“They Tried To Silence Me” - Atheist Turned Pastor REVEALS Death Threats Over His Beliefs
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Summary
In this episode, I sit down with my good friend and long time Christian friend, Dr. Sean McDowell, to talk about the role of C.S. Lewis in shaping the modern Christian faith, and whether or not he could have been a lunatic.
Transcript
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your uh evolution of you know going from the atheist to a you know christian yeah what role
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did c.s lewis play you know with mere christianity or some of his other writings that he had what
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role did he play he played a big role i mean mere christianity is a classic um and uh i recommend
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anybody read that whether a believer or not a believer just someone who's checking out the
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faith it's just a great great book c.s lewis wrote some wonderful wonderful stuff
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And his son, Sean McDowell, is a fantastic professor at Biola University.
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He's a Jonathan Edwards scholar, and he teaches spiritual formation at their seminary.
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there's a book written by a guy gosh what was his name um oh there's several books uh the agnostic
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who dared to search that was that was an interesting book uh peter stoner peter stoner great name yeah
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peter stoner sounds like an atheist name it doesn't it and he was owner peter stoner that's
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right he was an atheist in in england and became a um christian after he investigated the evidence
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for the resurrection and i read that book there was a famous guy at who made harvard law school
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what it is which is the second greatest law school after yale but back in the 1800s who
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investigated faith and became a believer and wrote a wonderful book on the reliability of the gospels
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there's a lot of great stuff out there josh mcdowell did he josh mcdowell write a book called
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tolerance no um he wrote a book called um the evidence that demands a verdict and more than a
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carpenter on a real popular level yep yep um great guy still alive um and sean as i say his
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son is doing great work he has a wonderful podcast that he does um so he's carrying on there's some
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there's some wonderful there's a bunch of one of them i wayne cordero one day my yeah brings me in
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oh wayne's a great guy i used to speak at his church yeah wayne from hawaii yes yes my pastor
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brings me in he says i want to have breakfast with you pastor dudley rutherford i don't know
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if you know who he is, he's in LA, big church, 20 plus thousand members.
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And he introduces me to one of Wayne's book called leading on empty.
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It says what men go through when they're in their forties, you know,
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it's kind of like, man, I'm carrying the weight. I'm doing this.
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You kind of need to go in to re-energize yourself for the next phase.
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Because sometimes at that age, if you go through that phase by yourself,
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you could do something dumb. You could do something, you know, and I was,
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that was also a big book, but when it comes on to CS Lewis,
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For him to be the, he was more from the philosopher's side, right, that he went there.
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Chronicles of Narnia, he's written a lot of things that you would think.
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But he did talk about those three things, the argument that kind of got me.
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What role did that play where he says, Jesus is either, what is it, the liar, the lunatic, or the Lord, right?
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Yes, yes, and that's a popular objection these days.
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You ever read the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, the Beatitudes,
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And besides which, the way in which we document his identity of being the Son of God
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is through the resurrection, and that's irrelevant.
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His mental health is not relevant at the time of that.
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But so, yeah, you go through those options and you see that Jesus is who he claimed to be.
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Back in my day, I got a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, which was the first and I believe the best journalism school.
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and we were taught to try to tell both sides and be objective as possible.
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When I was an atheist at the Chicago Tribune, I was very pro-abortion.
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As an atheist, I helped arrange an abortion for a young woman I knew as a friend
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at the University of Missouri who got pregnant, and she came to me and said,
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Even though at that time I was very pro-abortion,
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I covered a lot of court cases involving the abortion issue.
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It goes Supreme Court back and forth through those years.
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If you read any of my articles, you would not know where I stood
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Today, you get a lot of people, you say, why are you going to journalism?
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Your job is to tell the truth, is to tell both sides,
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figuring I'm going to kind of reach a mean that'll, you know.
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I bounce back and forth on television between CNN and Fox News.
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I'll listen a little here and a little there and try to catch something.
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I subscribe to the Washington Post and the New York Times, not because I trust them, but because I want to know what they're saying.
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They become people who are trying to promote a cause.
