

00:17:34.000 yeah yeah and so that's one that's even like a word that we would associate with something that's

00:17:38.920 archaic you know halt who goes there but we're still getting it wrong wow right and so there

00:17:44.300 are things like that there are things uh there are other words that we just don't use anymore

00:17:48.540 um they're just passages in the king james so if someone is like starting out and they're just

00:17:55.680 assuming well the king james is the bible i'll read the king james i think they're it's not the

00:18:02.020 worst thing they could possibly do i just think they're going to be better served with a modern

00:18:06.960 translation that's actually going to be understandable i i was and i was pretty

00:18:12.240 familiar with the king james not from a not from like a christian perspective exactly but i was

00:18:17.760 familiar with it but esv i was like this just there's like less of uh it's less hard to listen

00:18:25.360 to god i think that way if it's in an understandable language but i was like maybe i'm being lazy or

00:18:29.680 something but i like that argument i like the halt argument i'm gonna remember that yeah that's very

00:18:34.200 interesting i often say like the english bible is changed but it's changed for the sake of clarity

00:18:38.660 not corruption so it's it's in order to actually be understood read and applied to your life

00:18:46.320 it makes sense that there are just and we just find more about what certain terms mean so in

00:18:54.240 the king james at i think i think it's second chronicles 26 18 it says at parbar westward

00:19:00.220 forth the causeway into it parbar so you read that and you go i don't know what that means

00:19:04.300 right um you were the esv and it says something like as for the court to the west there were two

00:19:09.280 at the court and four at the road itself you're like okay i know what that means and there are

00:19:15.160 certain words that in the 17th century they didn't know what a parbar was so they transliterated it

00:19:23.300 the hebrew word is literally a parbar and so they were like we don't know what this word means

00:19:28.320 we'll transliterate it and so but now because of our expansion of the semitic language we know

00:19:33.600 that means a court and so we can translate it as court so yeah does that impact like the essential

00:19:40.840 truths of the christian faith no but do you want to know what it actually says yes then read you

00:19:46.600 know an niv and esb and an niv and nlt you're you're gonna be best served in that way cool

00:19:53.840 okay um what's your perspective on whether or not a christian can lose salvation

00:20:01.800 i would say ultimately what we see within the testimony of scripture is that if someone

00:20:08.060 truly has had in the language of salvation that we see in the bible their heart of stone

00:20:15.060 removed and they're given a heart of flesh they're empowered by the spirit and we look at something

00:20:21.300 like john chapter 6 where jesus says all the father gives to me i will raise up on the last

00:20:28.820 day and no one can snatch them from my father's hand i think it is impossible for a true genuine

00:20:36.380 believer to lose their salvation now that doesn't mean that there aren't people who have like

00:20:43.440 profound experiences where they think that they are born again and then maybe later in their life

00:20:51.680 they backtrack on that or something like that i mean the parable of the the seed and the sowers

00:20:56.360 right it communicates this there are people that are going to fall on rocky ground they're going to

00:21:01.680 you know have the the shoots of the root in the shallow ground but then as the winds and the rain

00:21:08.300 come they're not going to survive um i can think of people in my own life who it appeared at face

00:21:15.680 value to have a genuine conversion experience and then later in life they decide you know i don't

00:21:22.740 actually believe this i'm just not convinced that you can know the creator of the universe and have

00:21:27.860 a personal relationship with him and then decide that that you can be made a new creation in christ

00:21:34.080 and then undo that i just i look at the angel coming to mary and saying you will name him jesus

00:21:41.140 because he will save his people and the emphaticness of that not may save his people not could save his

00:21:47.320 people but that he will save his people and so i see that and and i don't along with you know there

00:21:55.620 are passages like the gospel of john chapter 6 where jesus is talking to the jews and he's saying

00:22:02.420 things like that and then he's saying listen you don't understand what i'm saying because

00:22:06.840 my sheep hear my voice and you're not my sheep you're not getting it something's not clicking

00:22:12.080 and for that reason i think a genuine believer who has been transformed by the spirit

00:22:19.100 it is impossible to lose their salvation that doesn't mean that there aren't periods of time

00:22:23.540 where maybe we we waver um you know dark nights of the soul as john wesley would describe it

00:22:29.500 but at the end of the day the perseverance of the saints is something that is going to follow

00:22:36.280 through in the life of the believer till the end okay cool i had a experience like that when i

00:22:44.680 first when my mom had cancer and then in the hospital said it went from being like i would

00:22:52.020 say agnostic not atheist but agnostic to catholic and we were like that's weird um for a long time

00:23:01.360 after that i was like she changed you know like um she became a lot more patient and kind in a

00:23:07.260 completely different way and i i knew my mom i was 27 or something at that point so it was a big

00:23:12.160 change and i was like okay whatever that is that she has i want to have that peace like that's a

00:23:18.060 real thing everybody in my family noticed that okay maybe we weren't religious or christian but

00:23:23.120 we could see a peace she like exuded a peace that wasn't there before and she was like yeah

00:23:29.100 it's god um and then when i met my husband because he he's been a christian for his entire life

00:23:35.980 i had an experience that i thought was me getting saved and i was convinced i was saved for like

00:23:42.060 this was i think it was almost two years it might have been a year and a half

00:23:45.460 and i was reading the bible and i was praying and i was pretty convinced but then a year and a half

00:23:53.500 later it might have been two years um I like it hit me um in a completely different way than it

00:24:03.280 had before and I was like I wonder how many people haven't because you don't know and you don't know

00:24:10.440 I think you don't know until you're saved what if what it feels like or um how overwhelming that

00:24:16.720 experience is um and so I misattributed it for a whole year and a half and it took some

00:24:22.480 kind of bad periods um and then for some reason that was time for me i guess another question

00:24:32.380 that could lead off of this is how much of being saved is on the individual versus god's timing

00:24:39.220 i mean at the end of the day i think that the act of salvation of taking someone

00:24:48.160 from death to life is a work of god and god entirely i think when you read scripture and

00:24:55.920 you see you know paul in romans talking about us being enemies of god us being children of wrath

00:25:02.560 and then being becoming children of god that's a spiritual work that we're we're fighting against

00:25:11.600 the work of the spirit until our eyes are opened and in order to realize that truly and fundamentally

00:25:17.760 I believe that is what the testimony of scripture communicates is that it is a work of God in the

00:25:23.620 person's life when Jesus says that he's knocking on the door the whole reason you're able to hear

00:25:29.900 him is because there's an empowering the spirit to even hear the knocking to begin with because

00:25:34.900 our fleshly desire is going to want to drown that out we're going to be you know we're going to be

00:25:42.760 tempted by the whims and the ways of the world and the the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh

00:25:49.640 and the pride of life are going to attempt to drown that out I think so I think that the work

00:25:55.940 of salvation is entirely a work of God and I'm very thankful and I see that in my own life like

00:26:02.540 I know my own heart and I know it's kind of proclivities that are acting that are constantly

00:26:08.960 trying to pull me away and apart from god breaking into my life and taking my heart of stone and

00:26:16.200 giving me a heart of flesh my desire is to choose all of those things right it's not necessarily

00:26:23.060 that god is throwing us a life preserver and it's our duty to like reach out and grab the life

