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Andy Stanley - Reasons Not to Panic About Bible Skepticism An Interview with John Dickson · Andy Stanley Sermons

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So next week, as we just talked about, and as
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: those of you watching online know, is Easter. And generally,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the way I start every single Easter message, and I
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: do it on purpose, the same way every Easter, because
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  Speaker 1: I hope it just becomes part of your thinking, part
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  Speaker 1: of your heart and your soul.
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  Speaker 2: As a Jesus follower.
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  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's a surprise to people who aren't Christians
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  Speaker 1: or who haven't really considered Christianity. I say, hey, this
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  Speaker 1: weekend is Easter and we're celebrating the resurrection of Jesus
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  Speaker 1: because that's what Easter is all about. And just so
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  Speaker 1: you know, we believe Jesus rose from the dead, but
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  Speaker 1: we don't believe Jesus rose from the dead simply because
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  Speaker 1: the Bible tells us so. It's so much better than that.
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  Speaker 1: We believe because in the first century, Matthew told us,
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  Speaker 1: then Mark told us, and Luke told us, and John
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  Speaker 1: told us, and Peter told us, the apostle Paul told us,
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  Speaker 1: and James, the brother of Jesus, In fact, not only
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  Speaker 1: does it not depend on the Bible, there would be
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  Speaker 1: no Bible if there had been no resurrection. But again,
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  Speaker 1: that begs the question for those of us who hear
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  Speaker 1: that year after year after year.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Andy, that may be true. Here's the thing.
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  Speaker 1: If our faith in Jesus and the resurrection depends on
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  Speaker 1: those first century documents, the question is, are those documents,
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  Speaker 1: are the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are they
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  Speaker 1: reliable accounts of actual events? Is there reason for us
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  Speaker 1: to actually trust what they say about Jesus? Because if
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  Speaker 1: they are reliable, then Jesus rose from the dead, and
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  Speaker 1: if Jesus rose from the.
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  Speaker 2: Dead, game on. But how do we know?
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  Speaker 1: And here to help us wrestle through that very important
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  Speaker 1: question is our friend, John Dixon. Would you please welcome
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  Speaker 1: John Dixon this morning? So I love talking to John.
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  Speaker 1: We had a wonderful dinner last night. We were just
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  Speaker 1: totally nerding out on all this stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Fried green tomatoes. That's right.
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  Speaker 2: Tomatoes. Yes, tomatoes. That's fine.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: That's just the beginning of the diction lesson I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to have because John is not from here. So limited time,
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  Speaker 1: so I want us to dive right in.
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  Speaker 2: John, you're a professor.
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  Speaker 1: You live in the minutia and the nerdiness of historical
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  Speaker 1: Bible background, something we have in common. But are the
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  Speaker 1: Gospels reliable accounts of actual events? And if so, why
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  Speaker 1: should we take the historical part of Christianity, the history
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  Speaker 1: behind Christianity seriously?
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  Speaker 3: That's the starting point. Christianity is weird compared to other
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  Speaker 3: world religions. Other world religions have sacred texts, but the
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  Speaker 3: idea is that they are revelations that have come from
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  Speaker 3: heaven out of nowhere. So our Muslim friends will tell
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  Speaker 3: us that the Quran isn't a historical document reporting historical events.
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  Speaker 3: It's actually a divine dictation that was sent down to
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  Speaker 3: Muhammad untouched. Buddhists, their texts are the account of the
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  Speaker 3: revelation the Buddha had. There are no events that are
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  Speaker 3: listed there. But Christianity comes out and says, oh, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: our guy was born under Emperor Augustus, lived most of
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  Speaker 3: his life under Emperor Tiberius. Oh, and by the way,
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  Speaker 3: the fifth governor of Judea crucified him. Now, as soon
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  Speaker 3: as you say something like that, smart people are going
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  Speaker 3: to go, okay. Okay. So you're claiming something historical. You're
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  Speaker 3: vulnerable now because I can see if there's any evidence.
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  Speaker 3: But actually, what appears to be Christianity's vulnerability, its historical nature, tends,
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  Speaker 3: I think, to be its superpower. Our texts are historical.
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  Speaker 3: And you've already mentioned the Gospels. I think the opening
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  Speaker 3: paragraph of Luke's Gospel nails this from the beginning. Because
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  Speaker 3: you can't read this opening paragraph... and think we're dealing
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  Speaker 3: with a legend or a myth, something like the Iliad
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  Speaker 3: or the Odyssey. I can read it here. The opening
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  Speaker 3: lines of the account of Luke about the life of Jesus.
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  Speaker 3: Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the
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  Speaker 3: things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they
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  Speaker 3: were handed down to us by those who from the
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  Speaker 3: first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this
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  Speaker 3: in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from
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  Speaker 3: the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account
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  Speaker 3: for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know
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  Speaker 3: the certainty of the things you have been taught. This
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  Speaker 3: is a historical introduction to a historical text, and he
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  Speaker 3: really underlines this by using this word, asphaleia, the... Greek
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  Speaker 3: term that really means solid, right? Asphaleia.
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  Speaker 2: That's where we get our term asphalt.
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  Speaker 3: Do you mean asphalt?
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  Speaker 2: No, asphalt. Okay.
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  Speaker 3: Okay. That always throws me, but it's still, it's the
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  Speaker 3: stuff that you make roads out of.
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  Speaker 2: It's the stuff we make roads out of that's solid.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: That's it. Asphalt. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Asphalt. So it's something
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  Speaker 3: you can touch and stand on. Right. It's solid. And
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  Speaker 3: for 20... years or more, I've worn a piece of
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  Speaker 3: the ancient world around my neck. This is Roman denarius.
