What If You Are Doubting? | Season 4 Episode 1

Welcome to the Point Taken podcast, the only podcast where we take and make spiritual and biblical truths and chat it up.

I'm Josiah, I'm not the host of this podcast, but I am today. In front of me, not to my right, is

Anna. Hey guys, glad to be back. And then to her right, to my 11 o 'clock, or you could say north northwest, is

Elena Cherie Everett. Hi. All right.

I loved that episode, by the way. That was great, wasn't it? No, it wasn't, because she lied. It is

Cherie. I stand by what I said. It's not Cherie. It's not Cherie. You are sitting, not standing, so you cannot stand by what you said.

I could, but it really wouldn't make a difference. I'd be about the same height. Agreed, agreed, and agreed. I'm the tallest person on the podcast today.

It's because of the shoes. Nick, make this the intro, the outro, the theme. Can you please get a shot of his shoes?

In all caps, have this be the thumbnail. I'm the tallest person on the podcast today. It's a fact.

Look at his little platform shoes. Without my platforms, I'm still the tallest person. Okay, do you feel better about yourself?

Very much so. Two petite women. Very much so. I am way taller, right

Seth? Right. Right, don't come on camera today. Unless you're like sitting. Yeah.

Okay, so today we are talking about deconstruction, the deconstruction of the

Christian faith, or so -called deconstructions. What we're gonna do is we're gonna have Anna over here read a definition of that, and then we're gonna react to a video that I have not heard except for when it was practicing the same thing earlier, but I could only hear half of what she was saying.

So, Anna, read the definition, and then Lowell hit us with the TikTok. Okay, this is from Desiring God. It's John Piper's website.

Deconstruction is a critical dismantling of a person's understanding of what it means to be an evangelical

Christian, and in some cases, a refusal to recognize as authorities those perceived as occupying privileged evangelical institutional positions who quote -unquote supposedly speak for God.

Excellent. All right, hit us with that TikTok, man. Let's see what she's got to say about it. And I always tell people, if you wanna become an atheist, read and study the

Bible. I used to be a devoted evangelical Christian, and I'm not talking about the kind of Christian that just shows up at church on Sunday and puts a

Jesus quote on their Facebook bio. I used to get up every single morning and have a one - to two -hour quiet time with God where I would read the

Bible and write in my journal and pray. I used to spend my extra babysitting money on books about creationism and apologetics and theology, and all

I wanted as a 16-, 17 -year -old girl was to make God proud and to be a shining light for Jesus, and so I studied the

Bible a lot, but the more I studied, the more questions I had, and when I would come across something that didn't sit right with my sensibilities,

I wouldn't just shrug it off and say, well, God's ways are higher than mine. You just gotta have faith. I wanted to be able to give an answer to anybody who questioned me about my faith, and the more

I learned, the more questions I had and the less answers I had, and over time,

I really started to see a very different story than what the church had taught me, a very different God than what the church had taught me, and you start learning about how the

Bible was formed, who wrote it or who didn't write it, the church history, where these stories came from, how the church has molded them and changed them to fit a narrative, and that's when all of it started to fall apart for me, and I genuinely just wanted truth.

I wanted to know the true God, not the God that my parents taught me, not the God that my church had taught me, not the

God that was acceptable within society. I wanted to know the true God, but the more

I sought after him, the less I found, and I begged God to reveal himself to me, and he never did.

I just got more confused, and I got further away from any type of belief in him.

All right, copy that. Hey, initial reactions before we dig into that. Lowell, how -

Lowell, you're already reacting. How long was that, Lowell? Like a minute? Do TikToks have a minute?

The reason I'm saying is, we might play that again in a minute. Don't worry about it. It wasn't long enough.

We might do that again in a minute. All right, initial reactions. Let's go one, two, three, go. I think that she was searching, but I don't think she was actually looking for what she was wanting to find.

I think she had in her brain what she wanted to find and ended up finding it.

Her church didn't do a good job. Her parents didn't do a good job.

She did not have the leadership, the discipleship that she needed, and a wise person to counsel her and go over scripture with her.

It sounded like she just kind of did it by herself. And when you do that, you can, what's the word?

Not adjust scripture, but conform it to what you want it to be.

Yeah, I think that's spot on. I have a lot of initial reactions. Part of my heart breaks for her.

The world is enamored with apostates, and that's not a mean term.

Apostate means someone who claims to previously have believed and no longer does. That's what an apostate is.

That's why someone who's been an atheist for the whole life can write a book and make zero dollars, someone who is an apostate and leaves the

Christian faith mostly, sometimes the Mormons, but mostly the Christian faith, and then writes a book, are millionaires because the world is enamored with apostates.

They believe that they have more credibility because they once were that thing, so they think they have more power to dismantle the supposed pillars of that belief system.

You know, it might sound ironic and scary to some of you at first, but I would think we would all,

I know I definitely do, I would actually agree with a large portion of what she said until she got towards the end, meaning the more

I read the scriptures, I come across questions all the time, and I do not want anyone to be satisfied with the, well, let's just have more faith and his ways are higher, therefore,

I don't have to dig into his word more. I have been railing against that for a very long time.

I have been railing for a very long time, and the reason I have is because not only does not that kind of, you know what,

Anna, just pray about it, and God will ease your heart about that. I don't mean to mock that, but in another sense,

I do, because not only will that not stand up to any scrutiny from the outside world,

I can tell you from personal experience, that won't stand up to any type of scrutiny you have laying in your bed at night. That doesn't stand up to any type of resistance, but I want resistance, because if something is true, it's going to be true whether or not

I have come to understand it or not. So I can believe quantum physics is true, even though I don't know it yet, but I know that if I study enough,

I would be able to discern and logically realize, okay, X, Y, Z, I am a pastor of this church,

I want people to ask questions. I want people to ask questions.

