A Trial Lawyer Turned Christian Apologist

Revealed Apologetics

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:02

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today

00:07

I have a very special guest with me. We're gonna get to him in just a few moments, but I just wanna give folks a heads up.

00:13

Now, tomorrow I'll be doing a live Q &A. So there is no specific topic that is going to be covered.

00:22

It is going to be your opportunity to just throw any question you want at me, whether it's philosophical, theological, and of course, apologetical, if it's related to presuppositional apologetics, or Calvinism, or anything relating to reform theology, you know, all the topics that I've covered on this channel.

00:38

You guys are free to grill me as best you can, and I'll try my best to answer that. So that can be potentially a very enjoyable show.

00:47

If folks send in their questions, I'll throw your question up on the screen there, and I'll try my best to tackle that.

00:53

So that's tomorrow at 7 p .m. Eastern. Also, I'm super excited about Thursday, on Thursday at 9 p .m.

01:02

Eastern, I'll be having Luke, Pastor Luke Pearson from Apologia Church.

01:08

That's the Jeff Durbin's church, James Wise Church. Luke is one of the pastors there.

01:13

They do a lot of work in the End Abortion Now movement there and I'll be having him on to talk about the super duper important topic of doing apologetics within the context of the local church.

01:28

So the importance of doing apologetics with the accountability of a local church. And we're gonna talk about why that is important, all right?

01:36

And for those of you who know, my full -time job, I'm a teacher. So I am technically on summer break.

01:41

So there's gonna be a lot of content that's gonna be coming out. So please stay tuned for that.

01:47

And before I introduce my guests in just a moment here, I just want to give thanks to all of those who have been listening and supporting

01:55

Revealed Apologetics. We are close to 5 ,000 subscribers on YouTube and just under two years.

02:02

And so I appreciate all of the support. You guys are awesome. And you know what? There's one area that I take great pride in is that the comment section on the videos, okay?

02:13

On YouTube, the comment section can kind of be like a sewer, but for the most part, people behave in our comment section.

02:20

So I really appreciate that. And let's continue that sort of behavior and set a standard that people should follow.

02:29

So I do appreciate that. Well, without further ado, I'd like to introduce, I'll be introducing them on the screen with me in just a moment, but I'd like to introduce

02:37

Dan Bottafuoco. He is a trial lawyer. He's a friend of mine. He has been practicing as a trial lawyer over half a billion dollars in settlements and personal injury and medical malpractice actions, practicing in all 50 states.

02:52

He wrote and graded the qualifying exam for the National Board of Trial Advocacy. And he's the founder of the

02:58

Historical Bible Society, which is a traveling Bible museum that promotes apologetics.

03:04

I actually used to work for Dan and write articles for him on the website, Historical Bible Society.

03:10

So you wanna check that website out. And if you're interested in having some awesome biblical manuscripts presented, he does his whole presentation where he talks about the history of the

03:22

Bible and he actually has a lot of these awesome, old Bibles and manuscripts that people can see for themselves.

03:28

It is awesome. So check that out at Historical Bible Society. Well, without further ado, let me introduce my good friend,

03:36

Dan Bottafuoco. How are you doing, brother? Greetings, greetings, Eli. How are you? I'm doing well.

03:42

And thank you so much for taking the time out of your super busy schedule to join me. I'm happy to be here because if we can promote truth, that's where I wanna be.

03:51

All right, well, why don't you, let's kind of jump right in. So you're a trial lawyer, but you're also an apologist.

03:57

I kind of entitled this episode, trial lawyer turned apologist, still a trial lawyer.

04:04

So why don't you tell us a little bit about your story? People kind of might find that interesting, the fact that you're a lawyer and you also deal with the evidences for the

04:13

Christian faith. Well, first of all, I think every Christian needs today to be an apologist. You know,

04:18

I disagree with the experts. I've heard one expert apologist, a very brainy guy say, I don't think amateurs should involve themselves in this topic because they might say the wrong thing.

04:29

That is absolute nonsense. You got the whole world out there spilling all kinds of lies on YouTube, on Quora, on social media.

04:38

And if Christians don't speak up and combat these lies at the ground level, then these things just proliferate.

04:45

So I wanna encourage every one of your listeners, I don't care whether you're a car mechanic or whether you're a school teacher or whether you're a professor or whatever you do, even especially pastors, they should be masters in this.

04:56

You need to be involved in apologetics. And for lawyers, especially, it's a natural transition, right?

05:02

Because lawyers argue. We argue sort of dispassionately. We could kill each other in court and then go out and have a beer or a cup of coffee and nobody's getting too excited about that because we combat ideas and we don't fight people.

05:18

Even if we don't like what they say, we try not to make it personal. So we're sort of trained in that.

05:24

And for me, it was a natural outgrowth of my passion to argue. If you grew up in an

05:31

Italian home, you argue around the table on a Sunday afternoon about every little thing possible, some stupid things even.

05:38

But certainly we should be contending for the faith, as it says in the book of Jude. Contending is just another word for arguing or fighting.

05:47

When you go into a ring, you have contenders, right? There's the heavyweight contender and there's the challenger contender.

05:55

And when you contend, you're in a brawl, let's face it. Let's get down and dirty and let's get into this brawl upholding the cause of righteousness and asking

06:06

God for help, but let's not avoid the fray. So I got into apologetics.

06:11

It's really actually a great story. I blogged about it on Quora. I have a pretty strong Quora presence.

06:17

I have over a million five views. And I write about a lot of subjects, but mostly about the

06:24

Bible and about apologetics. And I love demolishing the idiots, okay? Because you can say crazy stuff on Quora and then it just sits out there and everyone's like, oh yeah, right,

06:36

Jesus never existed. It's like, it's all a myth. And then I come in with facts and then you just obliterate them.

06:44

And I have no problem doing that. And I love doing that because we really should stick up for what's right.

06:50

So, well, it started about, and I wrote this on Quora because somebody asked, how did

06:55

I get into this? You know, it was a question related to it. And about 30 years ago, I was at a party with a trial lawyer who became a family member because my brother married into that family.

07:06

And we're at this party and I liked the guy. I tried cases for his firm and we tried cases against each other, you know, sort of a regular trial lawyer camaraderie.

07:16

And turns out, unbeknownst to me, he is an avowed atheist. And so he starts raising all these questions at this party and I'm a committed

07:26

Christian, right? I think at the time I was a deacon, but my knowledge wasn't very, my

07:31

Bible knowledge was always good, but my apologetic knowledge was very thin. And we got into this debate at this party and the party literally split into two, right on his deck, he had a big deck.

07:42

And it was like, we were in the ring going at it. And, you know, I felt like it was an undecided, you know, it was an undecided bout.

07:51

And I left that day sort of muttering to myself, like, Dan, you know, you are a good lawyer and you were terrible.

08:00

You were terrible in there. You didn't have any answers, you know, and I know we have answers.

08:05

So I sort of started out by being, and I think we should all start out that way, by being very disappointed in what we know or don't know.

08:13

Sure. And then you do the simple work and now it's easier than ever with the internet. You start to dig, you start to read books, you start to do what you did, you start to understand the arguments for and against the position, right?

08:27

And then you realize we have amazing answers for the Christian faith.

08:32

We have amazing intellect on our sides. We've got a very deep bench, or we used to have a very deep bench years ago in history.

08:42

Now the bench is somewhat thin because people have abandoned the fray. We need to bolster the bench and I want to encourage young people, get into apologetics, start knowing the arguments.

08:53

They're not that complicated and make them the best way you can. And so the upshot of that 30 year discussion, we've debated now for 30 years, me and my friend.

09:05

And he said to me about two years ago, he said, Dan, he says, you've annihilated every one of my arguments.

09:11

He says, but I still don't believe. So the point of all of that is you can't convince someone to believe because only the

09:20

Holy Spirit can really change their heart. But what you can do is remove the debris.

09:26

You can remove the objections. And really what it's important are for those in the background who are listening, right?

09:33

Because at that party, there were people who were in the undecided camp. Now he was very decided on his position.

09:40

He's a 60s liberal atheist, right? But there were others that were watching that I felt that I could have done a better job to encourage them.

09:49

And I'm now doing that on Quora because you see, when I obliterate somebody's argument, I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm doing it so that others who are watching the debate can understand where the truth is.

10:01

And that's what we have to be mindful of, that the debate is about who's watching. And so keep that in mind.

10:07

That's excellent. And it's funny, a lot of people, I've spoken to a lot of people, especially people on YouTube, they're like, apologetics doesn't work.

10:16

You often hear the atheists who are in the comment section saying, you guys are just wasting your time. Who actually gets convinced by these arguments?

10:24

In real life situations, I think you and I have both experienced people really being affected by a good case for Christianity and God using that.

10:34

But what I wanna ask - The devil hates apologetics. The devil hates apologetics. That's right. He wants to be the only one arguing.