00:26:27.360 preserver i think we're actively trying to swim down to the bottom of the ocean and that's way

00:26:32.320 darker i shouldn't even laugh at that but i know but you think about like our own our own like the

00:26:37.300 the innateness of our depravity and I think you know there are there glimmers of hope and that

00:26:43.080 we're all created in the image of God and so of course you know even people who have no understanding

00:26:48.760 no desire for God can do good things of course they can because they're they bear the image of

00:26:54.480 their creator and so it's less of a matter of like can you do good things if you're not a believer

00:26:59.440 and more of a question of what's the point of those good things to begin with you know where

00:27:05.340 are we coming up with a standard to ground what we call good or not good but i i think it genuinely

00:27:11.380 is it's a work of god in our life that thanks be to god he broke into my life and he renewed me

00:27:19.620 and he opened my eyes there's con there's this constant language of um he that is jesus saying

00:27:26.800 if you have ears to hear listen you know if you have eyes to see see and then that's parallel

00:27:34.180 sometimes even with his miracles you know opening a blind man's eyes that this blind man he can't

00:27:40.220 see he can't comprehend the world around him visually until i open his eyes and then they're

00:27:45.880 being almost like a spiritual parallel in the teachings of jesus where then he's saying you're

00:27:51.300 not going to understand these things you know you you my my sheep hear my voice and you're not my

00:27:55.880 sheep so you're not getting this yeah right he raises lazarus from the dead and then what did

00:28:00.600 the pharisees try to do they scheme to try to figure out how to kill lazarus well i'm sorry

00:28:05.660 did you just see what happened so i i think i think it is a the the the like theological term

00:28:11.620 is monergism it's a monergistic act it's a it's a the single act it's god that's you know reaching

00:28:18.400 into our lives and he's he's renewing our our minds to really understand what's going on so then

00:28:27.180 one of the things that happened to me when i was saved was even though i'd been reading the bible

00:28:32.500 and trying to understand it was that it was like a different language came out from it

00:28:35.820 i was like i was getting way deeper meaning i was understanding parts that i had almost skipped

00:28:41.940 like subconsciously and it's not like i was trying to skim through the bible but i was re i was

00:28:48.140 rereading parts of the bible and was like i didn't even notice this like a whole line like a lot of

00:28:52.260 the demonic stuff i didn't realize how much there is about demons in the bible until i read it when

00:28:58.320 i was saved and i was like i've read this before and just skimmed over that part that's terrifying

00:29:04.420 yeah um so then why is the purpose of talking about it then to make people aware and like help

00:29:14.920 them identify patterns of when god is kind of knocking on the door is that do you think the

00:29:19.800 purpose behind spreading the gospel yeah i think we kind of live in this tension between

00:29:25.180 jesus's great commission to make disciples of all nations and something like when peter writes to

00:29:31.180 the dispersed church in the ancient world and he says in first peter 3 15 and 16 but in your hearts

00:29:35.880 over your christ is lord always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give

00:29:41.020 the reason for the hope that you have and he prefaces it while he follows it up by saying

00:29:45.700 but do so with gentleness and respect keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak

00:29:49.780 maliciously against their good behavior in christ will be ashamed of their slander

00:29:52.460 so it's this juxtaposition do i believe that salvation is a work of the spirit yes i do

00:29:57.300 but i'm i also am commanded to give an answer to give a reason and the word that's used there in

00:30:07.080 greek is apologia it's a legal term it's literally what a defense lawyer would do when standing up

00:30:13.660 before a jury saying I'm giving a legal defense for my client and so yeah we we give an answer

00:30:21.960 for the hope that we have and part of that is you know I've talked to people who they've put up all

00:30:27.880 these barriers they have these intellectual barriers barriers to God and I talk to them

00:30:32.300 and as those kind of fall by the way I can see they're like okay I have no more excuse I have

00:30:36.620 no more excuse I have no more excuse and then God uses that to lead this person into the admission

00:30:43.340 that okay you know i i have a decision now i either follow god or i choose to rebel but um

00:30:51.760 and i think that's that's where kind of the conversation is engaged in is that i don't

00:30:59.300 think salvation is an intellectual endeavor i don't think it's just about knowing enough

00:31:04.480 because if you can if you could prove god you wouldn't need faith too i think i think there's

00:31:10.440 a component of that it's it's it's also the fact that faith in the greek the term pistis can equally

00:31:17.740 as well be translated as trust and so it's something like this like i trust based on evidence

00:31:24.100 in that my wife is back in canada with my four children and i have trust i have faith that she

00:31:32.620 is doing everything that is right to parent those children right in my absence but i know that i

00:31:39.680 have faith in that because i know she is i have evidence to point to that i know the character of

00:31:45.260 my wife and i think in that sense there's an aspect of there are certain things that we don't

00:31:50.620 understand about god but based on the character of what he has given us to work off of we can then

00:31:57.060 you know fill in the gaps and say maybe i don't understand everything but i do know enough to put

00:32:04.980 my trust and faith in God in moments where I don't really know what's going on because of what he has

00:32:10.380 revealed to me and so there's there's that I think there's also an aspect of you know God uses the

00:32:18.880 evidence that he gives into the world to when the person stands before him in judgment to say you

00:32:25.740 know you you really don't have an excuse you were given even if it's just creation at the beginning

00:32:31.680 of the book of romans paul says that god's invisible qualities and divine attributes have

00:32:35.660 been revealed by nature by creation so that no man is without excuse and that word is unapologatus

00:32:42.980 without a defense and there's an aspect of no one's going to be able to stand before god and

00:32:48.540 say i just didn't know because there's an aspect of the creation that's also communicating something

00:32:55.240 maybe you know not specifically about who the character of jesus is but i want people to

00:33:01.560 understand that there's a decision that they need to make but i i think i think it's reasonable i

00:33:08.600 think the evidence is on the side of the christian worldview here's a question for you when you think

00:33:14.320 about the questions of like the intellectual barriers to faith

00:33:21.240 what do you find is the biggest hang-ups for people well

00:33:29.200 let me see how can i word this so one of the really intense i don't know what word to use

00:33:39.440 other than the spiritual things i went through like when i got saved because it was it was a very

00:33:46.860 dramatic experience for me was god telling me and not in a like voice exactly but showing me that

00:33:55.660 i had been trying to rationalize like all the way down um something that i couldn't rationalize

00:34:03.000 that I was too small to rationalize. So to answer that question, like how does

00:34:08.000 like the kind of rationalization play a role or, or hinder people? I think people are trying to

00:34:16.720 rationalize something that you can't, that you can't rationalize. And I think it says in the

00:34:21.940 Bible that you need faith is part of it. Faith is faith is all of it. So I, what, like what

00:34:28.900 changed for me was obviously if somebody can somebody could explain the historical

00:34:37.540 evidence but i kind of knew the historical evidence and that's not what really did it

00:34:42.240 for me even though that's what i thought would um i needed to have that extra step of

00:34:49.040 you have faith that this was real and faith that we were created in the image of god and

00:34:57.140 everything that has to do with that and that's part of what saves you and that's what i was shown

00:35:01.980 when i was saved and i was like oh okay and it was like this weight was lifted that i didn't have to