One of the reasons we have this podcast is for that purpose. Because we had so many people asking,

I mean, not you in particular, but a lot of people were just asking these questions, like, hey, I don't know if it's okay for me to go to a gay friend's wedding.

I don't know if it's okay in certain circumstances if abortion's okay. And so, a lot of the things, though, in scripture,

I feel like there are some things in scripture that we are not meant to know. I mean, obviously, like the end times, we don't know when that's going to be.

We know that it's soon. Did you guys watch The Chosen? Yeah. You know how

Jesus always jokes about soon? I'm like, Jesus, where is that? And he goes, soon?

You don't have to worry about the spoiler alert, I think she's already read the book. Yeah, I know. Well, I didn't know if you were, well, it's the joke with the disciples and Jesus, and he's always talking about soon.

Oh, some of the jokes they have, I think, are great. One of my favorite jokes is when he's like, Peter's in a bad mood or whatever, and Jesus is like -

Peter's always so comfy. And Jesus is like, this is from season one, and Jesus is like, all right, trouble at home again?

He goes, yes, Lord, did you read my mind again? He goes, no, everyone can tell you're in a bad mood. Right? So, Elena, you come on Wednesday nights often.

Don't let me exaggerate. I would say for six months, all we did on Wednesday nights was answer questions that other people, and I say you, because Anna's a lot of times with the girls, but -

I've only been to a couple of those, because I'm usually with the youth. Yeah, well, and then, yeah, it's been crazy ever since we've had our baby.

What we have done is answer questions. That's what we've done for almost six months.

We've moved on from that now. Any question anyone had. And I don't care if it's the, is smoking weed a sin?

I don't care if it's the, who is the Antichrist? I don't care if it's the, what does this verse mean?

I don't care. It's if the, do we have guardian angels? How is man free if God is sovereign?

I don't, it doesn't matter to me. In one sense, in one sense,

I've heard it put this way. When I preach or teach, I am done.

I've heard someone else say this. I am done when with whatever pastor of scriptures I've gone over, if every possible question

I can think of has I have an answer for in my brain, I'm ready to teach it.

That's pretty close to when I know I'm done. Sometimes that takes a very long time. So this lady here, she said, she had a quirky little thing at the beginning about if you wanna become an atheist, read your

Bible more. But see, that's the problem. She said the operative word. She said it didn't fit with the story my church told me.

It's not a story. Why do you say that? This is history, because it's proven. I mean, if you go back like with Romans, like Alexander the

Great, like all of that stuff like that can be backed up with scripture. Lowell, can you play it again?

Because I wanna hear, I wanna make sure I don't misrepresent her. Can you play it again? And I always tell people, if you wanna become an atheist, read and study the

Bible. I used to be a devoted evangelical Christian. And I'm not talking about the kind of Christian that just shows up at church on Sunday and puts a

Jesus quote on their Facebook bio. I used to get up every single morning and have a one to two hour quiet time with God where I would read the

Bible and write in my journal and pray. I used to spend my extra babysitting money on books about creationism and apologetics and theology.

And all I wanted as a 16, 17 year old girl was to make God proud and to be a shining light for Jesus.

And so I studied the Bible a lot, but the more I studied, the more questions I had. And when

I would come across something that didn't sit right with my sensibilities, I wouldn't just shrug it off and say, well, God's ways are higher than mine.

See, we're on the same page right now. I wanted to be able to give an answer to anybody who questioned me about my faith. And the more

I learned, the more questions I had and the less answers I had. And over time,

I really started to see a very different story than what the church had taught me.

A very different God than what the church had taught me. When you start learning about how the Bible was formed, who wrote it or who didn't write it, the church history, where these stories came from, how the church has molded them and changed them to fit a narrative.

That's when all of it started to fall apart for me. And I genuinely just wanted truth.

I wanted to know the true God, not the God that my parents taught me, not the God that my church had taught me, not the

God that was acceptable within society. I wanted to know the true God. The more

I sought after him, the less I found. And I begged God to reveal himself to me. And he never did.

I just got more confused and I got further away from any type of belief in him. So, go ahead.

It almost sounds like she was looking at different religions and how it passed through religions instead of looking at -

Just scripture, like Bible. And then when she started looking at the scripture, it wasn't adding up to what the history of the church is.

And the history of the church is not necessarily the Bible and what it says. Sure. Let me give her some credit here.

Different than what the church has taught her. Unfortunately, that might be true. It's amazing how

I can have... See, I am not embarrassed by what

God has said and what God has done. I'm not ashamed. I'm not embarrassed by it.

Therefore, do not be ashamed of the gospel. I'm not. I have been before, but I'm not.

I find that there are some Christians that are so insecure about what they believe because it's different than what their grandma told them.

They don't know. If they're honest, they're a little uncomfortable with certain parts of the

Bible, and they'd rather avoid it. And I challenge people not to do that. That's not what you want.

For example, it's amazing how we can talk about the flood for years.

And I'll have Christians that have heard that, I'll use her word, story for years.

And then I'll mention, yeah, God drowned every person on human earth except eight. They look at me like their head's sideways.

What? That's what a story was about. But when I use words like God killed or God drowned, they're so unused to that language, but it's a fact.

Well, it's just that God flooded the entire earth. Yes. That's what he did. Which includes the rabbits, it includes...

Yes, he did kill. But there's even proof of the flood. What's that? Answers in Genesis 5.

Yeah, Ken Ham. Ken Ham, yeah. He does a whole thing on the flood. And he talks about how there have been remains and fossils of certain animals on the tops of these mountains.

Mount Everest. Yes, and it's like no animal could survive in that type of environment. And so it's just, that's the type of research you can do to prove these instances.