10:41

That's right. He wants to be the default. You know, in court we have a default. You know, when one side doesn't show up, the other side automatically wins.

10:47

That's called a default, right? I'm sure we have it in sports, we call it a forfeit, right? Yeah. The devil doesn't want to hear the other side.

10:54

He doesn't want the other side to be told. So of course he's gonna say that. He wants to be the only voice out there spewing these lies that are unchallenged.

11:02

No, no, no, no. Get in there and start swinging. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you were a lawyer first before you were an apologist.

11:11

When you had that experience with your friend and you were like, man, like, what the heck? I should have been able to do much better.

11:17

What was that process like for you when you had to step back and research? Did you use your tools as a lawyer and how you studied law?

11:25

Did you use those tools in your study of apologetics and Christian evidences? How did that process look for you?

11:30

Well, of course, you know, you can't separate, I can't separate myself as a person from being a lawyer because it's funny, a lot of people don't realize that when you go to medical school, for example, you learn medicine.

11:43

When you go to law school, you don't learn law. Took me like six months to find that out.

11:49

When you go to law school, you don't learn law. Well, shocking, right? You think you'd learn law in law school.

11:54

No, what you learn in law school is you learn to think like a lawyer. You learn to raise questions.

12:01

You know, in my first six months of law school, I was trying to give answers to the tests and I wasn't getting great grades.

12:06

And I knew I was a good student, right? I was always a good student. But all of a sudden the light bulb went on. I'm like, they don't want answers.

12:12

They want more questions. So when you get a test, I was starting to raise, what about this?

12:19

What about that? This issue, then all of a sudden you get A's. And that's how lawyers are trained. It's verbal jujitsu, basically.

12:30

I'm a Kung Fu artist in words. You know what I mean? That's what lawyers are. And that's what my friend was.

12:36

I mean, he was great. He was killing me in this battle because I was unarmed essentially.

12:43

You know, I mean, I had a couple of good points, but when I left that bout, and we're still friends, we're great friends.

12:50

Sure, I said to myself, you know, I just gotta learn the basic points and apply the same rhetorical skills that I learned in law school, the same analytical skills

13:02

I learned in law school, the same proof and evidence skills I learned in law school. Law, especially trial law, is all about proof.

13:10

If I'm an expert in anything, and I don't claim to be an expert in a lot of things, but if I'm an expert in anything, I'm an expert in evidence.

13:18

I'm an expert in proof and what is believable. And so that skill goes nicely with apologetics because you can see which arguments fly and which arguments don't fly.

13:29

Sure. Which arguments make sense, which are reasonable and which are not. And you use them in the appropriate place and you can use them to great effect.

13:38

Okay, now I like this analogy. You said that you're a martial artist of words, right?

13:43

I often joke around with people. I have a black belt in karate movies. It's different than a black belt in karate.

13:49

So I can look like I have a black belt in real life, but I don't. Perhaps you can kind of give us an example, maybe an illustration or example, maybe through conversations that you had.

13:58

How do you use verbal and logical martial arts when someone brings a specific objection against the

14:06

Christian faith? Maybe you can kind of give an example of an objection you heard and maybe kind of help us and walk us through your mental process as to how you kind of, you know, kung fu them.

14:17

Well, first of all, most people when they debate somebody or when they argue and we call it arguing in the colloquial sense, right?

14:25

Is they don't listen to what the other person is really saying. Number one, you have to listen.

14:31

And then what you can do, which is a classic jujitsu move, is you use their argument against them.

14:38

A lot of people when they raise arguments, they don't realize that those questions or their arguments or their objections are loaded with presuppositions.

14:47

And you know exactly what I'm talking about. It may be hard to give an actual example, but I'll give one. I think

14:53

I'll be able to give one. Like they ask these questions and they don't realize they are sort of buying into a certain fallacy that they're accusing you of.

15:04

And all you have to do is listen and point out to them that, dude, your argument is, your point is actually including certain, presuming certain things that aren't true.

15:19

For example, this is an easy one. People say things like, there's no such thing as absolute truth, right?

15:25

Sure. Here they are making a true statement. They're making, so the presupposition is, well, why are you even talking?

15:33

There's no such thing as absolute truth. Your statement is nonsense. This is just a truth declaration.

15:39

You just said it's absolutely true that there's no such thing as absolute truth. And all of a sudden they go, what?

15:46

And then they realize that, yeah, exactly. If there's no such thing as absolute truth, why are we even having a discussion?

15:54

And why am I even making that declaration that it's absolutely true that there's no such thing as absolute truth?

16:00

So you quickly could show them that, of course, there's such a thing as absolute truth. You're operating with it right now as you speak.

16:07

You're declaring it. Even as you're declaring that it doesn't exist, you're declaring it. You're relying on absolute truth.

16:15

Things like that. But what it really requires is that we listen to what people are saying.

16:21

And so many people don't listen. They are ready to make the next argument and not actually hearing what the other person says.

16:30

And there's so much embedded in what they're saying. And I think we just have to step back.

16:37

And that's why I think it's actually easier to do when the arguments are in writing. Because a lot of arguments, especially like Quora, Facebook, whatever,

16:44

YouTube, they're in writing. You could actually, it's easy to dissect it because you have much time to linger over it and sort of see what they're saying.

16:54

It's a little harder in a verbal situation, but you have to do that. You have to really hear them. And then follow up with another question, like, well, what do you mean by that?

17:03

Let's really get to the heart of what they're saying. And you're gonna find out that a lot of times, atheists, so -called atheists, it's not that they don't believe in God.

17:14

It's that they don't like God. They don't like what God does or what

17:20

God allows to happen. So the problem isn't that they don't believe in God. It's that they can't believe in a

17:26

God that allows little children to be aborted or a tsunami to wipe out a good part of Thailand, that kind of stuff.

17:35

And then, so the question shifts. It's not that you don't believe in God. It's that your problem is really the problem of evil, the classic problem of evil, which would require, as you know, a theodicy to address that.

17:50

So it's really important, I think, that you listen to people. And as your little sign says behind you, you have to respect their point of view, even though sometimes it's -

18:01

The coffee one or the Bible? I'm actually, I'm not the coffee, but the side about answering with gentleness and respect is really important.

18:14

Now, two points here, right? The Bible says, do not answer a fool according to his folly, right?

18:21

And then a few verses later, I may have them juxtaposed. Well, it's the next verse. It's literally the next verse.

18:26

Yeah, it says, answer a fool according to his folly. So, you know, you have somebody will come in.

18:32

The Bible contradicts itself, you know? And I'm like, no, it doesn't.

18:38

You don't have to understand the Hebrew way of speaking. You know, answer a fool according to his folly.

18:44

Don't answer a fool according to his folly. Both are true. It's an example. I actually blogged on this one.

18:50

I said, you're having lunch with a valuable client, right? And the client says something really foolish.

18:57

That's a good time not to answer a fool according to his folly, right? What are you going to gain from it?

19:02

You can only lose the client. You're probably not going to change his mind. And, you know, and if you do want to make a point to counter it, you got to do it really delicately, right?

19:11

So you're not giving him the answer he deserves. However, another situation where you will answer the fool according to his folly is in a public situation.

19:21

You're giving a speech. Somebody shouts something from the audience that's utterly ridiculous and absurd and heck, that's the time to put the fool in his place.

19:30

And to answer the fool according to his folly, not because of the fool, but because of the people who are watching.

19:36

So I have a question then. So I have a question. So, and this, I think that's a great point that you made, that there's a specific time.

19:42

And it actually takes training and practice to be able to recognize when that time is the time to do those things.

19:47

But how do you differentiate, Dan, between putting the fool in his place and throwing pearls before swine?

19:56

Does that make my question make sense? It makes perfect sense. I think that throwing the pearls before swine is related to the answer

20:03

I just gave because you're really doing it for the edification of those around who are listening.

20:10

I think that throwing the, casting the pearls before swine verse has to do with somebody who is totally hostile to your point of view, living a lifestyle contrary to everything

20:24

God teaches and really hates you and hates everything that you stand for and wants nothing to do with what you're saying.

20:31

And you continue to throw the word of God at them. At that some point, you have to say, you know what? You're just gonna have to relent and let them suffer the consequences of their action.

20:43

Maybe just pray for the person at that point. That's not a person where you keep sort of witnessing to.

20:50

I think that's what it means. I think the purpose of that verse is meant to spare Christians from banging their head against the wall, right?

20:58

You know, it's sort of a Hebrew way of saying, stop banging your head against the wall, right? You're wasting your time.

21:04

Use your time in a much better way. Right. And I think that's what it means. I don't think it means to ever give up.

21:11

I think it just, you change tactics. And maybe at that point, you just pray for the person, leave it to God to say, you know what?

21:16

I have nothing left here. Now you said something a few moments ago before with respect to the importance of listening.

21:23

And I kind of wanna highlight this for folks that we listen to other people, not simply to respond. Now notice what

21:29

I said, not simply to respond. We wanna listen and respond to what they have to say. That's part of it. But we genuinely wanna listen to what they have to say and hear where they're coming from.