00:35:08.180 understand all the way to the bottom and that not only did i not have to but i wasn't able to

00:35:13.020 like i there was there's no way to to prove it so i i think um it was kind of a roundabout answer

00:35:20.500 but i think a lot of people are stuck on proving why it makes sense all the way to the bottom when

00:35:25.640 part of it is that you you need faith and you can't explain something like god all the way to

00:35:34.620 the bottom so that's what i was shown was just like kind of how dare you try to explain something

00:35:41.660 as big as me all the way to the bottom you can't do it yeah yeah i don't know if that answers

00:35:48.080 your question yeah no i i i get what you're saying though i mean i think there really is

00:35:52.940 something to say like i'm a i'm i find my default is very heady but then i interact with and work

00:36:01.340 with a lot of people who are not believers in terms of the christian faith but know a lot more

00:36:08.520 about the bible than maybe i even ever will and i'm constantly thinking okay well what what's the

00:36:15.620 difference why isn't that switch toggled and i think you know when you read scripture and you

00:36:22.380 see Paul saying things like faith is a gift you're saved by faith and through grace and that

00:36:32.760 that's a gift it's something that God gives you I think it helps me understand that I'm never

00:36:40.420 going to argue anyone into the kingdom nor should I try to because that would be exhausting you know

00:36:46.840 every conversation I had I had the expectation that someone was going to fall on their knees

00:36:50.040 and say good teacher what must i do to inherit eternal life um it's completely unrealistic yeah

00:36:55.200 and and it would be exhausting and so i shouldn't try to you know i sometimes say um that's the

00:37:02.680 spirit's job right the holy spirit has the job to do that my application to join the trinity has

00:37:08.620 been denied i failed the minimum requirements so let try to like my endeavor to steal the holy

00:37:15.040 spirit's job is a is a work in futility and i shouldn't be trying to do it but i still think

00:37:21.400 you know i'm excited to tell people yeah about that which i think is verifiably true even when

00:37:29.200 there are legitimate true divine mysteries yes i like that that was a much better answer than

00:37:36.400 the answer i gave you your answer was great okay i've got i've got some other good questions

00:37:41.760 um okay this has been on my mind what what do you think the biblical view of suicide is

00:37:51.020 wow okay just throw that out there yeah i mean

00:37:56.520 suicide is a complex topic because it's wrapped up in a lot of pain and suffering i gave let me

00:38:06.420 give you an example okay yeah because i just had this conversation with my husband because

00:38:09.860 like i've wondered this what happens if you have someone who's been in a battle

00:38:15.140 and they're very very injured and in a lot of pain and they decide to take their own life

00:38:21.540 and this is like an injury that's going to do them in and they're stuck somewhere yeah like

00:38:26.960 what happens to those because i find it hard to believe that that falls into the category of

00:38:34.200 something that dooms you but i but um and then i tried to do some digging into the bible was like

00:38:41.460 does it talk about suicide anywhere dooming anybody so that's just some context around

00:38:49.600 yeah i mean this was an interesting conversation because uh early on in the protestant reformation

00:38:55.400 And Martin Luther, when he's involved in kind of his ragings against the abuses of the Catholic Church,

00:39:05.520 there's a particular story where one of his congregants commits suicide.

00:39:09.820 And they won't allow this, I believe he was like young, like in his 20s, to be buried on the church grounds because this is a damnable sin.

00:39:20.520 And in kind of a rage, Martin Luther, Martin Luther is a little bit of an emotional person.

00:39:25.400 he he goes and he starts digging a grave for this boy on the church and saying oh wow that

00:39:34.400 you know this person was consumed by satan like satan was the one who led this person to lie to

00:39:42.780 himself to commit murder against his own image and there's kind of a wrestling there in that

00:39:52.440 when you're overcome in those moments i mean so a friend of actually the organization i work for

00:40:01.360 a guy named ewan golliger who's an md phd in in toronto um wrote a book called how then shall we

00:40:07.560 die which talks a lot about this things like suicide assisted suicide um a very relevant

00:40:14.540 conversation particularly where i live in canada with made medical assistance and yeah yeah and

00:40:19.920 And one of the things that I found very profound about what Ewan articulates is that he says,

00:40:25.960 you know, human life is intrinsically bearing of worth.

00:40:32.420 We have worth by nature of bearing the image of God.

00:40:36.080 That's intrinsic to us.

00:40:37.980 It's not about what you can contribute to society.

00:40:40.420 And one of the dangers of allowing ourselves to buy into something like medical assistance

00:40:48.500 and dying is that we allow ourselves to say that if I'm no longer able to contribute because I am

00:40:56.400 too depressed or too in pain or too in a state of any range of suffering, then I don't deserve to

00:41:04.900 live. And even if we don't intend it to, what that tassily kind of says is that you don't actually

00:41:11.560 have intrinsic worth, but your ability to no longer contribute because of whatever the range

00:41:16.980 circumstances are means that you should be removed from society now that is I think more

00:41:22.780 application to something like made for someone who has a treatable issue than it does for someone

00:41:30.400 who's genuinely like in in the the situation that you're positing that they are now going

00:41:35.400 through chemotherapy and they're they're they're just in so much pain and and I'm sympathetic to

00:41:40.140 that I'm sympathetic to that because I think there is a conversation about quality of life

00:41:45.800 And at the exact same time, I feel the tension of also understanding that, you know, life is sacred no matter what.

00:41:52.920 There's a particular person in my home church community in Toronto who has MS.

00:42:00.420 And though she's very early, like in her 40s, she has been declining for years and is in a very precarious state right now.

00:42:15.800 In that, you know, she she's really not lucid most of the time, can't move, can't talk in a lot of pain.

00:42:25.580 Yeah. And so looking at this particular individual and knowing that she is just in those moments where she's able to communicate so joyful in spite of this is it's convicting to me.

00:42:40.080 in thinking about my own struggle with whatever you know fill in the black i'm not as bad as carol

00:42:48.520 carol is in a genuine state of something that would be a nightmare for most people

00:42:54.620 and yet carol's life is sacred and there's something about that that speaks profoundly

00:43:03.240 to me and just the perseverance of understanding how she lives her life i i don't claim to

00:43:14.340 understand what any individual is going through especially in those kind of circumstances

00:43:19.980 and far be it for me to pass judgment on someone who's genuinely in those kind of states but at

00:43:28.280 the end of the day I would want to say you know don't buy into a culture of death that tells you

00:43:33.540 that your worth is less because you are struggling or you are in pain or you are suffering or God

00:43:45.000 cares for you more than you could ever know and the gift of life even in the times where we don't

00:43:53.420 feel like it is a gift is still sacred and so you know something like the command to not murder

00:44:00.820 I think we should take very seriously you know there's something about

00:44:04.940 the violation against the sacredness of someone else's life or my own life that I think that I

00:44:12.740 think we should take seriously but it's a it's a very hard question in regards to the conversation

00:44:17.920 of suicide it's tricky because you can see like the maid situation in canada is insane

00:44:24.140 and i've covered that a couple of times on the podcast where it's like i've had some rough

00:44:28.900 periods of time where i never got to that point you know but i wasn't very far from getting to

00:44:35.460 that point where like maybe death would have been easier but for like short trials in life that is

