Transcription
But I want to talk about the Gospels. What's your name? Rachel. Hey Rachel, they're not necessarily eyewitness accounts. They're written in the third person, and the reason why we have the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is thanks to the Catholics putting those labels on there. So I guess I don't understand why you say they are eyewitness accounts.
Why do I think they're eyewitness accounts? Because they contain eyewitness data. Like, for example, the Gospel of John, there are 59 eyewitness details in that in that document called The Gospel of John that could only have been known by an eyewitness or somebody who knew an eyewitness. Okay, is it possible that someone could have just been writing a story? Well, then you'd have to discount all the other evidence that this doesn't appear to be a story. It appears to be a historical account from because from the Bible, right? The Bible is writing about it. Like Mark is the first Gospel that was written, and probably some think Matthew may have been written first. Most scholars say Mark was written first, so we'll go with the general consensus, I guess. And then they say maybe Matthew and Luke used a lot of Mark. That's why there's a lot of coinciding events. And if you ever read the, um, Gospels horizontally where you compare each resurrection account, there seems to be a lot of contradictions. And it's not just an eyewitness.
What would those contradictions be? Well, for example, I think in Mark, the ladies go to the tomb, uh, and Jesus isn't there, and an angel tells them to go tell the people that they don't. It just ends, and then something else is added on about snakes. And then Matthew, he goes ballistic and says there's angels and earthquakes and everything at the resurrection, and they tell her to go, go tell them to go tell the disciples, and they do. This time, Luke reins it in a little bit, and he says the stone was already rolled away, and their angel is sitting on the tomb, or I don't have this exactly correct, but it's the gist. And then John, being the Beloved disciple, made himself, or whoever wrote it, made himself get there first before Peter. And I don't know, there's just a lot of contradictions.
How are those contradictory? I don't see them contradictory. I see them complementary because they're written by different people telling their perspectives.
How are they contradicting? How, how did Luke miss the earthquakes and the angels? That seems. Well, if, if he doesn't report an earthquake, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. It doesn't mean it did. No, but it's not a contradiction. Well, like for example, if somebody, if somebody came into this, uh, some reporter came into this room tonight and said, Frank Turk gave a presentation, that would be true. And if somebody else came into this room and said, Frank Turek spoke and so did, uh, Dr. Ben Gates, that would be true as well. That would be complementary. That would not be contradictory, right? But those are ordinary, um, those are just ordinary circumstances, ordinary things. Those are not hard to believe when something extraordinary happens like there's angels and earthquakes and stones rolling away. And but they're not contradictory.
You might say, well, I would, I would hope this would be in here. See, here, here's one of the problems that I think some skeptics have with the scriptures is they want to say that they're too divergent to have been true. Yet, on the other hand, if they were exactly the same, they'd say, well, they were just copied from one another. The Gospels have both exactly the same and different, right? Because they are witnessing the same events, so you're going to have some overlap, and then you're going to have some differences. Let me give you a couple of examples of this. Do you know that when the Titanic went down, some eyewitnesses said it broke into, and other eyewitnesses said, no, it went down whole? Does that mean that we can't trust the Titanic sank? No, that doesn't. That is not a miraculous occurrence. Leave miracles out for a second. Is that a contradictory? Well, it seems contradictory, right? Well, but what do they agree on? That the Titanic's sinking, right? Exactly. To tell about it, right? So every single Gospel says there was a resurrection. They may tell the story a little bit different way and have different details in there. And even if there are contradictions, that does not disprove the fact that there was a resurrection.
Why would you, why would you have to see a story? But then you, you're giving, this is what I feel like you are. I haven't heard evidence for your resurrection. I hear assertions and appealing to emotion. I haven't seen any evidence.
What would you consider to be evidence other than eyewitness accounts? Eyewitness accounts are usually the least reliable evidence. So how do you know anything from the ancient world? I don't. I have to use, um, I have to go by. It's the thing that makes the Bible unbelievable are the miracles that are in it.
Okay, so you're, you have a philosophical presupposition against miracles then. I wish that rather than her beginning with the idea that eyewitness accounts are not reliable and that history is not reliable, and that at one point here she said that she can't know anything from the ancient world, she can't know of Tiberius Caesar existed, etc., rather than taking that extreme level of skepticism to the point of, you know, complete ignorance, I wish that she would have just said, hey, I have a problem with the supernatural. I have a problem with the idea of miracles being possible of God intervening in history in miraculous ways. I have a, you know, philosophical problem with the idea of the resurrection. And even though the account of the resurrection checks out according to the standards of history and the validity of eyewitnesses, I don't believe it because it includes this, this claim of something happening that is miraculous and supernatural in nature. I wish you would just lead with that. And I think I appreciate her honesty because a lot of times I do think that this is the real problem. It's not people's issue with history, people's issues with eyewitness accounts or the Gospels or these contradictions. You know, in one Gospel it said there was two women at the tomb, and then another Gospel says there was three women at the tomb. The whole story must be false because these two men who wrote down these events made this, you know, this error and or in their memory or the recollection of it. Um, I, I just wish that she would be more honest from the get-go. That being said, let's continue.