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  Speaker 2: We have a picture of it. Yeah, this is amazing.
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  Speaker 2: I was jealous when you showed me that. Go ahead.
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  Speaker 3: It's Emperor Tiberius on the front. This is an actual 2,000-year-old
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  Speaker 3: coin from the time of Jesus. And the reason I
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  Speaker 3: wear it is it's a great reminder that the events
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  Speaker 3: of Jesus' day We're as tangible as this piece of
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  Speaker 3: silver is still around my neck. And I touch this
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  Speaker 3: and my mind runs wild because I'm touching the time
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  Speaker 3: of Jesus here. And Luke's point is, this stuff I'm
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  Speaker 3: about to tell you is asphalt. It is solid, historically solid.
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  Speaker 1: That he thoroughly investigated all of these things. And when
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  Speaker 1: he says from the beginning, it doesn't mean from the
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  Speaker 1: beginning of time. He means from the beginning of these
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  Speaker 1: accounts he's about to tell us specifically about Jesus.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, and we can place Luke amongst the eyewitnesses in
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  Speaker 3: the 40s AD, within about 15 years of the events.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, again, these are the things that we read quickly
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  Speaker 1: as Bible readers that are so significant. There's a sense
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  Speaker 1: of which, and correct me if you think this is
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  Speaker 1: too much, it's almost like he's saying to the readers,
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  Speaker 1: fact check me, I dare you, because I'm putting a
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  Speaker 1: pin in a specific period of time when these events happen,
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  Speaker 1: which makes it a big fat target, but it also,
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  Speaker 1: if it passes the test, it gives us.
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  Speaker 2: Extraordinary confidence around the certainty of these things.
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  Speaker 3: That's why I say it looks like a vulnerability. It
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  Speaker 3: turns out to be a superpower. Wow, okay.
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  Speaker 1: My second question, kind of related, and this is something
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  Speaker 1: I try to explain, and the people in our churches
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  Speaker 1: get this because they're all above average intelligence. But people
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  Speaker 1: outside of our churches, you're welcome. People outside of our churches,
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  Speaker 1: they criticize me for this, and I think maybe I'm
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  Speaker 1: just not explaining it well. So the way I wrote
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  Speaker 1: the question is, before there was the Bible as we
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  Speaker 1: know it, which was, the first Bible's a symbol in
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  Speaker 1: the fourth century.
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  Speaker 2: Before there was the Bible.
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  Speaker 1: As we know it, there were independent voices, or you
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  Speaker 1: would say independent.
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  Speaker 2: Sources, that brought us the words and works of Jesus.
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  Speaker 1: And because they were so, because first century people were
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  Speaker 1: so confident in it, that's why they were later inserted
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  Speaker 1: or included in our text. So talk a little bit
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  Speaker 1: about those independent voices.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, it's absolutely true. I mean, we're fooled into
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  Speaker 3: thinking it's just one source that fell from heaven, because...
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  Speaker 3: Now you can buy a Bible and it has an
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  Speaker 3: ISBN code on it for being a book. And it
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  Speaker 3: has a contents page and everything. They were added later. Originally,
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  Speaker 3: the texts were written independently of each other. So if
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  Speaker 3: you just think of these few texts here, you've got
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  Speaker 3: the Gospel of Mark, right? When Mark wrote his biography
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  Speaker 3: of Jesus, he did not have the letters of Paul
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  Speaker 3: in front of him. And when Paul wrote his letters,
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  Speaker 3: he didn't have the Gospel of Mark in front of him.
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  Speaker 3: So here are two separate voices. Yes, later brought together,
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  Speaker 3: but originally, yeah, in the Bible, but originally separate. Same
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  Speaker 3: with the letter of James. And we could multiply this.
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  Speaker 3: These are separate independent sources. And it gets nerdier than
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  Speaker 3: that because secular scholars recognize that within the Gospels themselves,
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  Speaker 3: there are sources that the Gospel writers used. I mean,
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  Speaker 3: Luke told us many have undertaken to draw up an account.
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  Speaker 3: So he knew sources. but scholars have gone to recognise
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  Speaker 3: these sources, and so you don't need to worry about
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  Speaker 3: the titles here, Q, L, SQ and M, but these
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  Speaker 3: are sources within the Gospels that the writers have used
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  Speaker 3: that even predate the writing of the Gospels themselves. And
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  Speaker 3: the reason this is so important, at least for the historian,
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  Speaker 3: is that one of the main tests we use to
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  Speaker 3: assess an event from the past or history someone's life
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  Speaker 3: from the past, is we try and work out how
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  Speaker 3: many independent voices there are that haven't simply copied each other.
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  Speaker 3: And in the case of Christianity, in the case of
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  Speaker 3: the life of Jesus, we have at least five, maybe seven,
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  Speaker 3: completely independent writings that have been brought together. This is
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  Speaker 3: called the criterion of multiple attestation, which you can forget
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  Speaker 3: as soon as you hear, because, I mean, scholars like
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  Speaker 3: to invent terms that make them sound smart, but it's
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  Speaker 3: not that smart. It's just obvious. If you hear... amazing
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  Speaker 3: news from one friend, you might believe it, right? It
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  Speaker 3: depends whether you trust that friend. If you hear the
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  Speaker 3: same news from a second friend or a third and
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  Speaker 3: a fifth, and you're pretty sure they haven't simply copied
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  Speaker 3: each other's story to tell you, you're more likely to
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  Speaker 3: believe it. Well, that's what historians do with these multiple sources.
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  Speaker 1: And the great thing about the New Testament is is
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  Speaker 1: that we have all of these sources together.