00:44:42.260 so it's so risky to have that option so available um and it's like what five percent of deaths now

00:44:49.860 or something in canada are from maid i don't don't quote me on that stat i just read that stat

00:44:54.940 it was on x i don't know if it's real right but it's shockingly high no matter what the number is

00:45:00.000 it's scary bad but then i can also see you know like maid's been available in some states in the

00:45:05.580 us for for decades if you're in the last six months of life and you're in a lot of chronic

00:45:13.380 pain and you have a you know stage four cancer and you don't want to put your family through that

00:45:20.340 and no one really had a complaint about that until it moved beyond that at least not that i'd heard

00:45:27.360 of they're like that's a little bit that's different than this like easy access or even

00:45:33.580 the healthcare system being like well surgery is going to be a couple year wait time would you

00:45:38.380 rather die yeah which is what's happening in Canada which is it's incredibly to describe it

00:45:45.300 as problematic is such a gross understatement but but it really is it's a marginalizing of value

00:45:52.840 it is and what makes it I don't know if it makes it worse or not but the fact that it takes so long

00:45:59.680 to get health care help in canada or that certain things aren't available yeah is there aren't even

00:46:06.140 like other options for these desperate people it makes me so angry the maid situation in canada

00:46:11.360 it's so bad that was a good that was a nuanced answer i think that's a tricky that's a tricky

00:46:16.600 question that's why i asked you what do you think only the easy questions on the michaela peterson

00:46:21.040 podcast uh okay i've got i've got a fun one um what is so can you explain the gift of speaking

00:46:30.680 in tongues and have you seen anybody with that and does it still exist so speaking in tongues

00:46:40.320 in the new testament is almost exclusively an actual language oh okay let's get into this

00:46:49.480 okay i don't think i've heard that before so when you look at something like what happens at

00:46:55.000 pentecost when you have a number of the disciples you know peter's there they go back i think this

00:47:01.580 is an interesting narrative because they're preaching the gospel at the scene of the crime

00:47:05.520 only weeks after the actual resurrection of jesus in a place where people could have seen

00:47:09.580 jesus crucified and so it's this interesting statement in terms of if they were purposefully

00:47:15.080 lying about this whole narrative why did they go back to ground zero where they would have known

00:47:19.380 that people could have seen Jesus die talking about how he was resurrected.

00:47:23.220 But then there's this instance where the spirit descends

00:47:27.200 and appears above the heads of the apostles in tongues of fire.

00:47:32.840 And they're speaking in the language of individuals from the Jewish diaspora

00:47:37.600 who had congregated in Jerusalem for this particular event,

00:47:42.080 which was like a, it was a religious gathering, right?

00:47:46.020 So people from all around the Roman world who are in the Jewish diaspora, who aren't necessarily speaking, say, the native language of Jerusalem, are gathering, and the apostles are speaking to them in their own languages.

00:48:01.200 And so then you have this instance of their speaking in tongues.

00:48:04.500 Now, later on in the Pauline epistles, Paul says, there needs to be a translator.

00:48:09.240 There needs to be someone, if you have an instance of speaking in tongues, there needs to be someone who can interpret.

00:48:14.540 Okay.

00:48:14.980 And so I think what we see primarily is that this is a kind of supernatural experience

00:48:23.800 of someone communicating in an existing language, in a language that they don't otherwise know.

00:48:33.000 Okay.

00:48:34.980 But the caveat to that is that then Paul talks about the language of angels.

00:48:39.500 and so this is usually what's capitalized on in say like the charismatic communities of

00:48:44.500 christianity yeah i'm very wary of a lot of that although i don't totally understand it entirely

00:48:50.320 i have never encountered that um i'm not precluding that it is a possibility because

00:48:57.380 you do have some of these passages to talk about you know we speak in the languages of angels

00:49:01.000 um but i think what's going on there is is that you have these kind of understandings of what

00:49:08.500 sometimes are referred to as the spiritual sign gifts of speaking in tongues of healing in a

00:49:13.260 prophecy they're referred to in the new testament i think something is going on in the new testament

00:49:18.300 that's different and i think it's going on in the apostolic period in this time period where you have

00:49:24.460 the disciples of jesus going around and preaching things for the foundation of the building of the

00:49:30.000 church where there's a uniqueness to all of it in that time period in that time period so it's

00:49:37.300 It's normative in a way that it is not now, in that the disciples are going around and they're, say, healing people in a way that we just don't see now because the disciples are building, the apostles are building the foundation of the church.

00:49:51.900 And even if you think about the analogy of a foundation in terms of, like, architecture, you don't continue to build foundations upon foundations upon foundations upon foundations.

00:50:03.880 That actually makes the building, it compromises the integrity of the building.

00:50:08.000 And I think in that period of time, you have things like the New Testament books being written.

00:50:15.100 But in this age of the apostolic witness, Jesus appears as the resurrected Messiah, as the Savior, as the Son of God, as the second person of the Trinity to his disciples in the upper room.

00:50:27.560 He breathes on them and he says, I give you my spirit and they are given the authority

00:50:31.560 to communicate in the name of Jesus.

00:50:34.480 And so there's a different level of authority that is then codified in the books of the

00:50:39.440 New Testament.

00:50:40.340 And so now we have the New Testament.

00:50:43.000 Now we have the books of scripture where God speaks directly to us in a different way.

00:50:48.680 And so, I mean, I think those things happen.

00:50:52.100 I have a miracle story in my own life where I believe I was healed of something.

00:50:57.220 and so I think those things are a reality I think healing speaking in tongues those things happen

00:51:06.600 prophesying I just don't think they're normative in the way that we see happening in the New

00:51:13.840 Testament because I think something is going on that's different to establish the church

00:51:19.080 and to kind of give it the groundwork in order to set it off to what it is but if I'm taking

00:51:26.640 the reading of what i see going on in the new testament tongues is almost exclusively an actual

00:51:36.340 language that someone can understand and paul in the life of the church requires there to be an

00:51:41.760 interpreter wow i don't know what i was expecting for an answer but i wasn't expecting that answer

00:51:47.860 okay do you expect me to burst out in in tongues that would have been amazing that would have gone

00:51:54.400 viral right that's the episode yeah that's the kind of clip i need um no i think i've talked

00:52:00.280 to a lot of people that are not not charismatics but um maybe more open to that i think it depends

00:52:08.980 like not not open to like that far right but but i've also talked even people from around here there

00:52:15.680 are a lot of churches around here in scottsdale and i know there was one lady that was doing my

00:52:20.620 lashes that was going to a church and she said there was like a someone who could who could see

00:52:26.820 the future and all these things and i was like maybe right maybe but also maybe not and maybe

00:52:34.220 the maybe not is fairly likely and in that case maybe you should be very careful right about what's

00:52:38.760 going on over there charismania is what we call it sometimes yeah yeah and you can see how people

00:52:46.580 could get swept up in that and then be like conned by people which just gives christianity

00:52:51.660 a bad name so i was like so i've seen i've seen that around i don't know not that i was comparing

00:52:57.580 you to the that person but i've just seen that um i haven't heard that speaking in tongues might be

00:53:04.540 a language and i didn't know that that section from paul so that's that's cool that makes sense