What meaning, you're ruling out miracles? Anything that has a miracle in it? Well, you want to say about him because he doesn't claim to do miraculous things. See, but you see, that's, that's a, that's what I mean by philosophical bias. Okay, you're ruling out miracles. And to be honest with you, you're probably on the side of most scholars. Most scholars will say, look, if it's got the miraculous in it, I can't believe it. The problem is, the miraculous is possible because the first verse of the Bible appears to be true. There appears to be a God, then the miracles are possible.
You're reading the, um, first verse of Genesis with your Christian eyes. You're not reading it in historical context. But also the, um, what do you think the proper interpretation of the first verse of Genesis means? What, what is it? I don't know, but I'm not, I, you're, I can tell that you're reading it with your Christian lens. It all it says there was a beginning, right? That God created the heavens and the Earth. Well, I mean, technically, you using or was the unit different state form? Well, it says there was a beginning. The Bible does. Yes. And science, the scientists currently, the science, including Einstein, is saying that the universe had a beginning through a theory of General. Maybe this current state of the universe had a beginning. Yeah. The universe can't be eternal, otherwise today never would have gotten here. That's gibberish. I don't even know it. I don't know what you're saying when you say that. Let me, he needs to unpack that because that's actually a pretty, um, intricate philosophical claim that does take more unpacking. But I don't know. I like her response to it.
Rachel, let me just give you, let me ask you a question. If Christianity were true, would you be a Christian? If brought me to it, I probably would have no choice. Oh, no, you always have a choice. Not if I was led by the Holy Spirit. Oh, you can resist the Holy Spirit. A lot of people do. Oh, well, then I, I don't know. I was a Christian. If I gave you a book, would you read it? My mom, I think, is going to buy it. But that wasn't my question. Rachel, if I gave it to you, would you read it? I could read it and I could do a YouTube response, I guess. You really sound open. You know, Rachel, think about this. If God exists, if he does, and if the story of Jesus is true, isn't that the greatest news in history? Oh, not for those going to hell. Nobody has to go. That's the whole point. Well, if they're not convinced what they're reading in the Bible is true. I said, if it was true, isn't it great news? I guess.
Yeah, this might sound overly simplistic, but when I watch a clip like this and I hear these different objections, these these little, um, ways that she's sort of trying to scratch at the surface of what is being said and sort of poke holes into, um, the presentation and really in the Bible itself, what I hear at the end here is like a clue where she talks about hell. And I know that that reality of hell is is such a huge stumbling block to so many people. And what it does is, when it's improperly understood, it causes you to believe that God is not good. And once you believe that God is not good, that affects the way that you look at all of these other things in scripture. It, it, I've just noticed this in myself personally when I was, when I was, uh, doubting and when I was in skepticism, that that belief in a, in in the God of the Bible being not good becomes like, uh, it's a smear on the glass of the lens that you're looking through. And suddenly you're, you're like hypersensitive to everything. And you don't want to believe in supernatural realities. You don't want to believe in there being a historical reliability to the Gospels. You, you don't want to believe that the things in the Bible are true because if they are, then it follows that the God that the Bible is presenting is true. And you know that he's not good. And you don't want a not good or bad God to be real. So you are motivated intellectually and philosophically and emotionally to reject all of these little things and find these little problems that you can possibly find because you're convinced at the beginning of your pursuit that God is not good. So your, your goal is to disprove, not to learn and to come objectively to the equation, but to disprove this God that you know is not good. And I, I mean, I hate to speculate about that, but I, I relate to the place that she is at in this video. Rachel is at in this video because I have been in this exact same place. And I know the way that her feeling about who God is, based on her wrong conclusions around topics like hell, I know what it feels like to have those things sort of taint your view into the rest of scripture and really your view into the rest of reality. What she needs is a revelation of God's love, of his goodness. She needs to understand not just informationally, but at the deepest level of who she is, that that God is her Creator, uh, her Redeemer, and that if she will just see him through the lens of the life of Jesus, I really think that for me was the, was the big realization. Is that if the Gospel is true, then God is good. And not just good, but maximally good and ultimately heroic and ultimately powerful in his resurrection. So God, I just pray for Rachel that you'll help her to come around to understanding that you are good, and that you are loving, and that you are just, and that the bad ideas that she has held about you would give way to truth. That you would reveal yourself to her in a way that is completely undeniable and in a way that's not just academic or intellectual, but that is, that becomes the sweetest and the most beautiful and the most real thing about her life. That she would say, be it that she would be able to say, I've looked and I've found, and there's no one like Jesus. I pray this in your name. Amen.