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  Speaker 2: But as I say sometimes, the way we.
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  Speaker 1: Got our Bible is not the way the world got
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  Speaker 1: the Bible. And because we think in terms of that
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  Speaker 1: it just, to your point earlier, it just kind of
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  Speaker 1: fell out of the sky.
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  Speaker 2: It's the B-I-B-L-E. It's just one book.
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  Speaker 1: It's a bit misleading in in terms of we miss
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  Speaker 1: the extraordinary historical significance of what happened that ultimately brought
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  Speaker 1: us the Bible.
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  Speaker 3: And all of this bolsters the credibility of the Bible. 100%.
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  Speaker 3: It shouldn't undermine it.
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  Speaker 2: No, 100%.
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  Speaker 1: And the order in which these things were written is
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  Speaker 1: also a little bit misleading the way they're laid out
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  Speaker 1: in the Bible because the Apostle Paul was writing earlier
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  Speaker 1: than the gospel writers, which, again, we could spend a
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  Speaker 1: lot of time talking about that. Okay, so the pushback,
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  Speaker 1: my third question, the pushback sometimes is, is that these documents, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,
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  Speaker 1: or the epistles of Paul, are presented in such a
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  Speaker 1: way that they were written so long after the events
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  Speaker 1: that perhaps some things got added, some things got subtracted,
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  Speaker 1: some things were exaggerated. And that's true for a lot
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  Speaker 1: of ancient literature, but the New Testament is unique in
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  Speaker 1: terms of the dating.
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  Speaker 2: Talk a little bit about that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's great to have written sources that are
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  Speaker 3: closer in time to the events, right? for the reason
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  Speaker 3: that you explained. But the New Testament scores incredibly well
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  Speaker 3: on this test of ancient history. And the way to
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  Speaker 3: work this out is just to think of some comparisons.
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  Speaker 3: And we brought a slide that lays this out. If
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  Speaker 3: you just think of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, the prince
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  Speaker 3: from India, who dies around 500 BC, well, all scholars agree,
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  Speaker 3: and Buddhists agree, we don't have any writings... about that
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  Speaker 3: for 350 years. 350 year time gap.
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  Speaker 1: But there's no doubt that the Buddha existed and that
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  Speaker 1: he taught. The first time anything's documented that he taught,
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  Speaker 1: 350 years later.
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  Speaker 3: The earliest biography of Muhammad, it's called the Sira. Muslims
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  Speaker 3: love it, they read it, but they will tell you
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  Speaker 3: the biography of Muhammad was composed 180 years after Muhammad
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  Speaker 3: had died. Or you go into the sort of ancient
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  Speaker 3: Greek history, Alexander the Great, you know, conquered the world
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  Speaker 3: and did all those crazy things.
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  Speaker 2: But how do we know that?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the earliest biographical account of his life comes
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  Speaker 3: from 120 years after he's dead. But, you know, we
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  Speaker 3: trust Polybius. There's another source that's 400 years after. That's Arian.
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  Speaker 3: And actually, we think Arian is better than Polybius, but
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  Speaker 3: that's too much information. Tiberius, this is the emperor... who
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  Speaker 3: ruled when Jesus lived, the emperor on the coin that
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  Speaker 3: I'm wearing. Well, our very best account is written by
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  Speaker 3: a Roman chronicler called Tacitus. And Tacitus writes 80 years
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  Speaker 3: after Tiberius died. That's the norm.
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  Speaker 2: Can I say one thing about this?
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  Speaker 1: And again, correct me, you're the professor, but the significance
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  Speaker 1: of Tiberius in particular, he was the emperor of Rome.
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  Speaker 1: He had access to libraries and people had access to
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  Speaker 1: him This is the kind of person, historically, you would
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  Speaker 1: think they would be walking around behind him, taking notes
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  Speaker 1: of everything he said and everything he did, and that
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  Speaker 1: the moment he passed away, they would publish all this.
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  Speaker 1: And yet, still, it's 80 years before anything shows up.
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  Speaker 3: To get the best account, the one all historians rely on,
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  Speaker 3: is Tacitus. I mean, obviously, Tiberius got coins. I've got one,
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  Speaker 3: all right? Jesus didn't get any coins, because the Roman
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  Speaker 3: Empire didn't really honor him. But my point is, look at,
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  Speaker 3: the texts for Jesus. He dies around the year 30,
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  Speaker 3: but we've got texts written by the year 50 that
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  Speaker 3: give us accounts of Jesus. By 60 years after Jesus,
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  Speaker 3: we have all of the New Testament texts. So even
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  Speaker 3: the latest New Testament text is still written closer in
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  Speaker 3: time to Jesus than our best source for the emperor
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  Speaker 3: of the same time.
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  Speaker 2: Who, again, was.
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  Speaker 1: You know, world famous at that time, as far as
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  Speaker 1: you could be famous throughout the.
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  Speaker 3: World, right? Yeah. And we can do even better than this.
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  Speaker 3: We have one scrap, one formal summary of the Christian faith,
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  Speaker 3: which even atheist scholars agree was composed and memorized by Christians,
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  Speaker 3: here it is, by 10 years after Jesus. So at
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  Speaker 3: least by 40. Most scholars think by 35, so within
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  Speaker 3: five years of Jesus. And this is the earliest written
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  Speaker 3: fragment of it from a text called P46. And I
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  Speaker 3: have not the original, don't worry. I have handled the original.
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  Speaker 3: But this is an exact replica printed on ancient Egyptian papyri.