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I'm interested in somebody telling me what is going on.
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I mean, listen, today it's not easy to sit there and, you know, see who to trust, what they're going to be saying.
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It's such a great time for propaganda and confusion.
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And, you know, now, having been trained in journalism and law, I have some skills that I can kind of cut through some of the—
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So I know how to, if you want to tell a story to present one side, I can pretty much spot it.
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There was an article in the Denver newspaper recently, or on television, and it was about transgenders in women's sports.
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And they interviewed this one guy who was very, he was a coach, and he was very in favor of having men in women's sports.
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And as you dig down, which was not disclosed at the time, when you dig down, you find that, oh, he's part of an advocacy group that promotes transgenders involved in women's sports.
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So you go a little bit deeper to see what the writer is about, what their background is about.
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You look at, are they telling you something that your antenna go up and say, wait a second.
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oh, I have no problem with men coming into my women's sports and playing.
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Did you see the story about this NBA player, Jaden Ivey?
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Did you see this story in the last couple days?
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I'll let you, Rob, if you want to play this clip.
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He was the backcourt in the Pistons, pretty strong guy.
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He had a good season last year, 17 points, four assists, four rebounds,
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and shares this about LGBTQ, the fact that NBA supports it.
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right they have they have they proclaim pride month and the nba they proclaim it
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they they show it to the world they say come come uh come join us for pride for pride month
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So how is it that one can't speak righteousness?
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How is it one night, how are they to say that, man, this man is crazy?
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You know, in law school, my specialty was First Amendment law.
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I used to teach First Amendment law at Roosevelt University.
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First Amendment is foundational in our nation, absolutely foundational.
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We're seeing censorship, whether it's overt or covert.
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We're seeing people whose opinions, like his, that's a legitimate opinion to have as a follower of Jesus,
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He should be allowed to express that without consequence in this country.
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I've been working with the FBI for the last couple of weeks because someone's trying to kill me because of the stands I take.
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And, yeah, there was a credible threat on my life.
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And so we've been working together, and I think the time has passed.
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But they provided protection for me at various events
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because the threat was they were going to shoot me at my next speaking event.
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Unfortunately, my website is pretty rudimentary, and I can't capture.
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I don't capture the whole IP address because I'm cheap and I didn't want to spend the money on a nice website.
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And so they tracked them down a little bit, but they've not identified them.
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No, I'm saying the evidence points toward Jesus being the unique son of God.
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Here's what I said that I think got me in trouble.
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The Koran, you have the Koran and you have the Bible.
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I read the Koran when I was a spiritual seeker.
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And I saw three things in there that contradict Christianity very clearly.
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Number one, it says in Surah 4, 157, Jesus didn't die on the cross.
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Well, if he didn't die on the cross, there's no resurrection.
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Secondly, the Koran says that no one can bear the sins of another.
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Well, that takes away the atonement, which is the foundation of Christianity.
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So, okay, they're allowed to believe that and proclaim that and preach that.
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But if those three things are true, the Bible is false.
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So either both books are false or one of them is true, but they cannot both be true at the same time.
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That's all I said that I think triggered this whole thing.
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And so the individual that came to you, did they know if he was Muslim or not?
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They don't know for a fact, but it was right after I expressed this on a podcast.
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But just to get past this, the criticism for this story about Jaden Ivey
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is that there's another NBA player called Kevin Porter.
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Now, Kevin Porter gets charged with assaulting a girl, strangulation, I believe,
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And he pleaded guilty, just pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault.
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And when he did this, this was just two years ago.
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And this other guy, he's questioning why five months, and he gets five.
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and this is why I believe the NBA is the worst product out of all the four sports that we have.
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You know, what have we got in England these days?
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And it is dangerous now to have an opinion that violates the standard viewpoint of the culture.
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It's just unbelievable to me where that nation has gone.
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Hi, I'm Lee Strobel, atheist turned Christian, author of several books,
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including The Case for Christ and Seeing the Supernatural.
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about how we know that Jesus is who we claim to be
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and that there really is a realm beyond what we can see
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you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
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