I would challenge anyone who has questions questions like this young lady has, we'll take on any one of them.

Absolutely. We'll take on any of them. Zero doubt, no problem. Do it publicly, reactionary, don't need time to prep.

Not because I'm a genius or Elena's a genius, and I might be a genius, but not because me or Elena are geniuses.

Oh, okay. Because we believe God. Because we believe in his word.

So here's what I'd like to do. Oh, and by the way. Can I ask a question real quick?

Of course. Okay, so what would you say to the people, like I mentioned earlier, where scripture doesn't outright answer specific questions?

So like the end times, or like what heaven will exactly be like? You know, we talked about the new heaven, new earth, all of that stuff.

Like what would you say if they have questions and they can't get answers for those particular questions?

I would say, well, most of the time when someone has questions, there is an answer for it.

If it's questions about things that God has not revealed. Right. Then I'm saying, yeah.

Then I'm comfortable answering it in the realm of possibility, not in the realm of fact.

Right. And you have no choice but to be comfortable with that. If we are in the realm of exactly, exactly how will heaven be organized?

I only have answers to which God has revealed. He's chosen not to reveal the rest. So, but I'm comfortable with that because he's proven himself trustworthy.

And it's such an easy analogy to understand when I recognize how I treat my four -year -old daughter.

And this is where people lack so much humility. It amazes me. Like, oh, that's wrong that you're comparing me to your four -year -old daughter.

I'm like, yes, it is wrong. Because the difference between me and my daughter is far smaller than the difference between me and God.

It's wrong to even use that analogy because it's not a wide enough gap. Right. God is so much more above me than I am my four -year -old daughter.

Right. So if I speak to her that way of, that's not time for you to know that yet,

Ava. And I could, the title of this video would change if I'd say the question she asked and it might be rated a different TV version if I asked the questions that she asked.

But sometimes the answer to that is, I'll tell you when you get older. How is it any more of a stretch to say sometimes

God has that answer? Now, I don't like using that unless he really has not revealed.

Because too often we use that as a crutch to I don't know is what we're really trying to say. Right. Oh, no,

I had something else. Oh. So at the very end of her video, she said something along the lines of,

I asked God to reveal himself to me and he has not. What would you say to that?

I mean, granted, don't know how she asked for that or don't know if she's trying to read scripture because that's where he would reveal himself to you but if you don't understand it.

I know exactly how I would answer that because it's not like how would I, it's how have I in that exact scenario, someone sitting right next to me.

I'd say, okay, well, and this is what I'll do every time. We, let's say we're on a plane or whatever.

We don't have time to go into every possible objection you have to Christianity. Would you mind telling me the one or two biggest objections that just solidified for you this can't be true?

Now, nine times out of 10, this is their answer. When I say, what was the biggest objection that led you away?

This is what they'll say because they don't have one.

They haven't actually thought that deeply about it. They just want an excuse to disobey. But for the other 10 % of the time, it will be an attack on scripture, which are my favorite.

The contradictions. It's are my favorite. So what I'd like to do then.

So to answer your question directly, what would I say to her? I'd say, how did you seek him?

And this is when you say you pleaded with him. I don't want to mock that for a moment.

I've been there. God has spoken. God has spoken through his word.

And whenever someone balks at that, just if you don't mind, I'd like to share an analogy. Okay. My daughters are four and two.

So this analogy doesn't work super well. So I am going to assume that my daughters were my children, let's just say.

Let's say you got kids and you've got three or four kids. The oldest one is 17 and the others are like 12 and 10.

Let's say, so they're all old enough to read, let's say. Let's say you call the 17 year old on your way home from work and they've got to be ready to go.

So you call the 17 year old and say, hey man, tell everyone else to get their shoes on. And you get to the house and they ain't got their shoes on.

You actually don't know who to address because you don't know if the 17 year old correctly passed on the message or if they just didn't listen.

Because if you ask them, they're going to say, oh yeah, he didn't tell me that. Or he said we had more time or whatever, right? But if you ask him and go,

I told him they didn't listen to me or whatever, right? But let's say that you just wrote on a piece of paper, everyone have your shoes on at two o 'clock and put it on the magnet on the fridge.

Well, now there's no excuse because it's written plain for everyone to see. Everyone has the same standard.

And you can't say, oh, God's really like this because he talked to me in a dream yesterday and he's really like this.

And you can't say, oh, actually God's really like this because in a vision last week, I saw he was like this. And I can't say, well, that's not really what

God's like. See, it's written for all to see. God has spoken and laid it out for all to see who he is.

He has revealed himself universally in one way, primarily, we can talk about creation later, primarily through his word so that we all have the same instruction sheet and description of who he is on the fridge.

And we all can't blame each other for not knowing who he is. That is why I believe he did it that way.

So with that being said, I would ask that young lady, I understand you crying out to him.

What if he has answered who he is and it's right here? Yeah, that's my point. It's like, have you?

And her answer would be yes. But before you do, come to it and say, all right,

I am going to let him define for himself who he is and then choose whether or not to reject him.

I'm not gonna let the Southern Baptist Convention or the Presbyterian Church or the Catholic Church tell me or Islam, tell me who he is.

I'm going to see what he has said he is and go from there. I'm going to his autobiography, not a biography written by somebody else, okay?

So when it comes to attacks on the Bible, because most people would say, God did not write this.

That's what I love. I'd like to go over a few that we have all encountered before, so let's move past the silly ones.

If we may, I'll just throw out a couple of silly ones that are not even worth our time. We reacted to one here.

I think Anna was here on that one a few weeks ago where a college -aged female, yeah, was doing one of those

TikToks where you're in your car and said, okay, make it make sense.

Four guys with the whitest names ever, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, supposedly lived in Israel.