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  Speaker 3: And I have held the real thing in Chester Beattie Library,
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  Speaker 3: and I couldn't tell the difference. And this summary of
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  Speaker 3: the Christian faith, written at least within 10 years of Jesus,
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  Speaker 3: says this. I hand over to you what is of
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  Speaker 3: first importance.
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  Speaker 2: Read it in Greek. Go ahead and show off for us.
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  Speaker 2: It's amazing. I'm serious. It's wonderful.
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  Speaker 3: I love it. That Christ died for our sins according
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  Speaker 3: to the Scriptures. And that he was buried. And that
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  Speaker 3: he was raised on the third day in accordance with
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  Speaker 3: the scriptures. That he appeared to Kephas, which is Peter, Kephas,
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  Speaker 3: and then to the 12th. Okay, so you've got Jesus'
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  Speaker 3: status as Christ, his death for sins, his burial in
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  Speaker 3: a tomb, his resurrection, his appearances to Peter and the Twelve,
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  Speaker 3: already locked down in a formal summary within 10 years
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  Speaker 3: of Jesus. And by the way, Andy, I actually had
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  Speaker 3: this museum-grade copy made as a gift for you.
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  Speaker 2: What?
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  Speaker 3: Yep.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, you're kidding.
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  Speaker 3: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: You didn't do this in the 9 o'clock service.
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  Speaker 3: I did not. Oh, my goodness. I was saving it up.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, you're kidding.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: No, I'm not kidding.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Oh.
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  Speaker 3: We had it made this week for you. Ah.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so let me... Okay, I know. Thank you. Oh,
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  Speaker 2: it's right. Okay, here's what's amazing that you didn't know.
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  Speaker 1: If you have a copy of the New Testament, you
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: have a copy in English of what he just read.
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  Speaker 2: And let me tell you what I think is even
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  Speaker 2: more amazing. But again, see... what Paul wrote in.
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  Speaker 1: First Corinthians is from first Corinthians, what he wrote, he
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: wrote to the church in Corinth and he was reiterating
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: what he had already taught them, which means you take
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  Speaker 1: the date of this writing and then you push the
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  Speaker 1: date when he was with them and taught them this
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  Speaker 1: even closer to the event of the resurrection. And this
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  Speaker 1: is the most, perhaps the most if you can use
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the word strategic, are I guess the big, most important
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  Speaker 1: leverage point in terms of how early Christians believed Jesus
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  Speaker 1: rose from the dead. This wasn't a story that became
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: a story that became a story. And by the time
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  Speaker 1: everybody was gone, this myth became history.
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  Speaker 3: It's impossible for someone who knows the history to think
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  Speaker 3: that the story of Jesus' death and burial and resurrection
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  Speaker 3: appearances was a late accumulating legend. Because it's already locked.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: in that place within 10 years wow okay.
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  Speaker 1: Um uh anything else on this yeah no it's good
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  Speaker 1: i know we could stay there all day i love
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  Speaker 1: that okay then beyond the new testament authors that we're
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: familiar with there are other people of ancient writers um
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  Speaker 1: who referred to jesus talk a little bit about that
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  Speaker 1: because they attest to his existence for sure but even
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  Speaker 1: beyond that.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah well there they are um Yeah, there are about
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  Speaker 3: 11 non-Christian references in the ancient world that mention Jesus, right?
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Tacitus simply mentions his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate and how
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: much he hates Christians, which is fun. He calls them
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: a disease that has infected the world. Mara Bar Serapion
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  Speaker 3: simply calls Jesus a Jewish king. Pliny refers to the
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  Speaker 3: Christians worshipping the man Jesus as God, and it confuses
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  Speaker 3: Pliny no end. Josephus is a Jewish aristocrat writing in
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: the first century. He mentions Jesus twice and gives us
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: enough information that we can outline Jesus' life. He's a
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: famous teacher, Josephus says. He performed paradoxa ergo, the Greek
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: for baffling deeds. Josephus isn't sure what to call them,
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: those miracles, so he calls them weird things, right? Baffling deeds,
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: paradoxa ergo. And Thallus references the eclipse that coincides with
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: the death of Jesus. And I guess my point is,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: historians look at this and go, look, there can be
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: no doubt that the figure of Jesus lived, that the
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: broad outline of his life, as mentioned by non-Christians, really,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: really happened. So you won't find a professional ancient historian
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: who disputes that. In fact, Andy, in a rush of
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: blood to the head some years ago, I wrote for
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: our ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Commission, which is a bit like,
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: I guess, PBS, is that? Except people watch it, the ABC. Oops,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: did I say that or just think that? So ABC
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: is like hugely watched in Australia. Anyway, I wrote this
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: crazy article where I challenged people, if you can find
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: just one professor who of ancient history or classics in
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: any real university in the world who says Jesus didn't live,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: I will eat a page of my Bible.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I will eat a page of my Bible if Jesus
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: didn't exist. This is 2014.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: So what's happened since then? How much of your Bible
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: is missing?
