Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #104 - Were Apostles Playing a Good Ole Fashion Telephone Game?

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#104 - Were Apostles Playing a Good Ole Fashion Telephone Game? · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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  Did the apostles pass along reliable words of Jesus, or were they just playing the telephone game?
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  My name is Brandon Fogle. This is Evolution. Let's dive into this.
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  I wanted to talk about this today. We are on the verge of Easter. It is Good Friday today.
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  So if you haven't decided if you're going to go to church or not this Sunday,
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  you should, but you should go every week. So I wanted to talk about this today
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  because I just watched a podcast.
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  It's Julian Dory. It's his podcast. And he had on there, Alex O'Connor,
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  you know, I'm like a groupie of Alex O'Connor at this point.
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  I'm like following him wherever he goes, I guess. I don't know what the deal is.
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  But because he, he is very, Alex O'Connor is very intriguing to me and interesting, interesting to me.
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  He's, I love listening to him. I love hearing his perspective and his view.
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  And when I listen to this podcast, I haven't listened to the whole thing about
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  halfway through, but it's almost four hours long.
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  They're talking about the Bible nonstop. And I almost had to take a break.
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  I'm like, man, this is too much of the Bible, guys.
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  I'm the Christian in the room. I wasn't in the room, but listening to the podcast
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  and these guys, Alex Conner, he's a well-known atheist.
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  I don't know Julian Dory's, his views on everything, but he doesn't,
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  I don't think he's a Christian. I don't know if he would say he's a Christian.
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  He might be skeptical at this point. I don't know.
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  But I was almost, it was like so much text that they were covering in the Bible and Alex, he like,
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  what really like entices me about him and what I don't know if that's the right
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  word, but what is interesting to me about him is he knows the Bible so almost
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  more than most Christians.
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  I'm sitting at the feet of Alex O'Connor and I'm learning.
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  I'm like, but he has an open mind and that's what is really...
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  Cool to me. And I think Jesus is going to get him. I think Jesus is going to get him.
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  And if I had, if I was sitting across the table from Alex O'Connor,
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  what I would say to him would be, have you ever thought about whether Jesus is really there?
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  Have you ever opened your mind to whether Jesus is actually listening,
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  whether he is actually alive and he is just sitting alongside you and just hearing
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  how you're talking about him all the time.
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  Do you ever open yourself up to that possibility.
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  And because I know as a Christian myself, it's tough to put yourself in someone
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  else's shoes and think, could this religion be true?
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  Could I be open to the possibility that God isn't there? That this is all just
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  make believe and I'm just believing something that is not really there.
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  But I try to do that. I try to be open and what it would be like if I was on
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  the other side of the fence, because I was on the other side of the fence at
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  one point. I didn't always believed this.
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  I didn't, I didn't become a Christian until I was 20 and I'm 39 right now, about hit 40 this year.
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  And I don't look it, I don't look a day over 20, I'm sure. But just hearing
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  Alex O'Connor talking about this, they, and they got into,
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  like I said, so much text of the Bible and they're just trying to understand
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  it from the perspective of how we have these things, how we have these writings,
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  how they were passed along to us.
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  And are they reliable? They covered so much stuff.
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  And I haven't got to the whole thing, like I said, which they got,
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  they're going to talk about Wes Huff and I'm excited about that and hear what
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  Alex and Julian has to say about him and their topic.
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  But we're going to, what we're talking about right here and what they're getting
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  into is the reliable of the transmission of the text.
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  And Alex says, we're talking right here. You're listening to me.
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  Do you remember what I said two sentences ago or two minutes ago?
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  Could you repeat it back to me?
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  And Julian's like, no, I couldn't. I really couldn't. And so how did the apostles,
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  when Jesus is out there in his public ministry and he's teaching the multitudes,
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  he's telling about all these different things, how do they, when they're recording
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  the gospels 30 years later or however long, probably about 30, 40 years later,
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  30 years, I'd say, that how are they accurately getting the exact words of Jesus?
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  And apart from, I mean, there was strong case for oral tradition.
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  You pass something along orally, you repeated it.
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  A lot of the people that studied the Bible, studied the, which was at the time,
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  just the Old Testament, they didn't have the New Testament.
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  They would memorize it. They could say it word for words.
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  A lot of them could recite the entire first five books of the Bible from memory,
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  could just say it all out, nonstop.
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  Because they weren't like we are today, where our attention span is very short, very short.
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  And they had to remember it. They didn't have a Bible app. They didn't have
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  something on their phone where they could easily pull it out and just read a verse.
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  They had to memorize it. So their memory and their reciting something over and
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  over was well documented.
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  It was well, just a part of that culture. And if someone's passing along,
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  say, not just somebody, just a random person's telling you something,
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  but say your family is telling you the history of where you came from and like
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  about your grandparents.