00:53:09.840 that makes sense to me um okay here's one i that i want to use where do i have it

00:53:17.660 my pregnancy has my brain just it's pretty rough just being alive right now but i'm making it

00:53:25.920 through give me a sec did i delete it okay i can just remember it

00:53:34.320 okay best historical evidence for the resurrection oh okay best historical

00:53:42.040 resurrect evidence for the resurrection i mean i take i take kind of a cumulative approach to

00:53:48.340 the resurrection in that one of the best pieces of evidence that i think speaks to

00:53:55.560 the tangibleness of the resurrection is that you and i michaela are talking about it 2 000 years

00:54:01.200 later. Yeah. In that there are other messianic movements in the ancient world. But I bet you

00:54:09.980 couldn't name any of the individuals involved in those. And there's a reason why we're asking

00:54:14.520 questions about Jesus of Nazareth and not Simon Bar Kokhba. And that's because Simon Bar Kokhba

00:54:22.760 led a revolt and died and his movement died with him. And so I think there's something unique

00:54:29.640 about the movement of jesus that requires an explanation for what's going on because we see

00:54:37.420 the disciples scared and hiding when the crucifixion event takes place simon right peter who's supposed

00:54:47.300 to be the good guy right he's like jesus's right hand man tells peter you're going to you're going

00:54:57.420 to deny me and lo and behold that's what he does right when push comes to shove peter decides three

00:55:04.600 times to say i don't even know who that jesus guy is and the disciples the 11 of them because

00:55:11.460 judas has gone and hung himself are hiding in an upper room scared and cowering what what takes

00:55:18.860 them from that to being this incredible missionary force, to be able to go back into Jerusalem on

00:55:28.280 something like the day of Pentecost, proclaiming the resurrection to a group of people who very

00:55:32.260 well could have seen Jesus crucified. Something happens, and I think there needs to at minimum

00:55:37.680 be an accounting for that. And you talk to secular scholars, and they will grant, okay,

00:55:42.760 the disciples had some sort of experience. Yeah. Right. Something motivated them to do this

00:55:50.440 because it just seems a little bit crazy. I mean, there's the adage that liars make poor martyrs

00:55:58.340 in that you will die for something you believe to be true, but something you know to be a lie,

00:56:06.060 it's a lot harder to actually go to your grave too. Yeah. You won't push yourself that far.

00:56:10.420 Yeah. So sometimes when people hear, you know, liars, or sorry, yeah, liars make back martyrs, point to something like the, like suicide bombers, or those who flew the planes into the towers on 9-11.

00:56:25.060 Yeah.

00:56:25.440 And my answer to that is that those aren't martyrs, those are murderers, A.

00:56:30.340 And B, they don't actually know definitively that what they're dying for is true.

00:56:35.200 They might believe it's true, but the difference between them and the disciples is that the

00:56:39.720 disciples both were there when Jesus died and claimed to have seen him resurrected.

00:56:46.800 Whereas the people who hijacked the planes on 9-11 weren't there when Muhammad was waging

00:56:54.940 his, you know, escapades in seventh century Arabia. So they're going off of what they believe

00:57:02.060 to be true, not what they know definitively to be true objectively within their kind of

00:57:07.000 own conscious experience. And so I think, you know, there needs to be an account. I think the

00:57:12.440 breadth of the historical case for the credibility of the gospels is comprehensive enough that it

00:57:19.100 gives us a base work to say that the disciples were not lying, that they believed what they

00:57:26.220 were doing to be true, and that the account for that, all of the kind of alternatives to

00:57:34.700 Jesus's resurrection, I think ultimately fall short. Whether we're talking about group hallucinations

00:57:40.600 or, you know, whatever that be, the disciples stealing the body and trying to make up a story,

00:57:46.080 i think i think they're implausible based on then what transpires in the years following

00:57:52.840 jesus's actual you know death that was great i i already i had known about the like if you

00:58:01.500 if you don't believe in a lie then you're not going to be a martyr for it i knew that but i

00:58:05.300 hadn't connected that to they had also seen him be crucified which everybody basically even secular

00:58:12.600 scholars believe so yeah and they know that it's costly so a few a few uh you know uh a short time

00:58:20.560 after pentecost stephen who is you know part of this inner group he's not one of the disciples

00:58:25.480 but he's part of this inner group he is then proclaiming the you know the gospel message and

00:58:29.720 then he gets stoned to death and the disciples see this and so that's like a warning shot across the

00:58:34.620 bow yeah they at that point know this is costly they could lose their lives for it that is the

00:58:41.700 moment that you decide okay you know we've gone a little too far our friends are being killed

00:58:47.460 yeah so maybe we maybe we can slow our roll in this whole conversation on the jesus stuff

00:58:52.800 but that's not what they do they seem to be more empowered than ever and so it's just it's i i think

00:58:59.320 we see an interesting test case it's the whole c.s lewis in mere christianity has the whole uh that

00:59:05.080 what's referred to as the lewisian trilemma the jesus is either a liar he's a lunatic or he's lord

00:59:09.960 and and i think that's still i think that still applies today you know if you evaluate what

00:59:15.400 jesus's claims actually are about himself he's either lying through his teeth he's either a

00:59:20.800 lunatic or he's the lord of the universe who actually validated the claims that he made about

00:59:26.760 who he is by rising from the dead and so i think you know i think the evidence is on the side

00:59:33.040 though of course not everybody agrees that that actually happened that jesus predicted his own

00:59:38.500 death and resurrection and then pulled it off and i have a friend who likes to say the people

00:59:43.640 who rise from the dead have more credibility and authority than people who don't rise from the dead

00:59:48.080 and so that that means something that's good i'm going to use that in conversations with people

00:59:56.140 unsuspecting people there you go who aren't christians yet i'm going to remember that

01:00:00.240 the steven part is good too because yes and they see other people suffer for for okay that's perfect

01:00:06.540 okay um i want to wrap up but i want to ask you a few pa questions okay uh like i said i'm really

01:00:15.360 glad you came to teach i think people on the platform are going to be absolutely thrilled

01:00:21.280 and i've heard good things from everybody who was there and i would have gone except i'm pregnant

01:00:25.920 and kind of i'm just focusing on surviving and doing that for now fair enough but um what made

01:00:33.120 you decide to agree to teach at peterson academy it's a good question i mean i think i think you

01:00:39.380 guys are doing something that's novel i think you're tapping into something as someone who

01:00:45.300 has a broader kind of exposure to the academic world i i think that traditional academia

01:00:56.480 could very well be in trouble because of a number of factors but i think that there's room for

01:01:04.480 broadening the categories of how we educate people in a world where i'm seeing students

01:01:11.040 turn in things that are very clearly written by ai yeah where a lot of the universities are

01:01:17.480 turning into diploma mills and where education is becoming sort of this fuzzy category of

01:01:23.960 you have a piece of paper or some letters behind your name but you don't seem to have any actual

01:01:31.220 knowledge is becoming complicated and so i think there's room for expanding the category of what

01:01:40.700 we understand as post-secondary education and so i like what you guys are doing i like what your

01:01:47.540 your data started because i think that it's tapping into something that has potential longevity

01:01:54.460 in a way that is affordable and is approachable and that people actually want to invest in