21:37

But at the same time, one helpful way of refuting something is listening.

21:43

As one great philosopher said, this is my favorite Christian philosopher, the late Greg Bonson. Folks who listen to this channel know who

21:50

Bonson is. He says, sometimes you need to let the unbeliever talk so that he can give you just the right amount of rope that you'll use to hang him with.

21:57

And of course, he doesn't mean that in a violent sense. It just simply means that when you listen to someone long enough, they will give you everything you need to kind of do that, what you said, that judo move to kind of make the point you're trying to make.

22:09

So I think that's super, super important. And I think coming from a lawyer's perspective, the way your mind works,

22:15

I think people can appreciate that, especially with what's going on in the news today. Have you been following the

22:20

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial? I can't believe you brought that up because as you said that, I was thinking about that.

22:27

And there's a great point to be made there, right? You see, when people talk long enough, they can't help but reveal their heart, right?

22:39

And the more skillful you are at listening, you can pick it up sooner rather than later.

22:44

But after you hear, and I could barely watch that to be honest, my daughter became fascinated with it.

22:52

But from the snippets I picked up, you realize, you can realize very quickly where someone's coming from and whether they're credible or not.

23:02

And you also understand what their problem is, right? Like, it doesn't take me long.

23:07

I go to a party or whatever, a cocktail party, I meet new people for the first time. And it doesn't take you long to find out what's the most important thing in the world to someone.

23:18

Sure. They usually launch into it within the first two minutes of meeting you, whether it's airplanes or boats or how much money they're making or how many people they're sleeping with or whatever their most important thing is.

23:31

You know, it doesn't take long. Similarly, if you're gonna meet me at a party and you're gonna have a heart -to -heart, you're gonna find out very quickly that I'm a

23:39

Bible teacher, I love the Lord, I'm a solid Christian and I'm a lawyer and I engage in apologetics.

23:44

I mean, you can't help it, right? Because it's sort of, you know, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, as Jesus said, right?

23:53

Jesus, the master apologist of all time, right? People can't help but reveal what's in their heart.

23:59

It's a wonderful trial lawyer tactic to just let someone speak.

24:05

I remember having a doctor on the stand once who was dying to convince the jury that my client wasn't hurt, okay?

24:13

And I just let him talk, which is, you know, the more he rambled on and on, the more ridiculous he sounded, you know?

24:22

And he wouldn't answer my questions, which even made it worse and I could see the jury was getting frustrated.

24:28

And of course I won the case and I violated every trial lawyer rule, which is not to let the witness speak, but in this case it worked because he was trying so hard to not be objective and be, you know, an expert is supposed to be objective and just state the facts.

24:46

He became like a lawyer, for whatever reason, trying to sell the case that my client wasn't hurt.

24:52

Of course my client was hurt and the jury awarded them a lot of money. And it was just, it's just one of those things.

24:58

People will reveal themselves, what's important to them, what their biases are, the more you let them speak.

25:05

Yeah, so your professional opinion then, before we move on to our next segment, people would wanna know, right?

25:11

This is a professional lawyer, trial lawyer like yourself, Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, is she guilty or is she innocent in your eyes?

25:19

You think there was a good case? No, I'm just kidding. You can answer that question. I will tell you this, I think the justice, American justice system worked perfectly in that situation.

25:27

Okay, okay. I think that the result that the jury rendered is exactly the right result. And really he won the court of public opinion because,

25:36

I mean, it's sad, but her life is ruined. She'll never find work. As pretty as she is, if you consider her pretty, nobody's gonna wanna date her because she's flat out crazy, right?

25:49

I mean, she just ruined her whole life. So whatever he tried to accomplish and she tried to accomplish, he was the clear winner.

25:57

Public opinion is on his side. He spent a lot of money to clear his name and I think he succeeded. Yeah. Well, thank you for that.

26:06

You wrote a book. Folks might be interested that you wrote a book right now. It is, you got 40 reviews on Amazon and it looks like just about all of them are really, really good.

26:18

So I wanna talk a little bit about your book because it is entitled Consider the

26:24

Evidence. And so I want to ask you a couple of questions with respect to the content of your book.

26:30

What was the purpose? How did you navigate the topics that you covered? And maybe we could, in doing so, give people some apologetic nuggets to use when they're talking to their skeptic friends and things like that.

26:41

Okay, so real quick. Consider the Evidence. The entire title is,

26:46

A Trial Lawyer Examines Eyewitness Testimony in Defense of the Reliability of the New Testament.

26:52

So folks, if you're interested in defending the Bible and the reliability of the New Testament, you definitely wanna check that out on Amazon.

26:59

I think, is it available on Kindle? Can someone get it on Kindle? I don't know. Okay, that's okay.

27:05

Hey, paper books, man, that's the way to go too. If you like the smell of brand new pages,

27:11

I know people who are obsessed with books, that's a thing. Order the book now. I do have a copy of it somewhere.

27:17

It's been a while since I've looked at it, but I remember it being really good. And so I do encourage folks to check that out.

27:23

But this book that you wrote, okay, what was your purpose? Is it a general defense of the

27:30

New Testament? What did that process look like for you when you were sitting down and writing this book?

27:35

What were you trying to accomplish in writing this book? Well, first of all, all apologetics eventually is going to come down to the

27:43

New Testament, right? You agree with that, right? You gotta start somewhere, but eventually you gotta get them to the

27:50

New Testament. Right, whether you take a philosophical approach to the defense of the faith or a historical approach and a mixture of both, you're eventually,

27:58

I mean, whether you're a presuppositionalist or an evidentialist or whatever, you're defending the claims of the scriptures, which all of the juicy stuff is in the

28:05

New Testament, because that's kind of where our central claims are. So yeah, I would agree with that. The rule of faith and practice for the

28:11

Christian, it's history for the Christian, it's actual events. And you can start with the New Testament, which is suppositional apologetics, or you could start somewhere else and get them there, but you gotta get to the

28:21

New Testament. So what my goal was in writing the book was I had read a lot of apologetic books from the scholars.

28:29

And honestly, some of them are so dense and so esoteric, big word, good scrabble word.

28:37

You got the scholars up here arguing with each other, and they're arguing on a

28:44

IQ plane of 160 here. And none of it's filtering down to the average dude, the average plumber, the housewife, the car mechanic, the lawyer.

28:55

Lawyers aren't so smart all the time, right? Lawyers are very practical. So especially trial lawyers,

29:01

I wanted, my skillset is to take complicated subjects, whether it's law, medicine, engineering, and break it down, in this case, theology and apologetics, and break it down to the average person.

29:15

So I wanted a book that somebody would pick up and not be able to put down, something that's easy to read.

29:21

You can read it on the train and going to work, read it on the beach, on a beach chair. I didn't want a gigantic tome that weighed 10 pounds that tried to be the final word on the subject.

29:33

I just wanted to get people to support the reliability of the

29:38

New Testament. I try to make it funny. I put some anecdotes in there. I told the story about the debate, with this guy,

29:45

Lou, who's my friend to this date. And I also have a lot more material to add to it.

29:51

I need to do a revision of the book at some point. I'm collecting material. I have more evidence.

29:57

But the idea here was to show, from a trial lawyer's perspective, that the credibility of the

30:04

New Testament writers, like these guys, I've interviewed on the stand or cross -examined on the stand, put witnesses on the stand, many, many witnesses.

30:13

And the most important thing in any witness's testimony is credibility. These guys had credibility.

30:20

And they were cross -examined to death, even, by torture. They never recanted. They were in a position to know, which means the evidence is competent, right?

30:29

Muhammad writes about the crucifixion. He wasn't even born when Jesus was around.

30:35

So that's what we would call a law -incompetent testimony. He's not in a position to see or to hear what was there to be seen or heard at the time.

30:45

He wasn't born yet. John, however, was at the crucifixion. So you have the issue of competency.

30:51

You have the issue of credibility. And you have the issue, if you're in a courtroom, of admissibility, right?

30:57

Not hearsay, right? These guys were there in time and place. They're recounting what they experienced.

31:04

They were cross -examined. It's recorded. I mean, you got Paul's trial testimony recorded several times in the book of Acts.

31:12

That's clearly trial testimony that would have been recorded by a scribe. And then you have Luke, who was an investigative reporter who really, you know, and I wrote a little bit about Luke in this other book, which we'll talk about, hopefully.

31:26

But, you know, the idea of that book, Consider the Evidence, was to point people to the

31:33

New Testament and explain to them that it's not a book of fairy tales. I had a debate with a trial lawyer in New Orleans, and we're sitting around and we're, she gets up during dinner and with a bunch of lawyers sitting around, she's like, oh, dance into the

31:47

Bible, it's all a bunch of fairy tales. And, you know, she wouldn't even, she had no basis for saying that, just didn't, she didn't wanna believe it.