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, my Bible is safe and sound. Twitter went nuts
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: when this came out, and people started quoting professors that
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: had argued Jesus didn't live, but they were professors of poetry.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: I kid you not. psychology, philosophy, one professor of folklore,
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: and a famous professor of German language, but no professor
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: of classics or ancient history, which are the disciplines that
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: know this stuff. And my Bible has been safe for
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: all those years.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: But you shared that you had a backup plan.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: I had to develop a backup plan because accidentally a
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: few years later, I logged in to an online atheist forum.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: And they were planning to get a film crew together,
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: find a professor, and then come into my offices with
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: a film crew live and say, ha-ha, we've found a professor.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: So I had to develop a plan, which was I
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: will chop up Matthew chapter 1, like the first page
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: of the New Testament, and put it on Vegemite toast.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: Vegemite's like this thing you eat that you can't taste
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: anything else for hours after you've eaten it. And so
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: I sort of had a plan, and I would have
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: given a speech to camera. Yeah. They found one. It's
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: taken them years. There are thousands out there. They found one.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: But actually, they never found one.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So this still stands. It's somewhat here today. But the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: point is, once upon a time in universities, they would
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: just dismiss Christianity.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Well, we don't even think Jesus actually lived. Nobody is
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: there anymore because of the evidence.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so as we were preparing for this, I read
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: this statement that I had to read twice that turns
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: out to be a leverage point as well.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: We'll just put it up here.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: That absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. That
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: This is a really big deal.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I've never seen this phrase before, but this kind of, again,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: shut another door, another off-ramp to the historical nature of Christianity.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Talk about this. Yeah, I mean, it's commonly used, this expression,
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: within history circles for the simple reason that we know
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: that only Christians less than 1% of the evidence from
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: the first century still survives.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: For anything?
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: For anything. Less than 1% of the buildings, inscriptions, coins,
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: less than 1% of the written documents. We know this
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: because the written documents mention tons of other writers that
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: are all lost to us, but they must have existed
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: when these writers were.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: They reference people that we don't have any of their writings.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: So we can work it out. It's less than 1%
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: that we have. Okay. So you can still tell a
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: whole bunch of stuff from that 1%, right? Right. But
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: you can't, if you find a document that says something,
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: but no other document that says something, it doesn't mean
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: that's wrong. Because when 99% of the evidence is missing,
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: you cannot say that didn't exist when 99% of the
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: evidence is missing. So absence of evidence in the 99%
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: is no evidence of absence. And there are some good
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: examples of that.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: So let me say it back.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: So when somebody says, well, the New Testament mentions this,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: but nobody else references it, so we should doubt it happened.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I'll give you a cracking example. A what? Oh,
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: really good example.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: So years ago in Australia, the Australian Rationalist magazine, which
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: was constantly publishing sort of things against Christianity, had this
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: article by someone who, I don't know, he had an
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: undergraduate degree in modern history or something, and so they thought,
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: he'll do. And one of the key arguments against Christianity
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: in this article was that Pontius Pilate, the governor of
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Judea that interviewed Jesus and executed him, must have written many,
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: many letters back to Emperor Tiberius because governors had to.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: So this guy's argument was, where are the mentions of
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Jesus mentioned? In all of the letters Pontius Pilate must
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: have written back to Tiberius. Jesus must have been a
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: big deal. Crucifying someone was a big deal. Where is
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: the mention? There's no mention. He didn't realize we don't
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: have a single letter of Pontius Pilate back to Tiberius.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: About anything.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: About anything. Even though he was governor for 10 years,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: all of it's disappeared. That's what I mean. 99% is gone.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: We don't even have a letter from Tiberius, even though
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: Tiberius must have written to Pontius Pilate So it's all gone.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: So he was making the classic error of thinking that
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: absence of evidence was evidence of absence.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: So again, the one-offs that we find in the New Testament,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: just because they're not corroborated by other historical sources.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: That's not necessarily.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: And plus, who knows what we find next week or
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: next month or.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: And that happens.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. Another challenge....
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: That the way I wrote it out here is for
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: us modern readers is we have no context for how
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: rare it is that anything from the first or second
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: century survived, as you just said. But the New Testament
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: documents are an exception.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: We can put this next screen up.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: That the New Testament is probably, or you would say
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: more than probably, the best preserved text of all ancient history.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: And considering who wrote it and when it was written,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and the lack of social, society had not embraced this
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: new cult, this Nazarene cult.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: This is remarkable.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: Talk a little bit about this. Yeah, I mean, you
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: could delete probably and go into any ancient history department
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: or classics department and say, the New Testament is the
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: best preserved text of ancient history. And they'd say, yeah,
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: we all know that. Because they're used to other ancient texts.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: They have something to compare it to.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: They have something to compare it to. And I brought
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: along the best comparison. And I say the best because
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: Virgil's Aeneid was incredibly popular amongst the Romans in the
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: first century, the same period of the New Testament. And
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: so some good copies survived.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: And it's a poem.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful poem that tells a story about the
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: founding of Rome. Okay. And it was copied a lot.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: But what has survived, I've given you the numbers there
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: because I know there are nerds in the audience. We
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: have three complete copies of Virgil's Aeneid. So that's great.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: So we can lay them out, as scholars do, and
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: go line by line to see what mistakes or changes
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: or anything that have happened between the copies. And then
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: we have seven substantial manuscripts. This might be 50 pages,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: maybe even 100 pages of the Aeneid. That's one substantial copy.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: And then 20 fragments. That's just 20 Single pages or
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: maybe just a paragraph.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: So would this be considered a fragment?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Something of this.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: It might look like that, but that happens to be
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: one of about 100 pages of Paul's letters.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: So that brings me to this, because with the New Testament,
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: we have at least four. Some might quibble that it's
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: a bit more than that, but let's just go with
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: a low number. Four complete ancient copies of the New Testament, right?
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: And that compares pretty well to the Aeneid. But where
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: it gets... is substantial manuscripts. We've got at least 340
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: substantial manuscripts.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: Of the entire New Testament?