I think she said Palestine, and there's a reason she said that. That's okay. Lived in Israel slash Palestine 2 ,000 years ago, and their names were

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Make it make sense. Now, since you weren't here for it, were you? No, I don't remember that one.

Why don't y 'all, I'll let y 'all take that one. Why is she wrong? Those are very white people names.

Are we saying white people wrote? Go ahead. I think it's more that white people stole those names from the Bible to name their children, because it's not like they were -

Which ones are, well, I wanna look at - European or American people, they're like Hebrew names, like Jewish names, that's not how that works anyway.

Moving on. Peter, who was sometimes called Simon. They had two names for a reason, and neither one of them were necessarily white names.

Well, they do realize that America has not always existed as we know it. Even European countries like that, it's just like that's what you have, if you have ever tried to name a baby, you know those books of baby names, and they give you the origin of those names.

It's like Hebrew, Greek, all these things. It doesn't come from America. Beyond that, the translation, it's

Americanized because we turned it into English. The word itself, like Jesus, is not actually said that way in the

Greek, or, you know, it's just - Yeah, so let's just, we'll use Jesus. Boom, roasted, done.

Yeah, and for anyone out there who may genuinely, genuinely, not just using this as an excuse not to obey, genuinely not know the answer to that,

I'll make fun of you later, I'll help you now. Okay, the phonetics

J -E -S -U -S is only the transliteration in English of the

Greek name Iesus, which is a translation transliteration of the

Hebrew name Yeshua. In other words, we all know that the literal phonetical sound coming out of the mouth of Peter was not

Jesus. He didn't even use a J in that way. We all, those weren't even the letters.

We all understand that. Anyone who pretends like they don't has not seriously contended with the message of the

Bible. Aristotle's name was not pronounced Aristotle. Like, this should not be difficult.

This really should not be that difficult, but apparently we're gonna make it. Every person you've ever studied in history,

Christopher Columbus, it doesn't matter. That's not how their name was pronounced in the nation they were from. Right, right.

Okay, other silly ones, probably my, if any of you atheists say this, you don't care about actually deconstructing the

Bible. You just want an excuse not to obey. If you have ever said, if you have ever said, well, you know, it says they were in Bethlehem.

I'm sorry. It says they were in Galilee and they went up to Jerusalem. Well, that's actually south.

So whoever wrote this doesn't actually know the directions, this Bible's not inerrant. You don't care about studying the

Bible. They went up to Jerusalem because it's up the mountain. It's up, they don't mean north.

Altitude. Right, you don't care. If you are on the base of a mountain, no matter if you're north, south, east, or west, you go up the mountain.

This is, that's someone who does not seriously want to contend. So apart from those silly, unthoughtful, illogical, idiotic, stupid, supposed falsities of the inerrant word of God, what are some of the better or maybe more challenging or thought provoking, excuse me, attacks on the

Christian faith that we've come across? Go ahead. So the first one that comes to my mind is there are multiple men,

I think it's like what, up to 40 men, men, not white men, but just men, who have written the

Bible. So since so many people had their hands in it, how can we trust the truth, the inerrancy of the scripture?

And we talk about that scripture, all scriptures, God breathed.

And so God breathed means inspired by God. So God told these particular handpicked men what to write.

And what's crazy about it is that if you go in the New Testament, Old Testament, how many years apart are these?

1 ,500? Yeah, it's a considerable amount of time. If you go back to the

Old Testament and the New Testament and cross examine the two of them, if you will, you will find that everything is true.

I think it's in Hebrews. Does Hebrews quote the Old Testament a lot? There's stuff in Hebrews about the way that they did things in the temple.

And then it just like, it's always 100 % true, 100 % of the time. And so a lot of people just have a problem.

There was actually a girl at work I was talking to this week. And, you know, like with patriarchy and everything in our society nowadays, it's like evil and corrupt and all this stuff.

She was saying, I bet there was just some guy who wrote this stuff in the Bible just so that he could have power over women.

And I'm like, no, it's not really how it happened. I said, there was about 40 men who

God specifically chose to write scripture. And I said, and if you actually go in scripture, I said, there are no contradictions to that.

And I said, and on top of that, you have to think how different the culture from now is from the culture that was then.

I'm like, you know, this is the feminist movement. And, you know, like, oh, I'm not gonna let a man, oh, and she said that you were like a slave to your husband.

And I said, I am honored to have my husband lead my family. I'm like,

I just, he's the best. I said, but I cannot say that for everyone else's husband. And I said, in scripture says, submit to your husbands as your own.

So you submit to your own husband. I said, but what they don't say, and what a lot of people don't reference is that you're supposed, the husbands are supposed to love their wives as they love the church.

And so I'm just like - As Christ loved the church. Right, as Christ loved the church. And I'm like, so if you read scripture, it's there.

But so I was actually able to share that with a coworker. If you read scripture, it's there. But that's,

I had that conversation with a coworker and she just, she doesn't understand, but she was raised,

I guess it was evangelical. And then when her and her husband got married, her husband was Catholic.

So she had to do the Catholicism classes and the catechism and all of that. So she doesn't know, she hasn't searched for herself.

That term is kind of broad now. Evangelical doesn't really mean anything anymore. Right, well, that's why

I'm saying she was like, had those beliefs back then. But yeah, so that was just always one that's stuck with a lot of people is how many men had their hands in it and how can it be true if like there's 40 different, well, it's like the gospels, for example.

Every one of those gospels have a different perspective. So some of them mentioned certain things while others might not.

So let's tackle that one first. Let's do the, well, first off to the first thing Anna said. Anna's right.

Sorry, that was a long one. Don't apologize again. Anna's right. The scripture, like Elena said, it was written over 1500 years by 40 -ish different writers, but there's one author, one general editor, and that's

God, the Holy Spirit. And the Bible says as much. Peter, one of those writers, says, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. That's funny, that word carried along. I know it's two in English, but in Greek it's one.