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  And they're not just saying it one time. They're saying it over and over.
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  They're telling you like events and from different perspectives,
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  different angles of the same event. And Jesus, he didn't give a sermon.
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  And then he went home and, you know, that was a good Sunday.
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  I'm going to go home and just, you know, hang out or whatever.
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  He said the same things over and over wherever he went. And these guys,
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  they were living with him.
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  They daily ate with him. They slept with him. They were everything with him.
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  So they were very in tune with what Jesus taught and believed and what he was
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  telling people because they heard it repeatedly over and over.
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  But even that, you can't, I know they don't have a recording device.
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  They didn't have a, put a mic to Jesus's, what do you have on this issue, Jesus?
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  What do you got to say about this one? And they couldn't just record it.
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  They didn't have a video or a camera where they could say, we got him.
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  We got him. We got, we got a transcript of what Jesus is saying.
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  Like we have on YouTube, any, anything you listen on YouTube,
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  you can go in there. You can see the transcript of every word.
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  What was said, even this right here, what I'm saying right now,
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  it's being recorded by YouTube and you're going to be able to see this transcript of what I'm saying.
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  They didn't have that. And I get that. But it was the repeating over and over living with him.
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  But it was also supernatural.
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  And this is what the unique case of the apostles was.
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  We cannot forget how important and specific their role was.
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  Jesus commissioned these guys. Not everybody was an apostle.
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  There were tons of disciples, but not everyone was an apostle.
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  You had to have certain credentials to be authorized as an apostle.
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  And that's why there's only the 12.
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  And then there's the 11 when Jesus kills himself after he betrayed Jesus.
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  And then the apostle Paul comes along. And that's why throughout the rest of
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  the New Testament, after the gospels,
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  that the apostle Paul is repeatedly defending that he's an apostle.
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  He is, he's saying, I persecuted the church of God.
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  I wanted to destroy it, but Jesus selected me. He appeared to me.
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  He confronted me and he, he gives that testimony over and over in the book of Acts.
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  That's Luke's defending the apostle Paul, that he was an apostle.
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  Jesus appeared to him. And then repeatedly in the book of Acts that Luke is
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  giving, there are multiple times that Paul is describing his testimony in that book.
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  But that's from Luke's perspective. That's from Luke's pen.
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  But we see in the, in the, I keep saying the gospel in the book of Luke.
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  What am I doing? In the book of Acts, we see the writer of Acts actually coming
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  into the book and start using the word we.
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  Luke was along for the ride in a lot of the stuff that was happening towards the tail end of Acts.
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  But then also we have the exact from the book of Galatians that Paul describes
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  how he became an apostle and how Jesus appeared to him, how he was authorized to be an apostle.
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  He gives his own testimony about it. And so we cannot just skate past that,
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  how it was very important if you were an apostle.
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  You had the authority of Jesus himself.
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  And this isn't something that's just been passed down to everyone.
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  It stopped at the apostles. They had the authority.
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  And that's why when they spoke, Paul is saying, I am speaking the very words
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  of Jesus. If I say it, Jesus is saying it.
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  And then Alex does go into a little bit of talking about how Jesus says,
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  in the same way that the father sent me, this is after his resurrection,
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  he says, I'm sending you.
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  If you forgive men's sins, their sins are forgiven. If you retain them, they're retained.
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  It says that in the gospel of John, I'm saying the right word right now.
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  And this was specifically a role and an authority that they had.
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  It wasn't given to all the Christians. It was to them alone.
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  And Paul, even in, I believe it's in the book of Corinthians,
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  he specifically talks about this man who's caught in immorality and he says,
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  I have forgiven them, you know, whatever it is, I forgive them, you know,
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  they had the right to set out the guidelines and guidelines is loose,
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  is loose, but they had the, the, the role to lay out the, the, the, the, the
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  the doctrine of Jesus, the teaching that the church was going to be built on.
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  But I do want to get into this, this of, was it reliable?
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  And we're going to hear from Alex and Julian himself when they're talking about this.
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  Was it just a game of phone tag that is happening with the apostles?
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  It's a common analogy that's given is the telephone game. Bart Ehrman talks about this a lot.
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  I do think that it's not wholly appropriate for something like the Gospels,
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  because the point of the telephone game is you only get to hear it once.
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  And the fun is that you then have to hope you hear it right and pass it on.
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  And you're kind of trying to make it go wrong, because that's why it's funny.
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  With important traditions, you pass it on and you check you've got it right.
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  So you're going to tell me something, I'm going to say, I'm going to repeat it back to you.
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  You're going to correct any misunderstandings, I'm going to make sure I have
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  it memorized, and then I'm going to pass it on to my children, for example.
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  And so the oral transmission of religious traditions, I think,
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  is a lot more reliable than people often realize.
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  Because like you say, this was the only way that information is transpired.