31:54

It's clearly not a bunch of fairy tales. Anybody who's read the New Testament knows it purports to be an eyewitness account.

32:00

It's not a bunch of fairy tales. These guys were there and they write in real time, you know? So, and I point that out, how you can examine it and sort of come to that conclusion on your own.

32:12

And so that's really the goal of the book, is to just - Sure, so the title is

32:17

Consider the Evidence, A Trial Lawyer Examines Eyewitness Testimony in Defense of the Reliability of the New Testament. Now, that title actually is pretty controversial because there are a lot of people who really deny that the

32:30

New Testament is in fact eyewitness testimony. How would you speak to that?

32:37

How can we know that the New Testament documents, you know, whether it's the

32:43

Pauline Epistles or the Gospels, how can we know that this is actually eyewitness account?

32:49

Well, I think you can make a very compelling case starting with the fact that every book of the

32:56

New Testament had to have been written before 70 AD. Okay, I agree. That's a very compelling case and I don't think it's said enough because you got scholars, and sometimes scholars,

33:06

I have to say, are really, really dumb. I mean, I cross -examined some really smart people and I don't mean to disparage scholars.

33:14

There's a place for scholarship, but sometimes they get tripped up on their own intellect and they follow these rabbit holes, these rabbit trails, and they go down the rabbit hole and they don't come out.

33:25

And a lot of scholars were hung up on Revelation because there was one early church father who used the reference and they weren't sure when that could be dated.

33:36

And all that misses the really big question. And the really big question is this, and God put it there for a reason, right?

33:43

There's not a single book in the New Testament that mentions the destruction of the temple.

33:50

And it's impossible, excuse me, it would be impossible to write a history of the

33:57

Jewish people, which is really what the New Testament is. It's the culmination of the Jewish age, right? Jesus came in sort of in culmination of the

34:04

Jewish age to the Jewish people, his own, his own did not receive him, but they rejected him.

34:10

He prophesied that because of that, the temple was gonna be destroyed, that Jerusalem would be utterly wrecked and he cried over it,

34:21

I long to gather you as a hen, a mother hen gathers her chicks in her arms, but you would not let me, therefore your house is left unto you desolate.

34:30

And there's so much Luke 21, Matthew 24, which talks about the destruction of the temple.

34:36

It's a major prophetic thing. And the Bible talks about the end of the age, which is the end of the

34:44

Jewish age. And we get crickets in the entire New Testament about that happening, right?

34:51

It clearly happened in 70 AD. I mean, Judaism was forever altered in 70

34:56

AD. The blood sacrifices came to an end in 70 AD, which is a huge point because Jesus was the once and for all blood sacrifice, right?

35:06

The temple was the center of Jewish life. We don't appreciate it now, but there were sacrifices for everything.

35:11

There were daily sacrifices, there were birthday sacrifices, there were anniversary sacrifices, there were holy day sacrifices, there were

35:18

Sabbath day sacrifices. It was an endless river of blood of animals flowing from that temple.

35:23

And now no temple? I mean, and not only that, it's in fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus.

35:30

Failing to mention that in the New Testament, especially the places like the book of Hebrews or in the book of Revelation, would be like writing a history of terrorism in New York City and not putting in the story of 9 -11.

35:46

Right? It's such a glaring omission that the only possible explanation is that it hadn't happened.

35:54

So you have that, you have a very early date for the writings of the New Testament.

35:59

And then one other point I'd like to make in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews goes on at length talking about Jesus is the new and greater and ultimate sacrifice and that the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin.

36:14

And he goes on and on and on and on and on. And you wait like the slam dunk argument is, and by the way,

36:21

Hebrews, we don't have a temple or an altar upon which to make these sacrifices. You know, it's the slam dunk lawyer's argument that you're waiting for him to make.

36:29

He never makes it. And the reason he never makes it is because it didn't happen yet. And that's one of the later books of the

36:35

Bible. So having said all of that, I think you could reasonably date the books of the New Testament from about,

36:42

I would say 40 AD to 60 -ish AD, 65

36:48

AD, right? So basically mentioning the destruction of the

36:53

Jerusalem temple would have vindicated Jesus's prophet hood because he predicted its destruction in Mark 13,

37:02

Luke 21 and Matthew 24. So it literally would make no sense not to mention it because it would have been one of the more powerful evidences for what

37:10

Jesus was all about. And not only would have indicated his role as a prophet, it would have indicated his role as the sacrifice once and for all, because the whole

37:21

Jewish religion was based on sacrifices. And now you can't make sacrifices anymore. And so it really bolsters the idea,

37:28

I think conclusively, that he's the once and for all final blood sacrifice, right? Because the blood of bulls and goats does not take away sin.

37:36

They're just shadows and types of things which were to come, which in this case is Jesus, right? So you could reasonably date the

37:43

New Testament from 40 AD to around 65 AD, and that's a very narrow period.

37:49

Not only that, it doesn't mention the deaths of Peter, the main characters, Paul, right? Especially since in Acts they're so prominent, like you're sort of hanging on the edge of your seat.

37:57

What's gonna happen with Paul's trial? What's the final outcome? I wanna know, I'm watching the movie here and how does it end?

38:04

Well, he gets martyred under Nero. We know that, right? Roughly 64 AD. So all of those omissions say this stuff had to be written earlier.

38:12

So Luke had to be written before 65 AD. So when you put that all together, you realize the witnesses to the resurrection were still alive, right?

38:22

These accounts have to be very reliable because if anything they said was wrong, and these letters were circulated, these gospels were circulated, somebody would be like, wait a minute.

38:32

I was there in Jerusalem when this happened. That's not what happened. I'm gonna write my own book. Never happened, right?

38:38

That would have been a bestseller. Somebody wrote a contrary book, right? They would have made a lot of money. Like, oh, what all this stuff going on about some guy, some carpet to raise it from the dead.

38:47

That never happened, I was there. And that's not what happened at all. In fact, when Peter preached in Acts, he says to the people of Jerusalem, as you yourselves know, these things were not done in a corner, right?

39:00

The whole world was in an uproar over this stuff, right? And all of the accounts are consistent. So you have relatively contemporaneous events.

39:08

How about Luke? Talk about eyewitness. Luke writes, we went here and we went there and we caught up with them at this city.

39:16

And then when Luke is absent from the narrative, he says, they went there and we met up with them later on.

39:22

So clearly he's part of the adventure, right? And it was an adventure for sure. So, okay, so let's play a little bit of devil's advocate then.

39:30

So suppose everything you're saying kind of leans towards the historicity of some of the events of what's going on, but that doesn't demonstrate

39:40

Dan, the miraculous aspects, right? Suppose we could grant that Luke wrote

39:45

Luke and John wrote John. That doesn't prove that the miracles in those accounts actually occurred.

39:52

So how do you navigate that sort of discussion? If someone kind of hypothetically grants the quote unquote, the reliability of the

39:59

New Testament, that you still need much more to demonstrate that the miracles actually occurred.

40:04

How would you navigate that? The reason people don't believe in miracles is because miracles run contrary to nature.

40:12

And the people who are most adamantly against miracles are people who have an atheistic naturalistic worldview.

40:18

And they will say things like, this is one of the sort of the jujitsu moves you can use on them, right?

40:24

You don't believe in miracles because you say miracles can happen. Therefore, since they can happen according to your worldview, no amount of evidence is going to convince you of something that can happen, right?

40:36

So they start what's called an a priori bias. I don't believe in miracles because miracles can't happen, right?

40:42

So no matter what evidence you provide for a miracle, if it can't happen, because my worldview doesn't allow it to happen,

40:49

I can never accept any amount of proof. So here's what people don't understand. Testimony is proof.

40:57

To a trial lawyer, we use these terms interchangeably. And that's what people don't get. Like when we say proof and evidence are the same exact words in our vocabulary.

41:08

What's your proof counselor? Well, here's my witness, that's my proof, right? So the proof is the testimony.

41:16

Now, you don't have to believe it because that's where faith comes in, but you certainly have enough corroboration with history, with geography, with culture, with other writings, with, you name it, right?

41:34

Internally, other testimony of the time period, you have enough corroboration to verify without a doubt certain key elements of their testimony.

41:43

Is it a gigantic leap of faith into the dark to believe that since they're all writing about the same thing, and they're all saying the same thing, and they're all cross -examined to death, that they really did experience these miracles that they're talking about?

41:58

I mean, they gave their lives for it. They gave their, they went willingly to their death saying we have seen the risen

42:04

Christ, right? You gotta come up with another explanation other than people don't rise from the dead.

42:11

Sure. I get it, people don't rise from the dead. That's why it's so unbelievable. That's why it's so amazing because people don't rise from the dead.

42:18

Yet we have all of this proof that Jesus rose from the dead. What are we doing with it? Did anybody find the body?

42:24

Let's get the other side. Is there a body? You don't got a body. Anybody say, no, he didn't rise from the dead? These things were proclaimed while all the witnesses were still alive.