Don't correct me, grammar Nazis. It's only used one other time in the Bible to describe the wind carrying a ship to its destination.

That is how the Holy Spirit inspired these scriptures.

They were carried along. So these men with their own writing styles and vocabulary and personalities were carried by the

Holy Spirit to write God's words. Now, I don't for a moment believe like automatons, how do you say that word?

Robots, thank you, that God did this. I thought he was talking about a transformer.

Autobots? I don't know. Autobots, the racing thing. Autobots, Autobots, the racing thing.

Dude, automaton is a robot, right? I don't know what you're talking about, so just. Well, I'm talking, thank you,

Lowell. Hey, Anna, Lowell's on my side. I don't, I'm just, I don't know what you're talking about. You do now, because Lowell just said, now you can't tell him.

I know, but I'm not saying I'm not on your side. I don't believe God did this. What was that? Brr, brr, brr, chk, chk, brr.

Right, that's not what we're saying. Men spoke, that's what the scripture, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. Now, you are right to question how that can be.

You should test that. Test that. So, the test comes to pass from examination of the scriptures.

I'll just give you a couple examples, and then we'll move into the gospel thing you mentioned. John chapter five, verse four, verse four.

John chapter five, verse two. Verse four is one of those quote deletions you were talking about earlier. John chapter five, verse two says this.

It says that in the pool of Bethesda, there were five Ruth colonnades.

Those rows of columns, like in the front of the Lincoln Memorial. Well, about four decades ago, that was unearthed.

It was weird. It's in the back of an existing church, they unearthed a church that was built on top of the pool.

So, it's taken a long time to get there. You can go to Jerusalem right now. You can go and Google. Well, I'll be there in a year, and that is the one place

I just have to go. But, you can go and Google images right now, and in the pool there were five roofed rows of columns, just like John said.

Now, does that immediately prove that Jesus was born of a virgin? No. Does that immediately prove that God created the world in six days?

No. What does it prove? That John was an eyewitness, and had an accurate description of what

Jerusalem looked like. Someone who didn't live in Jerusalem, excuse me, who had not visited, who had not seen, who did not know, who did not have firsthand account, who did not have knowledge, would not have known.

How did John know that? Because he'd been there. Okay, so, that's the point. Is everyone following me on this?

Is everyone with me on this? And John was writing to people who had not been to Jerusalem. He was describing to them this pool.

If he was only writing to people in Jerusalem, he would not have said, which has five roofed colonies. He was at the pool of Bethesda, and they all would have known that.

But, he was writing to an audience outside of that, so he felt the need to describe this pool, yes? Okay, so, with that being said, when you see things like that, that we can archeologically see in life now, but then you can also go back.

Huh, well, that's weird. This book says that Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon, and that's what we see.

This book says Cyrus was king of the Medo -Persian Empire, and that's what we see. It's not in the sense of,

I expect what the Bible says to be true in what I see in the world, because the

Bible is truth. And it works beyond just the outward, because that stuff's easy.

Okay, Josiah, this book says, I must raise my children this way, or this will happen, and I can raise them this way, so this will happen.

And that's what I see in my life. It's wholly true. The Bible's not a history book, but when it speaks on history, it speaks accurately.

The Bible's not a science book, but when it speaks scientifically, it speaks inherently. The Bible is that.

So, Anna, when you were mentioning four gospels with four different perspectives, if I might,

I might share a story. You may. Okay. I'll allow it. All right.

The other day, this works out perfectly. I thought of this story Friday, but I didn't know we were gonna talk about it here at the podcast today.

But I thought of a story the other day, because I was gonna share it tonight at Bible study. That just revealed the day that we record these.

What am I doing? I, Ava and Naomi, Naomi and Naomi.

Okay, we get home, and Rachel, my wife, asks

Ava, did you have fun with daddy? And she says, yes, ma 'am. She said, what'd y 'all do?

And she said, we ate biscuits. So where did you guys go again?

That's the point I'm about to make. I was about to say, you haven't told us. That's the point I'm about to make. She says, we ate biscuits.

She goes, she said, we ate biscuits, and we went to the SOG gym, and we saw

Gigi. She asked Naomi, my other daughter, how'd it go?

And she goes, she said something like, watch

Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. And she asked me, I said, yeah, we had fun.

In other words, she kept getting pieces of it. When you put the whole story together, we went to the SOG gym first, then we walked over to the church, and then we went to my parents' house and ate.

The first thing on Ava's mind, of course, was the food, right? Because she's your child. No, nothing they said was wrong.

Nothing they said was wrong. It was just different pieces of a story, okay? She got the whole picture. Now, that's not exactly the analogy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

That's not exactly how that happened. But the point is, Jesus did a lot in those three and a half years.

We have relatively few words written about it if you think over a span of three and a half years. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John choose to focus on different aspects of it.

That doesn't make it untrue. It means we have four different testimonies about the life of Jesus.

And I challenge anybody, anybody, because most of the time what happens is someone hears or reads or sees a five -second

TikTok video or hears the Gospels contradict themselves. Challenge them. Christian, I dare you, go on the offensive.

Okay, which contradiction most convince you that they're untrue? You know what they'll say? Because they don't know, because they haven't looked.

But every now and then, they will have a couple. And that's what I love. That's what

I want. I want that. For example, it will be like, oh,

Legion. Y 'all remember this one? Do either of y 'all know that account? Remind me. Tell me what you know.

Legion was the demons that possessed the man. They came up to Jesus. Exactly.

Oh, there it was. Did everyone hear that? Say exactly what you just said again. They came up to Jesus. They came up to Jesus.

Now, what do you mean they? It was a legion. Of? Demons. In what? A man.