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  Imagine if you're learning something important, you're learning about your family
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  history, or you're learning something for class or whatever,
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  and you're not allowed to write it down.
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  And it's not written in a book anywhere else. You would probably put a lot more
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  effort into remembering exactly what was said.
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  And so that's passed down a lot better. But I am suspicious,
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  for example, when people say we have so much of Christology,
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  which is the study of the nature of Jesus, relies on his exact words.
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  Like it says in the Gospels that Jesus used this phrase, and this is really
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  important. Why did he say that instead of this? When it gets that specific,
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  I get highly suspicious.
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  Okay. And I get it. If you're coming at it, because I was very skeptical myself,
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  I had to research the Bible over and over.
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  And I was, I came at the thing that really got me to get on board with Christianity
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  was I read the case for Christ, the case for Christ.
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  And that was Lee Strobel's.
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  He came at it from an atheist perspective and he gave his, like from a lawyer,
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  he tried to put it into place.
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  Like, is the text of the Bible reliable? Is
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  Jesus a person that you should put your trust in is it
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  is this reliable evidence of what happened so he i get when you are very very
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  skeptical of the exact wording of the bible because they didn't have a tape
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  recorder we i can't i can't say they had a recorder and they're recording it
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  they they got jesus on mic on a hot mic they got him.
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  No, they did not. They had to remember what he had to say.
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  But Jesus even said in the gospel of John, you know, this is John's account.
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  John was an apostle of Jesus.
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  He calls himself the one whom Jesus loved. And Jesus tells his apostles that
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  the Holy Spirit is going to come to you and lead you into all truth.
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  He's going to, he's going to show, bring these, he's going to bring these things to remembrance.
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  So there is a supernatural element of the recording of it.
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  I cannot just say this is just natural explanation. And they just remembered it really well.
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  Because there was a lot of that, but there had to be the Holy Spirit coming
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  in and having them write the exact words that they were supposed to write.
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  Now, they're translating it from Jesus probably spoke Aramaic,
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  and they're writing it in a Greek language, but the Bible says that everything
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  in it, all scripture is God breathed.
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  So God used human writers to write out his exact word, but he didn't remove
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  their personality and who they were in writing it. They were still them.
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  That's where there has to be an element of faith that comes along because I
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  cannot just say, I'm just going to prove to you that Jesus is who he says he is.
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  The Bible is God's word. I'm just going to prove it. It is what it is.
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  You have to come at it with some faith.
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  And in it itself, in the book of Hebrews, it talks about without faith,
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  it is impossible to please God.
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  You cannot please, you cannot start pleasing God until you believe even believe
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  he's there until you actually take a second and think.
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  And really, is he there or not? Is he? Because he is or he isn't. He is or he isn't.
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  It's not both and. He's there sometimes, but then other times he's not.
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  So it's like, either got to be all in or not.
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  And then there's this whole faith is a gift kind of thing. And it's like,
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  how does this all jive together? How do I get somebody to believe in Christ?
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  But then faith is a gift.
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  All we can do as Christians is tell people the good news.
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  Tell people about Jesus, tell people that he came to rescue them and God will do the rest.
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  He'll take our simple at times crude words and he'll use it for his purposes.
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  But so if Alex ever sees this, I would just say, man, keep going, man.
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  Keep just sucking up all this because he is, he is more entrenched in the Bible
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  in a lot of ways than I am myself.
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  He knows the Bible like front and back.
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  And what was really awesome about this podcast that they had together was he.
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  Said, because he kind of amazed Julian and like, how do you know all this stuff?
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  And Alex in it is just a humble attitude, just like, man, I'm a student. I'm just a learner.
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  I am not an expert in these things. I would be the first one to tell you I am not a biblical expert.
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  There are so many people that know so much more. And I'm willing,
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  if my position is wrong, to acquiesce and kind of hear new opinions, hear new views.
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  I'm not just completely entrenched in what I believe. I'm flexible,
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  which was really awesome to me because, man, if you're playing with fire,
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  and I'm talking about the fire of God, if you're just playing with it this much,
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  unless you have a heart that is continually hardening and just saying there's
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  no way he's out there, you know, the same thing, fire can either melt wax or it'll harden clay.
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  And it depends on the nature of the two things.
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  And when it starts getting close to that fire, so man, I hope God puts in him
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  a heart of wax that melts and surrenders to him as opposed to the heart of clay.
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  Because that, I mean, and then that's in God's prerogative. He's in control
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  of that, of how he wants to kind of nurture and build up the soil of human hearts.
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  But all we can do as Christians is be faithful and just spread the word.
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  So if you've enjoyed this video, make sure you like, subscribe,
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  share this with everyone.
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  Just share it with everyone, you know, put any comments in. I'd love to hear from you.
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  And I hope you have a wonderful Easter, you know, get out there and go spread the word.