42:33

As Paul said, you know, we peered before 500, many of whom are still alive, although some have fallen asleep.

42:38

So you got a lot here. It's just too much to dismiss. Yes, it requires faith.

42:44

I'm not knocking the faith componio. You definitely need faith to be a Christian, but it's not some gigantic leap into the abyss, you know, where you're just sort of like floundering around waiting to land on solid ground.

42:56

It's more like little hops. You know, I look at it this way. The Christian faith, the evidence for the

43:03

Christian faith is very much like a mosaic, or if you want to use modern terminology, a jigsaw puzzle.

43:09

Right? There's no one slam dunk piece of evidence, right? It's a lot of little pieces that you got to assemble.

43:16

And as you assemble them, what you do get is a picture of Jesus, you know?

43:21

But it takes painstaking effort. That's why the Bible says, you know, seek and ye shall find, right?

43:30

There's the onus, the burden is on us to do the heavy lifting of scoping this out.

43:38

We can't just sit back and say, convince me, you know, convince me that Jesus rose from the dead. No, the burden is on the seeker of truth.

43:46

If you really want to know the truth, if you really want to know the truth about the Bible, about Christ, about God, you are obligated as an individual, and your soul is at stake, by the way, to get your butt moving and start digging.

43:58

And what happens when you dig is you're gonna find a little piece of evidence here, a little piece of evidence there, little piece of evidence there, and you start assembling it.

44:07

And before you know it, the picture starts to emerge. And that's where your faith comes in. You may not have every piece of the puzzle, right?

44:15

But you know, just like a jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces if you have a hundred pieces missing, then you can still make out the picture.

44:22

And that's how the Christian faith sort of arises in your heart. I think it's important that you mentioned, too, this idea of kind of an a priori commitment to like a anti -supernaturalist, you know, bias, right?

44:34

I think I listened to a debate, which I think was Michael Icona versus Matt Dillahunty, who's kind of a well -known atheist on the interwebs.

44:42

And in the debate itself, the scenario was given, Dan, and you might laugh at this.

44:50

Mike Likona asked the atheist gentleman, if a person's head was decapitated right before your eyes and the head rolled on the floor, and in the name of Jesus, the head came and reattached itself back onto the body, would you believe that a miracle occurred?

45:10

And the atheist said, no. And then if in the name of Jesus, the sea parted and there was a path of dry land, would you believe that's a miracle?

45:24

The answer was no. So while on the one hand, many people ask for evidence and it sounds like they're searching, in reality, when you push for what you just mentioned, kind of that a priori, you will see that a barrier has been pre -built, right?

45:40

In such a way that no amount of evidence is going to be sufficient because the person has made up their mind at the beginning that no evidence can be sufficient because of certain worldview commitments.

45:52

So - When you come to faith, you have to just, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but when you come to faith, if you're sincere about finding the truth, you gotta come as a blank slate.

46:01

And that was the reason why I chose the title, Consider the Evidence, because when we try a case, what we tell the jury, every juror that we select, we say, listen, do you know either party?

46:12

You don't know Bill? You don't know Sam? They're suing each other. Okay, good. You don't know them? Okay. Do you know anything about this case?

46:18

No, you don't know anything about this case. You're a blank slate, right? Yeah, I'm a blank slate. No matter what happens, no matter where the evidence takes you, will you base your decision solely on the evidence?

46:30

Not whether Bill's black or Bill's white, not whether Sam is Hispanic or not.

46:37

You're just gonna base it on the evidence. Can you do that? Yes. Can you promise to do that? Will you take an oath to do that?

46:43

And that's how we prep the jury. And it's much more detailed than that, right? And we get them to, and the ones who can't say that, boom, you're out, you're out, you're out.

46:52

We get another juror. So finally we get six jurors and two alternates, or sometimes four alternates, depending on the length of the trial.

46:59

And we will have a jury that says in unison, we can sit here and whichever way the evidence takes us, that's gonna be our decision.

47:08

That's how you have to come to this evidence. You gotta come with an open mind and an open heart, and you gotta let the evidence carry you along.

47:16

Now, that being said, we do know that no one can remove all bias, right?

47:22

Of course. Of course, so we're not saying like a complete and utter neutrality. People follow my channel, we always talk about the impossibility of neutrality.

47:32

But if someone, if we're gonna get theological, if someone is open and curious and asking honest questions, we know that that itself is a result of the spirit of God working in that person's heart.

47:44

So none of this is taken in kind of the bare evidential sense in that you're a completely literal blank slate.

47:52

No one's truly a blank slate, but we can kind of get the sentiment of what you're getting at. We need to be considering the evidence and acknowledging whether or not your own bias can affect how you're interpreting the evidence.

48:04

These are all kind of super important points. Now, you have another book you just showed me at the beginning here.

48:10

I want you to kind of take a few moments to share that. What is that? It looks super cool, and it looks like it's really old, but it's not, right?

48:19

What are you telling us? That's the mystery, is it really old? No, of course. That's right. There's a historical bias side, there's our law firm on the bottom, that's our logo.

48:27

Of course, the law firm is a big contributor to all these courses. We don't make any money from apologetics.

48:32

That's sort of one of the quandaries that you have in the ministry, is that the more pure ministry you have, unfortunately, sometimes the less money you make.

48:42

But we're fortunate to have a pretty profitable law firm which funds these ventures, and I know I funded some of your ventures, and we're happy to do that.

48:50

What this is, the Historical Bible Society owns an original 1611

48:56

King James, which is a magnificent book to behold. It weighs, as you can see, this is very thin, it weighs, the original

49:04

King James weighs about 20 pounds. It's about that thick. It's about,

49:10

I don't know, it's gotta be 18 inches high. It's massive. It's what's called a pulpit folio.

49:17

You've seen it, right? It's really cool, right? Yep, yep. And this is a photographic facsimile of our book.

49:26

So in other words, every blotch and stain, and there's some really good stains in here, and there's a good stain, every blotch and stain is on our original.

49:37

We didn't sanitize it. And one of the really cool things about the original 1611

49:42

King James, besides the fact that it's the only masterpiece of English literature ever produced by committee, and I believe a very anointed translation, in spite of its limitations, is that they took the time, because they had the time, and they had the skill to create a genealogy.

50:03

Well, the genealogy is already in the, let's do it this way, yeah. The genealogy is already in the

50:11

Bible, but they grafted out. So in other words, you see, they took and created a family tree.

50:17

That's cool. And they started with God, and then Adam and Eve, and then you got Cain, Abel, and Seth, and they put some nice graphics in there.

50:25

We like graphics, don't we? Except in those days - A very visual society. Yeah, well, in those days, the graphics were created using graving on copper plates or steel plates.

50:37

It was a very painstaking process, but as I said, they had a lot of time. Well, anyway, this genealogy goes on for 34 pages.

50:44

Wow. And it takes you through the Ark. It takes you through the Tower of Babel. And at the very end of the genealogy, on page 34, let me find it.

50:56

It has, I don't know if you can see it. It has

51:01

Mary and Joseph, and they come together and they have

51:06

Christ. Of course, Joseph is only the adopted father, but he is the legal title of Messiah that passes to Christ through Joseph's line.

51:17

That's a complicated discussion. And the by birth pedigree passes through Mary's line because she was the natural mother of Jesus.

51:26

And it proves, without a doubt, a couple of things. First of all, Jesus is one of the few people who can trace his lineage back to Adam and Eve.

51:35

I mean, I can trace mine back to like 1820, and then after that, it's sort of obscure.

51:41

A little blurry. More than a little. Have you ever done an ancestry .com thing? Oh yeah, yeah, I spent hours one day doing it.

51:48

I glued to my computer. I was fascinated, but I couldn't get past 1820. And then Jesus literally could go back to the beginning of human creation.

51:59

And that's number one. Number two is it shows, without a doubt, that he alone can claim the title to the throne of the universe because he had to fulfill all of the lineage that was required of the

52:13

Messiah. This is a huge apologetic point that is not often raised. I guess sometimes we worry about genealogies.

52:22

They're a little tedious. We tend to skip over them when we read. But the genealogy of Christ is fascinating because he had to be a man, first of all, under the proto -prophecy of Genesis 3 .16.

52:37

He will crush the head of the serpent. He had to be born of the seed of a woman virgin birth implied there.

52:44

He had to be a Jew from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who was later

52:50

Israel. Then he had to be the lion of the tribe of Judah, that branch. Then he had to be through the house of David, from Jesse.

52:59

And because on your throne will sit someone whose throne will be eternal, will be forever.

53:05

Had to be an eternal throne. And it goes on and on. And so Christ fulfills that. Now, anyone coming today in the modern times and saying, hey, look,

53:13

I'm the Messiah. There's always some weirdo out there claiming to be the Messiah. But by the way, before you finish that, that is not far -fetched.