A man. Isn't that crazy? That's scary. Now watch this.

It is, but there's a point to this. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and I think,

John, I think all four mentioned this one. So there's parallel accounts. In one of the accounts,

I don't remember, so I'm just going to say, okay, so I think Matthew uses like 100 words to describe the story.

Mark uses like 20. And Luke uses like 200. Now, again, I don't remember which one was which, so just bear with me for a minute, or lie in with me.

Bears hibernate. Depending on what part of the world you live in, they might still be hibernating. Keep going, keep going.

Yes, ma 'am. So, if you were going to describe that story in 20 words, there are certain details that you would leave out that doesn't make it untrue.

So, for example, when you read all four accounts, you recognize there are actually two men.

One did all the talking, though. Must have been a woman, then. No. One did all the talking.

So Mark, for example, may not even mention the second dude. He just may mention one word. Luke may mention the backstory about how they were cutting themselves with rocks and crying out, and people went around them.

Okay, but Matthew may not have mentioned that part. He was focused on the herd of pigs. Well, because he had a different perspective.

Right, and one of them may talk about what the shepherds did after they lost all their pigs, and John may not even mention that.

Okay, that doesn't make it untrue. That means they're focusing on different aspects of the story.

This happens every day in your life. Guys, when I go, here's my last analogy.

I used to, we have MMA fights, we still do it, we won last weekend.

We won our last fight, Parker. We're two and O in the heavyweight division, yeah. I used to do that all the time.

I coach now, but I used to compete. I was pretty good. I remember those days, you were good. I was good. I remember

I won a fight. Poor Rachel, she was a wreck watching him. Yeah, I remember I won a fight one time, and when people would tell details of the account, they would all be accurate most of the time.

They'd all be accurate, but Kathy used to freak out about the foot stomps.

That was the most violent thing to her, that we would stomp each other's feet, okay? Stepping on each other's toes.

One of the fights did that last night. Well, yes. Well, yes. That's just mean. Yeah. That's just mean. Right, yeah.

Women always. That's childish. Right. Yeah, but punching each other in the teeth. Yeah, I've never understood that.

No, that's manly. Anyway, my point is, to her, that was the most, someone said, how did your side do?

He goes, oh my goodness, he stomped that dude's foot. Whereas someone else, her husband,

Tommy, like, dude, he punched him right in the eye. He's got a black eye. Whereas someone else would say, he took him down and submitted him.

Well, all three were true, but each one chose to emphasize a different aspect of what they saw.

All three were true. We will allow that to happen and not call any of them liars, but we won't allow that when it has to do with the king of kings writing a book that we must submit to.

All of a sudden, we change the standard because it's not about an intellectual problem, it's a heart issue.

Oh, it all contradicts itself because they don't say the exact same thing. Right. Right. No, that proves that it was written by different people and not by the

Catholic Church. I would just love. Well, I would love for those people in particular to do an exercise with several other people.

Okay, you get to tell them something and then, okay, how you remember it, how you experience it.

Go, write it down. They're all gonna vary. Right, but they're not gonna. No, you're right.

But the difference is that doesn't necessarily mean that any one of them are false. And that's right, that's my point. Yeah, it's like everything that you guys did was true.

They might be, they might not be. So the point being, when it comes to someone just throwing out generally, when it comes to people throwing out generally, don't do it.

I did it. I said don't. Well, we did it before you told us not to. But you just did it again when

I. Generally. Okay, all right, you know what? Now I am gonna speak to your husband.

Go ahead. Do it. Okay. Go, do it. He would have done it too. We, now y 'all made me lose my boat of thought.

Not a choo -choo train of thought? Thank you for getting the joke. Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga.

Elena tries so hard not to laugh at my jokes. She fails. That one was okay. At least it wasn't

OC. Well, hold on, your joke though, or your dad's joke. Your dad's joke this morning about you.

Like if you were to. You mean about me dying? Yeah. That one? I was like, dang. Oh, was that funny for you? No, no, I was like, dang, that's a little harsh.

Really? Cause your smile seems to think it wasn't very harsh. Well, it was. Why are we talking about this, Lowell? What am

I supposed to be talking about right now? Why did you give me these two as co -hosts? You were talking about eyewitness accounts. John, this is what happens when you don't agree to be on the podcast.

All right, eyewitness accounts. Not you witness, eyewitness. Yes, eyewitness accounts. If Christians, I challenge you, quit always being on the defensive.

If someone asks you, if someone says, well, the gospels all contradict themselves. You know what?

Awesome. Can you give me one example? And every now and then, one of them will have one, and that's what you want.

I'm not afraid of that. That's what I want. And there have been times when they have not. Yeah, as long as they hold the

Bible to the same standard, they hold others to it, and if they say, well, no,

I'm not gonna hold to the same standard because it claims to be perfect. Absolutely. I don't mean the standard of the end product being true.

I mean the standard of allowing people to talk and speak and tell accounts of what they saw the same way you do everything else.

I'm talking about the relaying of information. I'm not talking about the end product of being true or untrue. So that's how we would do the gospels.

So. What were some other ones? What were some other ones besides that? Versus being left out of some translations.

Oh yeah, the deletions that we talked about. Yeah, okay, so I am very grateful for a guy named

Bart Ehrman. Now, let me tell you who Bart Ehrman is. Bart Ehrman is the reason that girl made that video.

Bart Ehrman is the most influential atheist. He calls himself agnostic, but he says there's no

God. That sounds like an atheist to me. Bart Ehrman is the most influential atheist slash agnostic in the

United States. Maybe in the world, but at least in the United States. And the reason is because he's an apostate.

He's not just a previous believer. He was a student of Bruce Metzger, who's the number one

New Testament scholar of the past century. He graduated from seminary.