01:02:03.000 peterson academy is doing something that uh i think is worth being involved in thank you

01:02:09.000 i hope so i think ai is gonna change i think it already is a lot i think i think i'm already

01:02:16.520 he's seeing i had a friend who had a student who clearly submitted an ai assignment yeah and he

01:02:22.340 gave him a zero and then um and then the student sent in an apology letter and he thought i wonder

01:02:28.680 if i check this by ai whether the apology letter was written by ai and the the the probability of

01:02:34.880 it being written by ai was also very high so i mean we're oh my gosh i'm i think we may very well

01:02:42.540 see a i wrote most of my essays in my undergrad by hand oh okay and so i i think we could be going

01:02:51.540 back to that i think either that or oral examination because an oral examination at

01:02:56.380 minimum communicates that you actually understand what you're learning yeah yeah agree that or

01:03:01.720 they're gonna have to come up with some ai tech that can identify ai faster than ai can stop

01:03:07.860 sounding like ai which seems less likely right uh i don't know or just do by hand that would be an

01:03:14.160 easy way to do it it's hard to write those long essays by hand but something needs to change

01:03:18.320 because yeah yeah something's got to give we're entering into like a a uh um a point of of

01:03:28.780 saturation where it's getting tricky with the students that are coming in yeah that's for sure

01:03:35.740 and is your course aimed at secular people or christians or is it kind of applicable to everybody

01:03:42.320 my attempt is just to make it relevant to anybody who's who's tuning in i mean i obviously have the

01:03:47.400 bias of the fact that i'm a christian i believe this stuff is true and so i'm coming at something

01:03:52.580 like the 66 books of the bible with a presupposition that i believe that they're inspired

01:03:56.880 i believe that they have the mark of divinity on them but i hope a fair-minded individual is able

01:04:04.680 to actually just look at what i'm presenting and say at minimum okay there's there's reasonable

01:04:10.660 grounds to assert that this is communicating things that are true that there's reasonable

01:04:16.960 grounds to look at something like the gospel biographies of jesus and say that they trace

01:04:22.480 back to early eyewitness testimony i think i think that is the case and i think it's it's

01:04:27.900 verifiable in that regard um i'm hoping to present foils in in quotations of individuals who

01:04:35.500 communicate opposite positions of what i hold and then say you know there are reasons why they hold

01:04:41.700 these it's never it's it's hardly ever a case of we're we're arguing about the data it's it's the

01:04:49.600 conclusions that we draw from the evidence that we present and so it's up to every individual

01:04:56.340 to look at what is presented i'm just hoping to be able to present enough information

01:05:00.740 that communicates i i think this stuff is reliable i think it communicates what is so

01:05:07.220 a word that's often used in my field is verisimilitude which is simply a it's a great

01:05:12.400 term but it just means the appearance of likelihood truth and probability and so in

01:05:18.340 historiography in history we're looking for verisimilitude in all sorts of fields does it

01:05:24.240 have the fingerprint of authenticity. And I think when we're looking at the various books that make

01:05:29.580 up the canon of the Bible, it does have that. And so hopefully I'm trying to present that in a way

01:05:37.200 that is reasonable and understandable. That's great. I would have taken a course on like the

01:05:44.100 historical reliability of the Bible in college before I was a Christian, for sure, because that's

01:05:49.780 what i was looking for i took a uh i went to an art school so it was already getting pretty

01:05:54.620 progressive when i went there this was like 2012 2013 but i took a intro to theology course

01:06:00.680 which nobody took and the average age in there was probably 70 and it was all men and me

01:06:09.200 i don't even know if they went to any other courses in the school it was concordia in

01:06:13.580 montreal so i didn't know like 65 or 70 year old men were even going there they're in this

01:06:18.200 intro to theology course and it was so far over my head it might not have been an intro course it

01:06:23.980 might have been a 300 level course i can't remember but it was so far over my head that

01:06:27.720 what i was trying to find was any information about the reliability of the bible um anyway

01:06:35.140 i think i ended up dropping that course i was taking latin at the time too nice oh latin latin

01:06:41.040 was harder than all other five courses i was taking yeah and i was in psychology and classics

01:06:45.320 and all i was doing was latin i and i got sick so i eventually dropped latin too but i was like

01:06:50.720 why do i need to learn this many conjugations of each word in a language that doesn't exist anymore

01:06:55.200 i think if i had been healthier at the time i would have finished it because it was really

01:06:59.640 interesting to learn like the well you know this but the background behind a lot of the words we

01:07:05.820 use now i found that interesting but i had no memory i can't believe how good your memory has

01:07:10.320 been by the way and i know i have pregnancy fog going on so i'm feeling like lesser because of

01:07:15.640 that but the number of names you just remembered was absurd well it's it's very pocketed because

01:07:23.720 if you ask my wife i don't remember anything but um i think you know part of the reason

01:07:29.420 that i am really motivated for this stuff is because i don't i talk to a lot of people who

01:07:36.640 way smarter than me. And a lot of the stuff that they say, I feel like I'm trying to like boil

01:07:43.920 down to a way that has it comprehensive to me. And so I hope that one of the reasons why

01:07:53.260 people have resonated with the material that I put out in the world is because I'm not actually

01:07:57.880 that smart. I'm just really interested in the topic. And so I'm trying to first learn it myself

01:08:05.700 in order to be able to tell other people about it

01:08:08.100 in a way that I wish I had heard it

01:08:11.200 because that wasn't,

01:08:14.380 I also took like an intro to New Testament

01:08:16.400 at York University and in my undergrad.

01:08:20.560 And one of the things that stood out to me was

01:08:23.760 if you take a class on Buddhism,

01:08:25.520 there's a lot of people who are actually practicing Buddhists

01:08:27.500 who are teaching those classes.

01:08:28.960 Or if you take a class on Islam,

01:08:30.320 a lot of the professors are practicing Muslims.

01:08:32.600 But if you take a class on Christianity

01:08:34.640 in a secular university it's going to be taught by an atheist or an agnostic that's very true

01:08:40.600 and so um i thought you know i realized this very early on i'm sure it's not true at every

01:08:46.440 university and every humanities department everywhere but i was like there seems to be

01:08:51.500 something going on here where the presuppositions are a lot more on the secular materialistic side

01:08:58.120 than they are not for Christianity whereas when I take the class on Islam the guy is a believer in

01:09:05.520 Islam and so I yeah that's played into the conversation for me is I've studied under

01:09:14.900 mostly people who don't believe this stuff and that's helped me fine-tune how I do believe it

01:09:21.960 and interestingly enough it hasn't I think my dad when I got involved in this was very worried

01:09:27.880 that i was going to study this stuff and that you know the the questions and the pushbacks and all

01:09:34.380 those things were going to cause me to doubt what i believed more than was necessary and i actually

01:09:40.440 found the opposite true reading the the the people who the detractors of the christian worldview

01:09:46.780 only made me go huh i've never thought about it that way before let me dig into why that might be

01:09:51.640 and only given me confidence that what I believed all the way along

01:09:57.340 or what we have now is what the original authors wrote

01:09:59.760 in regards to the scripture

01:10:01.100 or that we do have the relevant historical,

01:10:05.660 in the case of the New Testament,

01:10:07.520 I think eyewitness accounts of who Jesus was

01:10:10.380 in juxtaposition to other books that were floating around

01:10:14.320 bearing the names of Jesus and the apostles

01:10:15.820 that just had no credibility.