53:21

There is actually a guy - Oh, here's a guy in Florida. I know. A guy in Florida. A knucklehead. What a knucklehead.

53:26

He's got thousands of followers. It's insane. You wanna slap these people. It's unbelievable. But anyway, let's be

53:33

Christian. Slapping is frowned upon in court. I know that. I'm not an expert. You know what? Some people need it.

53:40

What an arrogant, arrogant person. But anyway, he would have to establish this pedigree, which of course he can't because the wreckings were destroyed.

53:51

When were they destroyed? 70 AD, back to that wonderful, important date. Not so wonderful if you're

53:56

Jewish, obviously. It's a sad time, which is, by the way, why every Jew breaks a glass at the wedding.

54:04

People forget how important this event is. Remember that, listeners. Every time you go to a Jewish wedding, and they break that glass, they are commemorating the destruction of the temple in 70

54:14

AD. They haven't forgotten, and neither should you, because that's a super important historical event documented in Josephus in great detail.

54:23

I have a first edition, by the way. That's awesome. Yeah. Dude, I remember when I first came in your office years ago, and you,

54:33

I don't know if it was you, you had a copy of Calvin's Institutes. Yes, I still have that.

54:38

What year was that? I think it's 1554, if I remember correctly. 1554.

54:44

I remember holding it in my hands, like, this is the coolest thing ever. Yeah. We got to go back to the 11th century, sorry.

54:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just to let people know, you still do the

54:58

Traveling Bible Museum, right? Right, but it's gotta be local because it's very hard to transport the books.

55:04

It's gotta be in the New York metro area. Sure, sure, sure. We need a significant crowd to justify it.

55:10

We have a plane now, which is nice. I don't know if you know that. I did not. Yeah, we got a small plane, which extends our reach.

55:17

We use it for work, and we also use it for the Historical Bible Society. And so I spoke in Chris Arnson's group there way out in the heart of Pennsylvania.

55:28

It would've taken me four hours to drive. Sure, sure, sure. So we can extend the reach, and we do.

55:36

So yes, we still do the traveling exhibition. And it was on hiatus due to COVID, as you can imagine.

55:42

Sure, sure. Well, I just wanna let people know, the stuff that you have is totally worth viewing.

55:49

It's not like, oh, you just got a couple of things. Like, no, this guy's got some pretty legit manuscripts and old, important theological works.

55:59

It is so fascinating. Just looking at it will make you want to just study your Bible and to study church history.

56:05

We have a page from the Gutenberg. What was that? We have a page from the Gutenberg Bible. I know, that's so cool.

56:12

So if folks are in New York or anywhere in Long Island, or if you're not in New York or Long Island, but you know a church that might be interested in hosting this, it's awesome.

56:22

So I highly recommend folks check that out. But - Can I say one thing? Yeah, go for it. We have one of only six

56:29

Coverdale Bibles in the world. We have stuff the Museum of the Bible doesn't have. We lend stuff to the

56:35

Museum of the Bible in DC. That's so awesome. Yeah, we have - Hey, David, you got the page.

56:41

We need a Gutenberg. We need some Gutenberg. Yeah, I'll send it over. We also have the first illustrated

56:47

Tyndale, which is magnificent. The condition is so good. It looks brand new. Right. Well, I remember one day

56:53

I was sitting with my dad. He's still alive. God bless him. He's in his late 80s. And we're hanging out and we're watching a

57:01

History Channel special on Martin Luther. And I didn't realize this, that Martin Luther was such a prolific author and printing was so new that at one point, more than 50 % of all printed material on the market was his.

57:18

Imagine that? Just like Thomas Jefferson could claim to have read every book ever printed. You know, it's not like today where there's such a proliferation of material.

57:27

But Martin Luther in like 1530, he had more than 50 % of what was printed was his stuff.

57:35

So I'm watching the movie with my dad, the show up with my dad, and they're recreating like Lutheran times.

57:41

And they're showing how they're printing it and they're hanging out his sermons to dry from the printing press. And I casually turned to my dad and I'm like, would you like to see some of those sermons?

57:51

And he goes, what are you talking about? And I go to the safe and I pull out about 10 original sermons from Luther printed in 1522, 1523.

58:02

It was wingly and I just blew his mind, you know? So yeah, we had really cool stuff. I was very fortunate to collect the stuff when nobody was buying it and we got it for basically nothing at the time.

58:15

That's awesome, man. Well, I wanna ask you one question with respect to that genealogy and then we're gonna move into the questions and then wrap things up, okay?

58:23

I just really am appreciative of the time and so I don't wanna take too much of it. So where can folks get that booklet there?

58:30

Pretty sure it's on Amazon. If not, you contact the Historical Bible Society and it's also in the

58:37

Museum of the Bible gift shop in the bookstore in Washington, DC.

58:43

They agreed to take it and they've got them and they keep selling out of it. People love it because they see the King James and they wanna take a little facsimile home.

58:50

Sure, sure. And where can people go if they need a lawyer? How can they contact you or your - 1 -800 -NOWHURT.

58:57

NOWHURT? 1 -800 -NOWHURT. 1 -800 -669 -4878. 1 -800 -NOWHURT.

59:04

And we use an 800 number because we don't want people to be discouraged from calling us, say, from Alaska.

59:10

We've had cases in Alaska. We've had cases in California. I had a case in Hawaii. If it's big enough, we'll travel.

59:17

And yeah, we love our clients. We represent a lot of Christians who are sort of intimidated by the legal process and they're worried about 1

59:25

Corinthians 6, I believe it is with chapter six, where they say, you know, brothers shouldn't go to law against a brother.

59:31

I've written about that. That does not apply to today with insurance companies and the difference between the civil and the criminal justice system, which didn't exist in the first century.

59:42

Modern lawsuits are just a civilized way of resolving disputes. They're done with integrity and, you know, honesty.

59:51

They can work out very well. And usually the more honest you are and the more honest your lawyer is, the better you do.

59:58

Believe it or not, because we have such credibility with the insurance companies, most of our cases settle. They don't even bother to fight us a lot of times.

01:00:05

They just pay us. Wow. Yeah. Oh, super interesting. Well, folks, if you're interested in getting a lawyer, you can follow that information and you can just look up Dan Buttafuoco and he's got a website and everything.

01:00:17

So let's move into our questions section here. We're gonna go through the comments and I'll just shoot a bunch of questions at you and then we'll wrap things up,

01:00:25

Dan. How does that sound? Sure. All right. So this is a question from Helen Peddicord.

01:00:32

She asks, would love your suggestions, teaching apologetics to young adults. So I know obviously you're not a teacher,

01:00:40

I am, but what you've explained at the beginning where you like to take complicated things and kind of bring them down kind of the bottom shelf, how would you suggest someone who's interested in teaching young people how they can better communicate some of these more technical truths of the

01:00:54

Christian faith? Well, obviously it depends on the age and intellectual level of the young adults, right?

01:01:03

But if we're talking about 17, 18 year olds that are fairly intelligent and eager to learn,

01:01:14

I'm not trying to promote the book, believe me, because we don't make any money from it, but my book is actually a great place to start because we wrote it with that in mind.

01:01:23

If some churches have been using our book in their life groups because they round table it and they'll read a chapter or a couple of pages and discuss it, there's a lot in there.

01:01:36

You can skip some of the stuff that's maybe a little bit boring, but I tried not to make it boring, but sometimes you can't help it.

01:01:46

Then it also depends on your level of interest in this stuff and maybe kids aren't into that, but I would start there.

01:01:53

The other thing is there are really many great websites, including yours, right? Where you can get material, you can tackle it question by question.

01:02:05

I once taught a seminar on a Wednesday night at my church called

01:02:11

Apologetics for the Lay Person, which was really well received. And there are groups like New York Apologetics, which will come to your church.

01:02:20

You know those guys, right? Yep, absolutely. Anthony, and what's the other guy's name? Anthony Venio and, oh man,

01:02:26

I don't remember the other. I haven't spoken to him in a long time. You know, they're good guys. They'll come to your church.

01:02:32

You gotta figure, I mean, that's not a great answer, but you gotta figure it out because it's so important.

01:02:41

You can't just tell them the things we would have said 50 years ago and then leave it there because then they go off to college and they get their brains slapped by these atheist professors and they don't have an answer.

01:02:56

They did it to my daughter, by the way, in college. And fortunately, my daughter had me at the same time

01:03:02

I was training and I was really on my game. And we just, we obliterated her professor's arguments.

01:03:08

At the end of the semester, he gave her an A plus and told her, you've caused me to re -question my atheism.

01:03:15

That's awesome. We looked at that as a huge victory. I mean, it would have been better if he just got on his knees and repented, but the very fact that he respected us and sort of, you know, he wasn't hostile about it was actually a major victory for us and it really helped my daughter.

01:03:33

And that's really where my heart breaks too when I see young people in the youth group and they're praising the

01:03:38

Lord and they're trying to be good people and they go off to college and they get bushwhacked by these atheists and they come back, you know, crazy woke and whatever else that, you know, and they don't believe everything and they challenge everything.