He has a doctorate in the Greek New Testament. So that's why everyone loves him.

He wrote a book years ago called Misquoting Jesus. It's in my office because I want to read the best of what the other side has.

I'm very grateful to him. He has strengthened my faith immensely, even though he tried to do the opposite.

Because I recognized the mistake he made.

But at any rate, Elena's question is, sometimes, in some of our

English translations of the Bible, and that's probably 80 % of our problem right there. We don't recognize that what we're reading is an

English translation. Of a Greek book or Hebrew book, hold on.

Thank you, Elena. You drank coffee in this this morning. You taste it. No, I smelled it right here when

I. I rinsed it out really quick before I came up here and filled it with water. He is a, you're a drink thief.

No, no, no, I asked. He's just a thief. No, no, no, I asked. This time, yes. You notice his girls have started doing that?

Like around, they'll just walk around and just like. No, no, no. Hey, what you got? His oldest has always done that.

That's what I'm saying. She's been walking. She would see me with food and she'd stop, back up and go, hey.

Hey. She asked. She goes, hey, sweet girl. She did that to me one time. Hey, sweet girl.

Because her wife does that. And I was like, what did you just say? Josiah has caught up on the hey, sweet girl. And she was like Naomi's size at this point.

She goes, hey, sweet girl. What, short and chubby? Yeah, she was like two. I love that. Yeah, she was so small.

Why are we talking about? Lowell, get me different partners next time. Bro, I can't even. Noah?

Noah. I noticed that girls a long time ago say, say the name of the man on the arc when they say no.

Have you? Okay. How do you say your first name again? I'm doing it. I'm proving a point. How do you say your first name?

Josiah. No, your first name. Hunter. Okay, so you say the T. When I say that name in our co -host name,

I say Hunter. Hold on, wait. Maybe I do too. Let me. Hunter. Yeah, I do.

So there's this girl. There's also people. She goes, Hunter. But sometimes, people from towns of less than 50 ,000 people won't say

Hunter. I just say Hunter. They'll say Hunna. Hunna. Oh yeah, that's because we have a Hunna here. People of towns of less than 50 ,000 people.

They also replace all words that end in O or O -W with an A. The thing you open to let air in is called a?

Winda. Okay. Like your mother -in -law. The thing you lay your head on is called a? Pillow. There it is. Thanks, Seth.

All right, Lowell. It's over. Do you want to end the episode? Like, where were we at, bro?

No, no, no, Lowell. Hold on, I don't know. It's a joke. Don't give up so easy. Where were we at? We were talking about the thing and the thing and the place and the, oh, deletion of scripture.

Contradiction. Oh, oh, oh, no, no. We were talking about Bible translations. Thank you. Bible translations. Okay. English.

I was going down the strain of thought. English translation. You're on here next week. All right. Hey. I'm kidding. Quit making that voice.

I haven't been here. Anna, you and me, we're starting our own podcast. Yeah, we're gonna have our own podcast where we're just squirreling the entire time. At least you're not gonna raccoon.

All right, now listen. Okay. In your Bible, sometimes you'll have something at the bottom of your, at the bottom of your page or in the margins or in the middle column or above that will say, some manuscripts say.

Okay? Some MSS say. Most people don't know what that means, never asked before, whatever.

Okay? Here's what that means. There are 5 ,800

Greek copies of the New Testament on planet

Earth right now. That number changes. It's steadily gone up over the years for obvious reasons.

We are much better at digging in the sand now than we were in 1700. Okay? So several hundred have been found the past couple hundred years because we have machines that dig much better.

So we will expect that number to continue to go up. Everyone follow me on that? Now, the only time it ever goes down is when they realize that this piece of paper actually goes with a piece of paper in a museum in London.

So that was actually one. Now, I need everyone to hear me on that. I said 5 ,800 manuscripts.

I did not say 5 ,800 pages. I said 5 ,800 manuscripts. Sometimes one manuscript is the entire

New Testament. Sometimes one manuscript is half of a page. Sometimes one manuscript is a whole book of the

Bible. Sometimes one manuscript is all four gospels. Sometimes one manuscript is all of Paul's letters. By the way, just a side note, the earliest copy of all of Paul's letters we have,

I think it's called P66 or P75, whatever it is, includes the book of Hebrews, which proves nothing other than the scribe from the year 200 believed

Paul wrote the book of Hebrews. Doesn't mean he did, but it means the earliest copy, you follow me on that? So obviously, the way

God decided to preserve his word was not with a photocopier or with a screenshot.

He decided to do it from the regular normative copying of handwritten material.

Now, sometimes there are differences between those manuscripts. So for example, let's say of those 5 ,800, let's say in Matthew chapter 17, let's say we have 1 ,000 copies of Matthew chapter 17 in the world right now.

Well, if 9 ,900 say the Lord Jesus Christ and 10 say

Jesus Christ the Lord, if we're gonna use a majority argument, and let's say that the ones that say

Jesus Christ the Lord are from 1 ,000 AD and the ones that say the Lord Jesus Christ are from 300

AD. So they're much earlier and there's much more of them. Well, that would be the original reading.

Everyone follow me so far? Yes. Of all the variants, variant just means difference.

Of all the variants, 99 .9%, this is according to Bart Ehrman, leading atheist scholar in this, 99 .9

% are non -consequential and cannot even be translated as a difference in English because,

I don't wanna lie, I think it's 94 % of all variants are spelling. There is one verse,

I can't remember which one it is, where the same word is misspelled three different ways and that counts as three. You follow me on that?

The overwhelming majority are spelling errors. The number one example is called the movable new. It's like,

A -apple is technically wrong, it's supposed to be like that little

N right there, an apple, yeah, it's that, okay? Or like Y -S as opposed to I -E -S, that kind of stuff, like at the end of a word.