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: No, it might be 80 to 100 pages.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Gotcha, okay.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: And this is a good example. In the next slide,
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: I'm actually handling a page of what is 100 pages
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: that have survived of Paul's letters. And that's one substantial manuscript.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: Right, we've got 340 of these. And by the way,
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: people don't know that the earliest manuscripts of Paul's letters
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: are at the University of Michigan. You got them. And you, Mish, yes,
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: all right. And you can go to the papyrology department,
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: like go and ring them up tomorrow and say, hey,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: we had Dicko at church the other day, John Dixon.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: And he said, we're allowed to turn up and go
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: and play with Paul's letters. Actually, don't say play. Say
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: be very responsible with Paul's letters. And Brendan Haug, he
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: will let you do it. He told me to let
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Americans know this is here. Anyway, I'm getting distracted. But
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: if you go to the next slide, the real exciting
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: thing about this is that we have over 4,000 fragments,
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: little pieces of paper with scraps of the New Testament
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: on it. When you've got 4, 340 and 4,000, you
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: can line them all up. see where errors or mistakes
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: have been made, and account for them and leave them
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: to the side so that we can today have every
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: confidence that what you read in the New Testament is
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: what was written in the first century. And that is
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: a statement that every classicist or ancient historian can agree with.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: The other thing, that I did not know when I
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: went to graduate school that so impressed me was that
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: these manuscripts and fragments were found in three or more,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: but three very diverse areas of the world. Alexandria, Egypt, Jerusalem. Some,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: there's the Byzantine manuscripts. So talk a little bit about
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the dispersion because the fact that copies of the New
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Testament were distributed so quickly and there are treasure troves of.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: These, especially the fragments, found all.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Over, not all over the world, but basically all over
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: the Roman world quickly, which is a message in and
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: of itself.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's fun because you can take a
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: copy of, say, Luke's gospel that we know is about
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: copied out in about the year 200, found in, say, Syria,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: and compare it with one from, say, 400 copied in Rome.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: So it's quite distant, there's a time gap, and they're
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: the same. It's remarkable. And of course, the reason we
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: have this geographical spread is that Christians were so active
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: in taking this message. They loved the Gospels especially. Evangelists
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: would go to new towns, preach the message of Jesus,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: and then leave them a copy of the four gospels.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And as a result, even though the Romans tried to
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: burn all New Testament manuscripts they could get their hands on,
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: we still have so many that have survived.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: That's another thing too.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: If there had not been, I guess specifically it was
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Emperor Diocletian that realized, okay, we can't just get rid
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: of the Christians. We have to get rid of their
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: literature because religions didn't have literature. This was something else
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: that was unique to Christianity. So imagine apart from that,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: from that, Short period of persecution. Imagine then how many
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: manuscripts we would have and how many fragments.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: It would be remarkable.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Andy, we even have an actual Roman transcript of a
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: trial of a Christian found with books that were confiscated.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: The Christian was found with the books. The Christian was
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: found with books. And it's the actual Roman side interview
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: with him. And the Christian tried to lie his way
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: out of it. Didn't want to inform on his friends
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: who had even more books. And then they took this
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: guy away and no doubt executed him and took his book.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: So people literally lost their lives protecting these manuscripts because
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: of the confidence they had in the story that they told.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: And it's why we even have the Bible today. It's remarkable.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: I know we got to keep moving. What about archaeology?
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: And again, this is a deep dive, but you have,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I think, a couple of great examples. What does archaeology
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: say about the New Testament?
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: We could spend hours on this. You're right. But look,
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: there are fun examples. that historians sort of go, yeah.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: And then there are really boring examples that historians go, yeah.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: Which one are we doing? I'll do two fun ones. Okay.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: So these are like random discoveries that demonstrate the Gospels
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: weren't making stuff up. Like in John chapter 9, there's
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: a pool, a public bathing pool described by John, said
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: to be the Pool of Siloam, which is a district
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: now known as Silwan, just in Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: And we had dug up all over that district and
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: not found a bathing pool. So some scholars doubted John
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: got it right. Maybe John was making it up. And
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: then in 2004, during some random sewerage works in the.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: What kind of works?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: Sewage. Sewerage works.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: It's good. I just want us to all know what
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: you're talking about.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Pipes underground. They had to go and fix a pipe underground.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: And they had to dig a lot deeper than they
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: had done. And they uncovered this amazing Jewish pool. Don't
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: worry about what he's saying. I can say it better.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: These are the steps down to a pool, and the
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: steps are Herodian style, which tells us early 1st century.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: Smack bang in the middle of the Silouan district, where
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: John said it would be, 2004. That's just like three
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: minutes ago in ancient history terms. And it's the largest
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: Jewish bathing pool. That's an artist's impression that now stands
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: at the pool. You can go there. artist's impression of
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: how big it was. So John has proved right. Another
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: example would be, until very recently, some skeptical scholars doubted
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: the gospel's constant claim that Jesus went and preached in
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: synagogues in Galilee. Because we hadn't found any purpose-built synagogues,
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: buildings for the religious services. So some scholars said John
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: or Luke or Matthew were making that up. And then
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: 20 years ago, we started finding synagogues. And then we
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: started finding loads of synagogues like this one in the
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: Galilean town of Magdala. This was uncovered in 2009. Magdala
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: should ring a bell because it's why we call Mary Magdalene,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Mary of Magdala. This is her town. This is her synagogue.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: Jesus almost certainly preached in that building I'm sitting in here.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: And then just four years ago, They found a second
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: first century synagogue in this same town. So now I
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: think we've got 12 first century synagogues. So any scholar
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: who had said there were no synagogues in Galilee in
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: the first century, I'm sure they've put their PhD at
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: the back of the library where no one will find it.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: And the significance is if in the Gospels it references
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: a synagogue, historians say there weren't synagogues. What that does,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: it says, well, when Luke wrote or John wrote, there
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: were synagogues. So clearly they're writing much later than the events.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: But when we find synagogues that did it, again, we
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: pull the date back.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: We pull the writings back. Anyway.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: So these are fun. These verify what the gospels say.