01:03:52

And you gotta have answers for that. You gotta sort of inoculate them in advance. Sure. You gotta sort of tell them when you go to college,

01:03:59

I don't even care if it's a Christian college, but when you go to college, these are the things you're going to hear, be ready for them.

01:04:06

Right. And have an answer in advance and that sort of inoculates them, you know, like it's a vaccination of sorts.

01:04:12

We won't go there. That's another question. We won't go there, that's for sure. Well, I'm a teacher.

01:04:18

I teach high school and I will be teaching middle school. So I actually will be teaching Bible and logic, which are two vitally important topics, especially with respect to apologetics.

01:04:31

So you're apologetic, if I can kind of share my thoughts here, you're apologetic is only going to be as good as the soil out of which it grows.

01:04:39

Okay. So if you have a strong and healthy foundation, your apologetic will naturally flow from that.

01:04:45

So my suggestion in teaching young adults apologetics or anybody for that matter is ground them in scripture.

01:04:51

99 .9 % of the objections I hear against the Christian faith are not the abstract philosophical arguments.

01:04:58

They're not even the technical historical arguments that you'll hear. They're often just misrepresentations of what that person thinks

01:05:04

Christianity teaches. And you often have to employ systematic theology and Bible doctrine to kind of address their topic and show that something's not in conflict or whatever the case may be.

01:05:15

So if you learn your Bible and theology, you are equipped to combat the mischaracterizations of the atheist.

01:05:22

You are able to respond to the Muslim that has a deformed view of what

01:05:28

Christians believe. The Mormons, the Jehovah's Witness, all of that is corrected by good, solid

01:05:33

Christian theology. So if you're teaching young kids, ground them in scripture, teach them doctrine and teach them logic.

01:05:41

I have a friend, his name is Matt Slick. He is the president and founder of CARM .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.

01:05:47

It's one of the largest apologetics websites on the internet. It's been around since 1994, I think.

01:05:53

And he explained to me that he used to teach his kids logic at the dinner table. He would say, bones sleep faster than Thursday.

01:06:02

What fallacy did I just commit in that sentence? And his little kids will be like, well, that's a category error because bones don't sleep.

01:06:08

And little games like that are fun. And they also teach young children how to think about things.

01:06:15

So Bible, logic, and theology, all of those things, age appropriate, of course, and making them kind of the background music of your mind, the background music of your life, so that as they grow up, it's just kind of part of the air they breathe.

01:06:29

They'll be able to combat error because they're so grounded in truth. So that's a little bit of my two cents there.

01:06:35

So thank you so much, Helen, for that awesome question. All right, Dan, a hobbit. This is the internet, the great names, right?

01:06:42

A hobbit asks, you know, I bet you've never been asked a question by a hobbit. So this is gonna be new for you.

01:06:48

There wasn't a central Christian council of the day, one that could circulate some texts and suppress others.

01:06:54

Do we have any data on how fringe, small, the Christian movement really was?

01:07:00

I don't know if you understand the question. Yeah, I got it. Okay. First of all, it was very small.

01:07:06

It started with 12 guys that turned the world upside down, according to the book of Acts.

01:07:11

They literally, which I think actually speaks volumes of the power of the movement. If you look at the

01:07:18

Christian movement, it should have never succeeded, right? You have, you know, let's contrast

01:07:24

Islam with Christianity, right? Islam is join the party. We get the maraud, we attack the caravans, we rape the women, we take the goods.

01:07:34

This is gonna be great. Let's do it. And if you don't do it, we're gonna kill you. Sign me up, right? Every reason to join, right?

01:07:41

Christianity, join our movement. You get your goods stolen. You get persecuted. You might die.

01:07:47

You might be tortured, but you'll get eternal life. People said, sign me up. Why did they do that?

01:07:53

Because it was true. In other words, Christianity defied the expectations of the Roman empire.

01:07:58

There was no reason on earth why anyone should wanna be a Christian, right?

01:08:03

There was no immediate benefit. There was no health and wealth gospel. You were buying into misery if you believe

01:08:09

Jesus and you join this group. And yet people joined by the droves. It swept through the entire Roman empire.

01:08:15

So what started as a very fringe movement basically consumed the whole world to the point where 2 .2

01:08:22

billion people today celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The only way that could happen is if it was true.

01:08:28

The second thing, as far as your texts question, right? The way that the canon,

01:08:34

C -A -N -O -N came together, canon means yardstick, which is the texts that were accepted, is that there were leaders in the

01:08:42

Christian church who had a very close connection with Jesus, right? Everything is based on Jesus, right?

01:08:49

He was the ultimate, right? He was the great teacher. He was the Messiah. He was the rabbi.

01:08:55

He was the prophet. He said he was going to die and rise from the dead. He did exactly what he said and then he ascended into heaven, right?

01:09:02

Among many witnesses, right? Anybody closely connected to Christ, when they wrote that movement, that writing had special status, right?

01:09:15

But that didn't mean by itself it was automatically accepted. Then it had to be vetted, like what did it say?

01:09:21

For example, James was the half -brother of Jesus, right? And so he went from being a guy who literally thought

01:09:31

Jesus was crazy, mocking Jesus, to somebody who not only believed everything

01:09:38

Jesus said, he became the bishop of the church in Jerusalem and was ultimately martyred for that belief.

01:09:44

Now, what in the world happened to change James? This is how lawyers think, right? Well, it says in one of Paul's writings, afterward, he appeared to James after he resurrected.

01:09:55

Well, that would change your mind if you saw your brother come back from the dead. Guess what?

01:10:00

I really am the Messiah. And James was like, whoa! And not only became a believer, became a minister and became martyred for the faith.

01:10:09

Well, he wrote a book, the book of James. Paul wrote 2 3rds of the New Testament. He had an encounter with Christ.

01:10:15

Luke was an investigative reporter. He interviewed the witnesses. Mary, what was it like being pregnant when you didn't have sex?

01:10:23

He got all the evidence and circulated. He wrote it to a high -ranking Roman official.

01:10:29

I actually referenced it in this here because Luke recorded the genealogies. Matthew, Mark, John, they were followers of Jesus.

01:10:38

John was at the crucifixion, right? So these books were circulated to the various churches that were popping up, which basically started out as Bible studies, or just gatherings where people would get together and pray, which by itself was a miracle in a way because in Roman society, they had never seen anything like this where senators would join hands with slaves, would join hands with women, would join hands with plebeians, would join hands with equestrians.

01:11:05

That had never happened in Roman society. Roman society, if you know your ancient history, was a society that had many, many 501c3s, if you will, organizations, charitable organizations, social organizations, but they never crossed class lines.

01:11:21

Christianity was the great equalizer because Paul said in Christ, there's neither Jew nor Gentile.

01:11:27

There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female. And so that blew the Romans' minds.

01:11:32

And so these little groups were proliferating and these writings were circulated. And just as the cream rises to the top, 27 books of the

01:11:42

New Testament just sort of, I don't wanna use the word magically because that's a bad word, but they sort of automatically became what everyone was using so that when they finally did have a regional council or an empire -wide council, they started talking like, what books are you guys using?

01:11:58

Oh, we're using these 27. Hey, that's funny. We're using the same 27. And they started to compare notes and it sort of just came to the surface.

01:12:06

And then later on, we have things like the Muratorian Canon, which sort of was a list of books.

01:12:12

And then the official proclamations came much later where the organized Catholic Church said, fine, these are our books.

01:12:19

And these are the ones we're gonna say are. But that was way later. But your question also implies that there were some other books like the

01:12:27

Gospel of Judas or the Gospel of the Shepherd of Hermes or Peter the Hermit or any of these other crazy later apocryphal gospels.

01:12:37

Not apocryphal, but the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Why weren't they included?

01:12:43

And the answer is, cause they're garbage. They weren't even written by the people that said they wrote them, which is a non -starter, right?

01:12:50

If you start with a book, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and we know she was dead when the book was published. We know that for a fact.

01:12:57

Or the Gospel of Judas. The guy was way gone when that book came out. These things are garbage. It's like Mad Magazine compared to the

01:13:04

Gospels. I remember Mad Magazine. Yeah, I mean, like if you read it, you wouldn't include it.

01:13:12

But nobody bothers to read it because it's tedious and it's in foreign languages. But this idea that the church kept some books and excluded others because they had an agenda is nonsense because nobody in their right mind would include these books.

01:13:27

It's just a subject of, the History Channel likes to sensationalize it, to sell advertising and to get people to watch it.

01:13:35

But no scholar takes these books seriously. They are literal garbage. I mean, garbage.

01:13:40

Like they say it's nonsense. It's like it reads like a comic book compared to the

01:13:45

Gospels, right? Am I right? Yes, I agree. I agree. Are you okay with three more questions?