So spelling errors are by far the number one. You gotta remember for the first 300 years of the copying of the

New Testament, there were no professional scribes. The Christians were a minority outcast group that if they were caught with the scriptures would be fed to lions or burned alive and had their family watch.

So a lot of these manuscripts are written on the back of a used napkin, for lack of a better term.

As everyone understand me out there? And not by scholars, they were just the average Joe who. And even still,

God has preserved his word. Now what's amazing is this, we have, get ready, 2 .7

million, million pages of the

New Testament in Greek alone. I'm not talking about translating of Greek alone, 2 .7 million pages, okay?

All handwritten. Of course there are spelling differences. Now there are a handful, and by handful

I mean 16, a handful of variants that actually have some significance that are more than just one line long, okay?

When you have those, so there's only two that are more than one verse long. That's the ending of Mark and John chapter eight, the woman caught in adultery.

The other ones are like one verse or whatever. And what it is, is instead of lying to you, the editors of that translation wanna say, hey, just so, they'll put at the bottom or at the top, just so you know, we have a few copies that say the

Lord Jesus Christ as opposed to Jesus Christ the Lord. Okay? Now, some people look at it and say, oh, they deleted the word

Lord from Jesus. Because what happens is sometimes Mark would write, and he went, and the scribe later would say, oh,

Jesus, and Jesus went, okay? There is not a single variant in the entire manuscript tradition that changes any doctrine or teaching of the scripture.

Not one. Not a single one. And if any of you have

Googled enough and you learned a new word variant and think there is, give me one, I'll read it,

I'll react to it. Give me one. There isn't any. Zero. It's a cute word for someone who doesn't wanna submit to what

God has had to say. It's impossible, and I mean impossible, to walk away from the faith solely because of that, and here's why.

That is true of every book written before the printing press.

So as long as you hold Aristotle, see, you have degrees, you have grades from classes that you took in high school and college that have far less evidence than the

New Testament, and none of your professors ever said, by the way, just so you know, we have four copies of Aristotle's work and they have spelling differences.

No one ever told you that. And none of them are original either. The Bible is the closest to get to the original text.

I'll give you one example, okay, and then I'll shut up on this and let them close us out. Julius Caesar's the most powerful man in the world in, say, a few decades before Jesus came.

I think everyone would agree with that. 4450 BC. He wrote a book called

Gaelic Wars. Right now on planet Earth, there are 250 copies of it on planet

Earth right now. I need everyone to hear me. 250 copies. There is no serious scholar on planet

Earth right now that doubts that Julius Caesar was a real person that he wrote that book. There are 250 copies.

None of them original. And they have variants between them. 250. 450. There are 5 ,800 copies in the

New Testament. And yet we are told we can't know what was written because we don't have the originals.

Listen to the double standard. Do you hear it? It's impossible to walk away from the

Christian faith because you say we don't have the original manuscripts. You don't do that for any other thing in your life.

Nothing. You'll quote Plato on your Facebook, not recognizing that we don't have his original words or anything close to it, but you will quote it as if he really said it because that's what you were told and you don't treat, you give him a greater standard.

It makes no sense. We have more evidence. We have more evidence for the writing of the

New Testament than we do for books written 1 ,000 years later. It's not even close.

Because of critics like Bart Ehrman, it caused me, just like that lady, to study and to recognize that I can trust what

God has given us because God has preserved his word. So I'm grateful for stuff like that. All right,

I'm shutting up now. Say what you were saying. What was I saying? I don't know, move on. What's the next one we got?

We have time for another one? Of course. Three minutes? Yes. Okay, I don't want to make you late for anything that you're doing.

Did you want to start on one of those questions? We can, do we have time? I'll tell you what, were those the apologetic ones?

Yeah, all the ones that we talked about before. Why do we have a youth group and all that stuff? Okay, so we'll do them next time, that's fine.

I want to make sure we tie this in a bow, as it were. So the reason that Elena, Anna, Josiah, Lowell, John, Taylor, Seth believe, is not, is not, is not because.

That's what we were told to. We just took it on something called blind faith, which isn't scriptural.

Took it on blind faith and just have more faith in Jesus and what'd she say, his ways are higher and turn a blind eye to it, whatever she said.

Why do you seek him? It's because the Bible says, seek me and find me. Well, the way you seek him is through the instruction book that he put a magnet on, put on the fridge for us all to see.

And has proven itself over time and time again, time and time again. Test it to what it claims, to what it claims.

And you'll find it to be fulfilling. There is no question, there is no skepticism, there is no doubt that any of us are afraid to tackle and would love to.

If you have any, send them our way. We'd love to take that on. Because, not because we're so smart or so brilliant, and I'll react to them.

We don't need no time to study. I'll react to them. Not because we're so brilliant, because we have a

God who has given us the tools we need to accurately proclaim and defend his word.

Okay, please like, share, subscribe. I'm gonna give this microphone to Lowell just to mess him up.

Like, share, subscribe, do all that stuff on this video. Please send us any questions you may have to listenpointtakingpodcasts at gmail .com.

Yeah, listenpointtakingpodcasts at gmail .com. Send any questions.

I'm not afraid. You can do it anonymously or write your name. I don't care. We're not afraid to take on any question.

So next week, we already got a few, but we can sub in whatever we want. We can do whatever we want. We make our own schedule.

Youth groups in church, apologetics, biblical manhood, biblical womanhood, right?

All right, very good. Any final words, Anna? No. Final words,

Elena? I'm good. All right then. Well then, until next time. Deuces. You know what

I find so cute about him? Just a little bit of gray over his ears. I love when guys say cute. Just a little bit of gray over his ears.

Just a little bit of gray over his ears. Little bit on the front comb, but mostly a little gray over his ears.