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: But there's a really profound thing that might sound a
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: bit boring and technical. But for historians, it's even more
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: significant than these random finds. Because the question has always been,
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: why if Jesus was Jewish, where the main language is Aramaic,
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: are all the New Testament documents written in Greek?
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: This is big. It's huge.
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: Which was the main language around the Roman Empire, but
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: not the main language in Galilee and Judea. And so
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: it seems suspicious. An Aramaic Jesus, but Greek records. Until
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: we started finding so many Greek inscriptions in Galilee and Judea.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: And some of the most important ones are like a
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: big sign. I think we have a picture of it.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: There's a big sign on the left there. indicating a
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: Greek-speaking synagogue in Jerusalem right next to the Jerusalem temple.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: And it says that this is set up for the
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: reading of the Torah and the teaching of the commandments,
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: but it's all in Greek. Then we kept on finding
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: these ossuries. These are bone boxes. Jews, and only Jews,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: laid their loved one in a tomb, came back one
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: year later, washed the bones, and put them in a
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: burial box.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Which is probably what would have happened to Jesus had
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: he not created Easter, right?
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, that was the idea.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Jesus didn't get a burial box.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: He didn't get a.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Burial box, but the point was they put him in
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: a cave.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: It dries.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: They come back later. So this is why they put
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: him in that cave.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So keep going.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: Exactly. And then once you've washed the bones, you put
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: them in the ossuary, the burial box, and then write
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: their name or a little message on the outside. We
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: have found that about 20% of these have Greek written
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: on them, Aramaic and Greek. Suddenly, we now know loads
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: of people who were Jews in Galilee and Judea were
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: also Greek speakers as a second language. The point is this.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Now we know that the message of Jesus would have
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: been spoken in Greek from the very beginning.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Which is a huge step forward in terms of evidence
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and connecting the Greek text with the actual teaching of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Jesus because the gap was Jesus spoke Aramaic, but what
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: he said was then translated into Greek, which may be
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: the case, and that doesn't diminish what he taught, but
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: to bring this into focus was huge.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: And it ties in with the fact that two of
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: the 12 apostles have Greek names, Philip and Andrew. Yeah.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: And they're like Jews we find on the ossuary boxes.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: They have an Aramaic name and a Greek name.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Last question.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: So perhaps you've heard, or I know you have, but
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: we've heard, that the winners write history. So you only
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: get the storyline and the version of history that supports
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: the winners because they're the ones that have access, libraries.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Of course, we only hear from their perspective.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: So.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe Christianity survived the way it did because in the end,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Rome capitulated. So consequently, they lifted up and elevated the
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Christian story because.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: They won and Rome embraced. Talk a little bit about
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: that because it's.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it is a worry with all ancient sources.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: So you just think of these classical sources, Tacitus I've mentioned, Pliny, Josephus,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: all of these. They are all written by elites, people
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: who had the power. And the historian is always worrying
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: that we're just getting a story designed to control. So
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: we have to account for that. Or we're just getting
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: a tiny glimpse of one segment of society so it's
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: not representative. Now the thing is, you're right, people say
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: that about the New Testament. But the New Testament is
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: the only body of literature from the ancient Greek and
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: Roman world written by non-elites. Our texts... Were written. by
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: people who were much lower class than all of these.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: The Greek is common Greek compared to all of these.
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: The manuscript copies are in copies we know were written
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: by amateurs, not professionals. And so everything about the movement
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: is from below. The New Testament is a history from below,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: not from above. And that chimes with the actual story
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: it tells as well, which begins in a manger, right?
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: An animal feeding area. We're told that God entered the world,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: not in pomp and circumstance, but in a manger. He
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: taught the lowly. He healed the sick. He had Meals
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: with sinners. And ultimately he ends up on a cross.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: Destroyed by the powers. And I know there are people
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: who have been sort of crushed by religion through their life.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: Where religion has been controlled. But the last thing the
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: New Testament is about is controlling you. This is a
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: history from below. Comes to us.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: There, again, within the context of history and ancient history,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: there's no real good explanation as to why any of
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: these manuscripts were written or.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Survived the first century.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: When we think, again, about who was writing them and
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: who was distributing them and what they did not have
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: access to, then you flip it around and the most
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: famous people in those times, we have virtually nothing from
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: them or it's later before we learn anything about them.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: So I wanna close this way John, and I asked
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: John for permission to do this.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna put this on top. This is amazing.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: For people who don't know you, you would listen to
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: you and go, oh, well, John's an intellectual and he's
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: so smart.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: I bet he reasoned his way into faith.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: He was probably apologetics that got your attention and brought
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: you to faith, but that's not the story at all.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So would you close with the story of how you
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: discovered faith in Jesus?