01:13:52

Is that okay? I got nothing to do. All right, cool, cool. So - I'm going fishing later, so. All right, no worries.

01:13:58

So Hobbit has a follow -up here. Is there a main Jewish objection to the genealogy of Jesus or do they accept it and just reject his divinity as Messiah?

01:14:07

The scriptures themselves wrote it as a proof of sorts for Jews. Well, the last statement is absolutely correct.

01:14:13

The scriptures themselves wrote it as a proof of sorts for Jews. I don't know that there's an objection to the genealogy of Jesus.

01:14:20

Well, certainly they object to the virgin birth part, right? You know, they don't believe that. I just think that,

01:14:29

I think the biggest hangup, and the Bible says it, what the biggest hangup with the Jewish rejection of Jesus is that they can't wrap their brains around the fact that their

01:14:38

Messiah would be crucified. Because it says, cursed is everyone who hangs from a tree. They sort of missed that part of the

01:14:44

Old Testament, which has a lot to do with how you view prophecy, by the way. And I always say this, you gotta be careful not to have a myopic view of prophecy because if you only envision your

01:14:59

Messiah or any answer to prophecy occurring in a certain way, then when it finally unfolds and it's right in front of your eyes, you miss it.

01:15:07

So here they had this vision of Jesus or of a Messiah coming in as a political deliverer on a white horse, figuratively, to liberate them from Roman bondage and return them to the glory days of Solomon, a very sort of naturalistic, sort of political idea of a kingdom now, you know, with lots of money and lots of prosperity and where the

01:15:30

Jews are the main people. And that's not at all what Jesus was about.

01:15:36

And so when he stood right in front of them, they missed him, right? Because they're expecting

01:15:41

X and here's Y. I think it'll be the same way with a lot of people when it comes to end time events. They expect a seven year tribulation, they expect everything to operate a certain way.

01:15:51

When it finally happens, they're gonna be like, this isn't the end. Because they have one view of it that doesn't allow for open -mindedness.

01:15:58

You gotta be open -minded when it comes to prophecy, right? So when Jesus shows up and they're expecting this sort of really cool guy who is gonna be a military and political deliverer, he rides in on a donkey and allows himself to get beat to death, right?

01:16:14

That doesn't really fly with them. And even the Bible says to the Greeks, it's foolishness, but the crucifixion is to Jews a stumbling block, right?

01:16:22

And I think that a lot of them can never get past that. The other thing is they always talk about when

01:16:28

Messiah comes, this is a major argument that was raised in medieval times during a famous debate, that Messiah would come, he'd bring peace, right?

01:16:37

Peace, but peace can mean a lot of things, right? The peace that Messiah brings is peace with God.

01:16:44

Our problem was with God, not with one another. Our problem was with God. We were at war with God, and we were gonna lose that war, by the way.

01:16:54

Messiah came and brought peace and reconciliation between us and God. And that's the peace

01:16:59

Messiah brings. Well, they were expecting world peace, which clearly we don't have. So one famous rabbi said, well, when

01:17:05

Messiah comes, he'll bring peace. Do we have peace? Well, look around, there's no peace. Therefore, he couldn't be Messiah.

01:17:11

Faulty logic, because they had a misunderstanding of what the idea of peace was. The best peace, the only peace that really matters to me, personally, and should matter to you, is that Messiah brings peace with God.

01:17:23

No matter what my life was, no matter what sins I've committed, no matter what sins I will commit, I have peace with God.

01:17:30

That's the ultimate peace. He has broken down the wall of hostility, also, between Jew and Gentile.

01:17:35

So there's a lot of peace that Messiah brings, but it may not be the peace, again, as they envisioned it.

01:17:41

Sure, sure. All right, these are the last two questions. This is Rigard De Bruyn. I hope I pronounced that name correctly.

01:17:48

Would your guests be able to defend the crucifixion in a court of law? Now, I would imagine they're not asking you to do that at this very moment, but what might be your approach if you were in a court of law and this was the specific topic, the crucifixion of Jesus?

01:18:02

Well, I don't understand, really, the question. I think if the question is saying, could

01:18:07

I defend that it happened? Yes, I could defend that it happened. I don't think it's in dispute that it happened.

01:18:13

Well, yeah, that's true, yeah. I think that it's clear that by history, by culture, by the existence of the church, by the fact that we celebrated for an unbroken chain of succession for 2 ,000 years, by the fact that I could even defend the resurrection, because 2 ,000 years later, we're still celebrating

01:18:33

Sabbath on a Sunday, which is a major change in God's law. Something dramatic had to have happened to cause that change, right?

01:18:42

And so 2 .2 billion people celebrate the resurrection, which, by the way, is the most celebrated event in the history of the world, the resurrection.

01:18:49

You realize that, right? Commemorated event, because 2 .2 billion people do it every Sunday. So I think we could defend the crucifixion in the court of law that it happened.

01:18:59

I think we even defend the resurrection in a court of law that it happened. The proof is there if you look for it.

01:19:06

So beyond that, I don't really know. Yeah, and interestingly enough, if the person's just talking about the crucifixion and we don't kind of consider kind of the divine intervention with respect to the resurrection, you would never have to defend the crucifixion in a court of law because it's so widely accepted.

01:19:21

People who reject the historicity of the crucifixion are fringe. They're not really taken very seriously.

01:19:27

Those are the people that wear tin hats. Yes. All right, here's our last question.

01:19:33

Okay, you're doing a great job, by the way, and I appreciate it. This is Jacob Lee. Earlier, you said that you could ask somebody claiming there is no absolute truth whether what they said is absolutely true.

01:19:44

What happens when somebody answers no? It's not an absolute truth. It's a paradigmatic truth.

01:19:51

Yeah, well, tell them that they're making up stuff. There's no such thing as a paradigmatic truth. You can make up words all you want.

01:19:58

Listen, truth, let's define truth. Truth is that which comports with reality, okay?

01:20:05

You know what? You can believe all you want that iced tea, I'd like to believe that now with gas at $6 a gallon, that iced tea would fill up my car and let it run.

01:20:14

And you know what? I will come smack into face with reality if I start putting iced tea, especially if it's got sugar in it, in my gas tank.

01:20:23

I won't have a car. Not only won't it run, I won't have a car, okay? So reality has a way of riding the ship of truth, right?

01:20:33

You can't function in a world where you make up paradigmatic truth and attempt to live by your own paradigmatic truth.

01:20:40

You will eventually smack hard into real reality and you'll see that it doesn't work, right?

01:20:46

You go into court and you start raising those kinds of arguments, you're gonna be thrown at, not only, you might only be held in contempt, you might be thrown in jail.

01:20:53

Oh, judge, this is paradigmatic truth. You try that one in court, you know, where they don't tolerate nonsense and where the judge is the czar, you know?

01:21:02

No, no, there's no such thing. And it also kicks the can further, right? So if someone says, well, no, it's a paradigmatic truth, we could just simply ask, is it absolutely true that it's a paradigmatic truth?

01:21:12

Yeah, of course. It's either absolutely true or it's not. And so - If you don't know something is true.

01:21:18

Look, there are times when we're trying to find the truth, we're not sure of the truth, right?

01:21:24

But we're debating the truth, but ultimately we're all trying to get at the truth. In fact, a trial, first thing you learn in law school, a trial is a search for the truth.

01:21:33

Did you know that? That's the definition of a trial is a search for the truth, right? And the way it works is by a clash of opposites, you know, because somebody has their position, somebody else has their position.

01:21:43

And by that clash of opposites, that violent clash of opposites, the idea is to get at the truth.

01:21:50

And it works really well. I mean, if you've seen it in action, trials are amazing. If you watch the Johnny Depp trial, you see how these things operate in real life.

01:21:57

It's sort of an amusing way. But no, we want truth. We want real truth. You know, I always tell people when it comes to truth, you know, if you're not sure if your girlfriend is cheating on you or not, would you like the paradigmatic truth or would you like the real truth?

01:22:11

There you go. You know what I mean? Like, I want the real truth because I got to make some decisions here.

01:22:17

You know what I'm saying? Let's be real. That's awesome. Well, Dan, that is the last of our questions.

01:22:22

I'd like to thank you so much for giving me your time. And this was a lot of fun. I love you, man. You're the best.

01:22:28

Keep doing what you're doing. You're a blessing to the kingdom and your people apparently 5 ,000 subscribers, you know, go team

01:22:36

Ayala, man. Come on, let's go team Ayala. Keep promoting the truth and keep spreading the gospel because it's the only way we're gonna change hearts and change souls and advance the kingdom of God, which is what it's all about.

01:22:51

And same to you, brother. And thank you so much everyone for listening in. Remember tomorrow at seven, okay?

01:22:58

I'll be doing a Q and A so you can bring all the questions you want and on a wide variety of topics that I cover.

01:23:05

And that should be a lot of fun. And then on Thursday, of course, I have Pastor Luke Pearson. So that's it for this episode, guys.