01:10:18.400 What are those?

01:10:19.680 Okay, so like the Gnostic Gospels.

01:10:21.640 or things like that like the gospel of peter the gospel of mary the gospel of judas the gospel of

01:10:25.480 thomas i don't even know if i know about these okay so the podcast is not done okay but then

01:10:31.400 then it can be done but what is this yeah so there were other books at the time written by other

01:10:36.000 eyewitness people so no okay so you have the first century you have the gospels and even then the

01:10:44.520 understanding is that there's one gospel message right that's the message of who jesus is and what

01:10:48.460 came to do. But the idea is that those gospels are according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

01:10:54.620 One gospel, but four accounts of it. Eventually, gospel literature is kind of framed in an

01:11:01.300 understanding of it looks a particular way. But there were groups in the subsequent centuries

01:11:06.080 after Jesus's death that aimed to appropriate Jesus and the disciples. So they wrote documents

01:11:13.660 that tried to shoehorn the credibility of adding Jesus into their philosophical systems

01:11:19.440 in order to kind of bring Jesus into the mix.

01:11:25.560 So interestingly enough, they almost always portrayed Jesus as a pagan mystic.

01:11:30.020 And that's very palatable for the pagan mystical world.

01:11:33.260 And so at even face value, we can go, okay, is it more likely that the first century

01:11:37.760 Nazarene rabbi itinerant Jesus of Nazareth was actually a pagan mystic that later people tried

01:11:45.860 to paint as a Jew or is it the opposite right that he's clearly you know born in Bethlehem

01:11:52.420 growing up in Nazareth wandering around Galilee that in this Jewish saturated Hebraic world

01:12:00.900 and that later people are like let's make him into a little bit more of a like a pagan philosopher

01:12:06.700 her. I think that's what's going on, right? But you have documents, even early documents,

01:12:12.300 something like the Gospel of Thomas, 114 sayings. It's one of the more famous ones because in 1945,

01:12:18.780 it was discovered in the Nakamadi Desert, what's known as the Nakamadi Library. Also contains

01:12:24.220 other documents like the Secret Gospel of John and the Gospel of Philip. But the Gospel of Thomas

01:12:29.820 is one of the more kind of famous, well-known ones. It's not a gospel in the formal sense

01:12:35.240 of like a birth life death and resurrection but it's 114 sayings of jesus but the this gnostic

01:12:42.840 group which so the the term gnostic comes from the greek word gnosis which means knowledge

01:12:49.660 and the idea is within historical biblical christianity salvation is something that is

01:12:55.360 done external to you on your behalf by the finished work of jesus gnosticism comes from the east

01:13:02.240 it makes its way into the the roman world and it starts to appropriate and include individuals

01:13:12.500 into its system and so by the second century jesus gets kind of by osmosis grouped into

01:13:19.020 these philosophical systems and though there's a whole but there's dozens of different gnostic

01:13:24.260 groups which don't even agree with one another the kind of central thread is that salvation is

01:13:30.980 not something external to you it's actually innate about you because it's not just that

01:13:36.360 jesus is god but michaela you're divine and the way you unlock that is by secret knowledge

01:13:42.360 so you listen to the secret knowledge once it kind of clicks and you become enlightened then

01:13:48.000 you realize i'm actually a divine being oh this is what gnosticism is so gnosticism is about so

01:13:54.380 So Gnostic literature often has Jesus, he's very secretive, and unlike the more public ministry

01:14:01.880 that we see in the biblical gospels, Jesus is whispering the secret knowledge into the ears of

01:14:06.580 whoever is the claimed individual. Interestingly enough, it's never the individuals that are the

01:14:11.720 key people in the biblical gospels. It's never Peter, James, and John. It's always Judas or

01:14:19.660 thomas or philip it's kind of the other background here mary magdalene um in a way that kind of is

01:14:25.580 trying to ostracize the key figures in the biblical gospels and actually say you know you guys think

01:14:31.940 it's matthew and peter and james it's actually it's actually philip or mary magdalene oh interesting

01:14:38.120 um but the gospel of thomas has a number of key features to it it's i mean right off the bat all

01:14:45.260 of these are written when people that are associated with their names are long dead so

01:14:50.500 thomas is dead by the time the gospel of thomas is written which is a key indicator that you know

01:14:55.380 this isn't reliable yeah um but then it has teachings like the last line of the gospel of

01:15:00.500 thomas has one of the disciples saying to jesus let mary leave us for women are not worthy of life

01:15:07.120 okay so starting off on a good note yeah and then jesus replies and says don't worry because i will

01:15:14.320 make her appear male as you males and the last line of the gospel of thomas is every woman who

01:15:20.540 makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven wow they're really ahead of their time

01:15:25.560 i know right but it's this kind of stuff so so when you have these these other pieces of literature

01:15:31.160 that are they're they're trying to kidnap they're trying to put words on the mouth of jesus

01:15:36.700 that jesus never said and interestingly enough early christians are well aware of these guys

01:15:43.020 like Irenaeus write treatises like against heresies where he stipulates that there is a

01:15:49.940 book called the gospel of thomas and it's nonsense it's heresy okay it's silly and for a long long

01:15:56.320 time until 1945 we had no like tangible artifact evidence for the gospel of thomas but when

01:16:03.860 eventually that comes to light what does it do it confirms that what Irenaeus was talking about

01:16:09.340 with the silliness of the gospel of thomas actually happens and we have we have evidence

01:16:13.520 for that also in the gospel of peter um the gospel of peter pops up also discovered in the 19th

01:16:20.160 century and when we discover it we have um a particular church leader i believe he's in turkey

01:16:27.740 and he's writing to there's a church in rhodes that writes to him and says hey we've come across

01:16:34.860 this gospel of peter we're not sure what this is and he says okay well you keep reading it i'm gonna

01:16:39.060 look into it and then he finds a copy of it and then writes immediately to them and says

01:16:43.920 this is heretical like all the way through this thing it doesn't represent anything that's

01:16:49.160 accurate about jesus stop reading it within your church community now we don't find the actual

01:16:54.100 copy of the gospel of peter until long long long long long time wow after that that's cool but then

01:16:58.620 once again what does it do it confirms that when we discover the gospel of peter it has these kind

01:17:04.100 of gnostic esoteric denying that jesus ever had a physical body and so jesus is on the cross and

01:17:11.120 he's kind of chilling he's floating because he's like the ancient world had no problem with

01:17:15.220 believing jesus was god but believing that jesus was a man that's the actual hang-up and so okay

01:17:21.000 if jesus if jesus denying the incarnation was a central point to a lot of this stuff because

01:17:25.540 the physical is evil and the spiritual is good so you wow this idea which is once again why you read

01:17:33.200 the book of acts and you get to act 17 paul is preaching on mars hill at the areopagus and it

01:17:41.740 seems that his audience of like jew of greek philosophers are tracking with him until he

01:17:47.100 drops the word anastasis resurrection and then all of a sudden they're like no we're out and

01:17:53.600 it's because an idea of a bodily resurrection they're like that's the opposite of what we're

01:17:58.740 trying to attain i'm stuck in a meat prison because i'm a spirit that is stuck in a body

01:18:04.000 and i death actually releases me from this so this whole jewish narrative idea of a resurrection of

01:18:10.980 the dead i want nothing to do with that and so this is a platonic thought that is adopted by

01:18:16.540 gnosticism and so they have no they have no hang up with jesus being god they just deny entirely

01:18:22.460 that he was physical. Wow. Wow. It's no wonder you've gone deep on this. It's kind of tempting.