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: I think it's amazing.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, I never stopped trying to reason through. But actually,
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: it was a teacher at my public school. There she is, yeah.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: Who was a really open Christian. I had never been
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: inside a church, which is very typical of an Australian childhood,
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: until I was 16. But I had this teacher who
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: was really open about Christianity in a way that would
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: probably be illegal now. But she was.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: In a public school.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Got away with it in a public school. And I
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: remember being intrigued. And I went up to her after
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: class once and I said, Mrs. Weldon, if God is true,
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: and I'm not saying he is, but if he is,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: what does he think of me, do you reckon? And
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: she said, oh, John, he sees everything you've done, said
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: and thought. And I remember thinking, oops. Because she left
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: a really nice long pause. And then she said, but
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: he loves you even still. And I thanked her. I
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: shot out into the playground. I couldn't get those words
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: out of my head. He knows everything about me, sees me,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: and loves me. So when, a few weeks later, she
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: said to the school, she was running these feasts at
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: her home right near school, and anyone was welcome. Hamburgers, milkshakes,
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: and scones are plenty.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Scone, scones, scones. Go ahead.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: I'm sure scones are different. We turned up and she
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: fed us so much food like only 16-year-old boys can eat.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: And I remember sitting in her beautiful lounge chairs full
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: of her food and then she brought out the Bible
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: and I thought, oh no, it's a trap. Because I
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: was so full, I don't know, I could get up.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: But she didn't Bible bash us or anything. She said,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: have you got questions? And we had questions. She invited
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: us back the next week. We started going back Friday
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: afternoons to her home for about two years. And in
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: that time, she read the Gospels to us and fielded
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: our questions. We were terrible to her, Andy. Sometimes we said, yeah,
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: we're coming this Friday and we wouldn't turn up. And
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: she'd made all this food. Sometimes we said, oh, we'll
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: be three or four this week. And honestly, we came
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: with 20. She had a giant home, so she'd fit us,
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: but she'd have to go out and make more hamburgers, milkshakes,
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: and scones. On one occasion when she's out making more hamburgers,
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: one of us stole her DVD player for drug money.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: The next week we're there, she simply says she seems
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: to have misplaced her DVD player. If we ever hear
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: where it might be, she'd love to know. That's all
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: she said. We knew, she knew we'd taken it, but
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: she wanted us there. And I guess here's my point.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: When you meet a Christian like that, it's the easiest
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: thing in the world to believe that God knows everything
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: about you and loves you even still. And I found
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: myself over those two years utterly compelled by Jesus and
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: finding him trustworthy with my life. I stayed in touch
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: with this woman. We all did. Five of us became Christians.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: These three here all went into full-time ministry from this
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: one class. She died in 2017. And I kept up
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: with her right through to her death. And actually, she
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: died about the same time I was finishing off one
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: of my books on Jesus. And I dedicated one of
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: my books to her And just, I mean, she was gone,
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: but I wanted the world to know what a remarkable.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: So I asked her at the last service I could
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: read this because this is a very unusual book dedication.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: In memory of Glenda Natasha Weldon, who put up with
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: this godless 16-year-old.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: This is the dedication of your book.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: Who put up with this godless 16-year-old and his scoundrel
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: mates every Friday afternoon after school as we ate her
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: hamburgers and scones.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Debated her God and lost her.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: Listened to her read and explain the four gospels, took
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: advantage of her generosity, caused her frequent headaches before eventually
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: finding ourselves captivated.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: By the story she told about the man from Nazareth. Wow.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: The power of an invitation. That's amazing.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: So real quick, John, I want you to be the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: preacher for just a minute.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: And I want you to just address us.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: What do we do with this? How do we respond
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: to this?
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: I guess for Christians, if you face doubts, just know
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: that there are probably answers to your doubts. So don't panic.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: Doubt your doubts. That is my t-shirt today, Andy. I
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: saw that. Doubt, doubt. But maybe if you're not sure
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: if you're a Christian... I often find there are two
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: kinds of people who are thinking about Christianity. One won't
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: take any step toward Christianity until they've had every question answered.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: Cross every T, dot every I. A mate of mine, Graham,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: is exactly like this. He's a statistician by trade. And
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: I took him out to coffee and I said, mate,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: You just keep asking sort of really basic questions like,
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: when are you going to take even one step? Like
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: even just start going to church or something. He said,
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: oh no, I've got to cross every T and dot
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: every I. I said, Christianity is not like one of
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: your statistical formulas. It's more like a relationship. Can you
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: imagine applying this methodology to a relationship? And he said,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: oh yeah, I've done that. It's terrible. I said, well,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: what do you do in a relationship? You take a
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: little step in the right direction, see what comes back.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: And if something comes back, you take a little step.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: And I'd say to people here who are like that,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: just take some steps, not a giant leap off the stage,
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: some steps in the right direction toward Christ. And then
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: there are different kinds of people who, they've taken every step.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: They've been hanging around Christianity, they've joined Bible studies maybe,
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: they read the Bible occasionally, but they've taken every step
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: except the last one of just entrusting themselves to Jesus Christ.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: And I remember meeting this woman in the UK at
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: an event. And she was at her like 100th Christian event.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: I said, okay, and you're not a Christian? No, no, no,
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: I'm still thinking. I said, you know, have you sorted
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: this out, this out, this out? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: You know, Jesus died for your sins and you rose again.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: I said, okay, hang on. What's going on? She said,
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: I just feel like I'm circling. And I said, do
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: you have any good reasons? not to land and bless
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: her in her honesty she said I have practical reasons
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: none of them good And I'd say if you're in
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: that situation, you've taken every step except you just haven't
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: had a moment where you said, okay, you're Lord. You
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: see everything I've done, said and thought and you love me.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: I want you. I trust you. Land.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: So would you give folks who are there.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: Who you're not going to learn anything new that's going
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: to you know what you need to know you've been
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: circling would you give that group an opportunity to land
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: today and lead us and lead them in a prayer
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: to where they say okay I'm ready.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Sure it would be a great privilege you can just
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: echo my words to God dear God I know you
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: are the Lord of all things. You know me through
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: and through and still you love me. Thank you for
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: coming into this world in Jesus Christ, living the life
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: I could never live. giving that life on the cross
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: for my forgiveness. Rising again. Because of all that, please
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: forgive me. Today, Lord, I trust you. I trust you.
• 51:36
  Speaker 3: In Jesus' name, amen.
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you, John. Can we thank John? Thank you for this.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: Thank you.