01:18:30.460 It's kind of tempting. Wow, that was cool. Okay, Wesley, where can I direct people to online

01:18:36.680 for anyone listening? Yeah, so I'm the vice president of an organization called Apologetics

01:18:41.040 Canada. So you can go to apologeticscanada.com. We've been producing, me specifically, a series

01:18:48.080 called Can I Trust the Bible, which is a documentary series. I've been flying to places like Egypt,

01:18:52.460 and turkey and um italy and talking about how the reliability of the bible can tangibly be explained

01:19:00.900 that's cool in the places i want to watch that that that that these things happen so we flew

01:19:05.060 to egypt we talked about the nag khamadi library and i'm standing in the nag khamadi desert where

01:19:09.600 the gospel of thomas approximately was found and i'm telling the story of its discovery and then

01:19:13.400 i go to the coptic museum in cairo and stand in front of the the gospel of thomas and talk about

01:19:18.780 you know why this wasn't included in your bible stuff like that so we've been producing that um

01:19:24.440 we just we just released episode three of can i trust the bible talking about what did and didn't

01:19:28.980 happen at the council of nicaea dispelling some of these myths and we went and to the modern site of

01:19:35.500 what was the ancient city of nicaea to tell it so that was really fun we're going to be dropping

01:19:40.180 another episode very soon uh in the coming months and then i'm flying out to um an undisclosed

01:19:47.320 location to talk about and record some more episodes so that's something that i've been

01:19:53.320 heavily involved with um so you can go to apologetics canada.com or the apologetics

01:19:57.840 canada youtube to try to keep tabs on that you can also go to my website wesleyhuff.com where i

01:20:03.920 uh have the the relevant social media tags and and blogs and videos that that i also produce

01:20:13.200 amazing that's great that was great i have something for you okay okay so i brought this

01:20:19.120 with hope that one day it may very well get to your dad oh my god but i want you to hold on to

01:20:25.340 it okay so but i'm gonna i'll get it to him i'm gonna outline what this is okay um so i am a

01:20:32.500 lover of facsimiles which are reproductions or photocopies of ancient documents and so what this

01:20:40.420 is it's a it's a leather bound facsimile of our earliest near complete copy of the gospel of john

01:20:46.540 so so this is a facsimile of what's called papyrus 66 so it comes from either the late

01:20:53.500 second or early third century and it preserves for us the vast majority of the gospel of john

01:20:59.820 so this is what john looked like that christians were reading in this in the second century

01:21:05.160 potentially oh my gosh and so this is in what's called you could show okay this is what's called

01:21:10.440 greek unseal or majuscule text so it's in what's referred to as scripta continua it's all capitals

01:21:18.840 little spaces and little to no punctuation between words this is what greek latin coptic a lot of

01:21:25.560 ancient languages just looked like but what's interesting about this one of my favorite

01:21:29.680 manuscripts, is that the ancient world seemed to like scrolls over codices, over books.

01:21:39.980 Christians, for some reason, prefer books.

01:21:42.060 And there isn't really a good answer to why that is.

01:21:44.800 But the downside of books is that the front and the back are the most vulnerable.

01:21:50.280 And so we have a lot of middles of books from the ancient world.

01:21:54.500 Oh.

01:21:55.020 what something like p66 preserves for us is the beginning of the gospel of john and so we have

01:22:01.480 john chapter one preserved for us from the late second or early third century and walking through

01:22:09.100 this i can sight translate this and it virtually sound like any greek any any english translation

01:22:16.860 of the gospel of john that i have on my person and you can just read that yeah so and archaian

01:22:24.420 halagas and kai halagas and prostam feon right in the beginning was the word and the word was with

01:22:29.480 god and the word was god and so this is one of my favorite manuscripts because manuscripts that

01:22:35.980 are handwritten tend to have the vulnerability of mistakes that scribes make and actually this

01:22:42.380 manuscript has a decent amount of its own mistakes because the scribe appears to be more concerned

01:22:49.360 with making a very pretty manuscript

01:22:51.020 than making a very careful manuscript.

01:22:54.400 And so it appears that the scribe himself goes back

01:22:58.080 and makes something like 300 corrections to his own text.

01:23:01.120 Oh, wow.

01:23:01.540 But in what we label as verses one,

01:23:05.660 chapter one, verses one to 14,

01:23:07.880 there are no differences between the Greek text here

01:23:11.800 and what you would translate from a modern critical Greek text

01:23:14.900 that would be used for modern translation.

01:23:16.960 That's cool.

01:23:17.680 So I've sat with, you know, the Greek text that we translate English translations from

01:23:22.560 and sat beside this and followed along and it's exact.

01:23:27.320 Wow.

01:23:28.340 Right down to verse 14.

01:23:30.700 And there's something beautiful about reading something that a Christian was reading in

01:23:37.500 the second century.

01:23:39.040 And 1900 years later, 1800 years later, reading along and thinking, when the Christian read

01:23:47.320 in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and then the word

01:23:51.200 became flesh and made his dwelling among us that i in conjunction with someone nearly two thousand

01:23:56.660 years ago can say amen to that yeah so this is yours and it is a a photocopy of the actual

01:24:07.800 manuscript that is in the the original is in um the bodily and or sorry not the bodily and it's in

01:24:14.300 uh the uh it's in geneva in switzerland oh this is cool you can see where it starts breaking down

01:24:21.360 yeah right in the back so wow so most of the manuscripts i'm looking at look a lot more

01:24:25.780 frank and terry like that at the back yeah wow wow okay i'll get this to dad i might wait a

01:24:34.920 little until he's feeling better so yeah he can actually you know appreciate it but like this is

01:24:41.940 this is amazing thank you yeah it's really kind of you no problem that's very cool yeah it is my

01:24:46.900 pleasure and know that i'm i'm praying for you and your dad and your family and thank you much

01:24:51.860 it's exciting to see that grow in you know your upcoming you know growing of your own family um

01:24:59.360 but i've been i've been praying for a long time years i i knew about your dad years ago before

01:25:04.660 anything blew up because i was studying at the university of toronto and so oh that's funny yeah

01:25:10.080 when there were just the protests there yeah yeah it was crazy it's been a crazy 10-year period

01:25:16.100 yeah it's been a minute well thank you so much wesley for coming on thanks for doing a course

01:25:20.720 i'm so excited for the course i'll link we're going to put this episode out way before your

01:25:25.100 course comes out but the course will be linked to i and everything else we talked about so thanks

01:25:30.040 again yeah it's a pleasure to be here i'm glad we're able to make a workout

01:25:40.080 You

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - May 07, 2026

Best Historical Argument for the Resurrection and Why Scholars Can't Dismiss It ｜ Wesley Huff Ep 232

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