A Trial Lawyer Turned Christian Apologist

Upcoming Live Q&A and Thursday Interview with Pastor Luke Pearson

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

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

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. 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.

So that's tomorrow at 7 p .m. Eastern. Also, I'm super excited about Thursday, on Thursday at 9 p .m. Eastern, I'll be having Luke, Pastor Luke Pearson from Apologia Church. That's the Jeff Durbin's church, James Wise Church.

Luke is one of the pastors there. 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.

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. And for those of you who know my full-time job, I'm a teacher.

So I am technically on summer break. So there's gonna be a lot of content that's gonna be coming out. So please stay tuned for that. 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 Revealed Apologetics.

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

On YouTube, the comments section can kind of be like a sewer, but for the most part, people behave in our comment section. So I really appreciate that. And let's continue that sort of behavior and set a standard that people should follow.

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 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. He wrote and graded the qualifying exam for the National Board of Trial Advocacy.

And he's the founder of the Historical Bible Society, which is a traveling Bible museum that promotes apologetics. I actually used to work for Dan and write articles for him on the website, Historical Bible Society.

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

It is awesome. So check that out at Historical Bible Society. Well, without further ado, let me introduce my good friend, Dan Bottafuoco. How are you doing, brother? Greetings, greetings, Eli. How are you?

I'm doing well. 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.

Why Every Christian Should Know Apologetics

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

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 Christian faith.

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

That is absolute nonsense. You got the whole world out there spilling all kinds of lies on YouTube, on Quora, on social media. And if Christians don't speak up and combat these lies at the ground level, then these things just proliferate.

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.

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

Even if we don't like what they say, we try not to make it personal. So we're sort of trained in that. And for me, it was a natural outgrowth of my passion to argue. If you grew up in an Italian home, you argue around the table on a Sunday afternoon about every little thing possible, some stupid things even.

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

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 God for help, but let's not avoid the fray.

So I got into apologetics. It's really actually a great story. I blogged about it on Quora. I have a pretty strong Quora presence. I have over 1 ,000 ,005 views. And I write about a lot of subjects, but mostly about the 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, Jesus never existed. It's like, it's all a myth. And then I come in with facts and then you just obliterate them.

And I have no problem doing that. And I love doing that because we really should stick up for what's right. So, well, it started about, and I wrote this on Quora because somebody asked, how did 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. 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. 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 Christian, right?

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

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

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

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?

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

And he said to me about two years ago, he said, Dan, he says you've annihilated every one of my arguments. 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 Holy Spirit can really change their heart.

But what you can do is remove the debris. You can remove the objections. And really what it's important are for those in the background who are listening, right? Because at that party, there were people who were in the undecided camp.

Now he was very decided on his position. 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. 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.

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

Listening, Logic, and the Problem of Evil

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

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. 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. 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.

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? Did you use those tools in your study of apologetics and Christian evidences?

How did that process look for you?

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.

When you go to law school, you don't learn law. Took me like six months to find that out. When you go to law school, you don't learn law. Well, shocking, right? You think you'd learn law in law school.

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

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

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

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 I learned in law school, the same proof and evidence skills I learned in law school.

Law, especially trial law, is all about proof. 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. 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. 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.

How to Use Verbal Jiu-Jitsu in Apologetics

Okay, now I like this analogy. You said that you're a martial artist of words, right? I often joke around with people. I have a black belt in karate movies. It's different than a black belt in karate.

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

Well, first of all, most people when they debate somebody or when they argue and we call it arguing in the colloquial sense, right? Is they don't listen to what the other person is really saying. Number one, you have to listen.

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

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 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.

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. For example, this is an easy one.

People say things like, there's no such thing as absolute truth, right? Sure. Here they are making a true statement. They're making, so the presupposition is, well, why are you even talking? There's no such thing as absolute truth.

Your statement is nonsense. This is just a truth declaration. You just said it's absolutely true that there's no such thing as absolute truth. And all of a sudden they go, what? And then they realize that, yeah, exactly.

If there's no such thing as absolute truth, why are we even having a discussion? And why am I even making that declaration that it's absolutely true that there's no such thing as absolute truth? 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. You're declaring it, even as you're declaring that it doesn't exist, you're declaring it. You're relying on absolute truth and things like that. But what it really requires is that we listen to what people are saying.

And so many people don't listen. They are ready to make the next argument and not actually hearing what the other person says. And there's so much embedded in what they're saying. And I think we just have to step back.

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, 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.

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? 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, it's that they don't like God. They don't like what God does or what 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 God that allows little children to be aborted or a tsunami to wipe out a good part of Thailand, that kind of stuff.

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.

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 The coffee one or the Bible?

I'm actually, I'm not the coffee, but Yeah, I ran out of coffee. The side about answering with gentleness and respect is really important. Now, two points here, right? The Bible says, do not answer a fool according to his folly, right?

And then a few verses later, I may have them juxtaposed. Well, it's the next verse. It's literally the next verse. Yeah, it says, answer a fool according to his folly. So, you know, you have somebody will come in there, Bible contradicts itself, you know?

And I'm like, no, it doesn't. You don't have to understand the Hebrew way of speaking. You know, answer a fool according to his folly, don't answer a fool according to his folly. Both are true. It's, example, I actually blogged on this one.

I said, you're having lunch with a valuable client, right? And the client says something really foolish. That's a good time not to answer a fool according to his folly, right? What are you gonna gain from it?

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

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

When to Answer a Fool and When to Stop Casting Pearls

So I have a question then, so I have a question. So, and I think that's a great point that you made, that there's a specific time, and it actually takes training and practice to be able to recognize when that time is the time to do those things.

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

Does that make my question make sense? It makes perfect sense. I think that throwing the pearls before swine is related to the answer I just gave, because you're really doing it for the edification of those around who are listening.

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 God teaches, and really hates you and hates everything that you stand for, and wants nothing to do with what you're saying, 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. Maybe just pray for the person at that point. That's not a person where you keep sort of witnessing to.

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

You're wasting your time. 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. I think it just, you change tactics. And maybe at that point, you just pray for the person, leave it to God and say, you know what?

I have nothing left here. Now you said something a few moments ago before with respect to the importance of listening. And I kind of wanna highlight this for folks that we listen to other people, not simply to respond.

Now notice what 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.

But at the same time, one helpful way of refuting something is listening. As one great philosopher said, this is my favorite Christian philosopher, the late Greg Bonson. Folks who listen to this channel know who 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. 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.

So I think that's super, super important. And I think coming from a lawyer's perspective, the way your mind works, I think people can appreciate that, especially with what's going on in the news today.

Have you been following the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial?

Letting People Speak and Reading the Heart

I can't believe you brought that up because as you said that, I was thinking about that. 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?

And the more skillful you are at listening, you can pick it up sooner rather than later. But after you hear, and I could barely watch that to be honest. My daughter became fascinated with it. But from the snippets I picked up, you can realize very quickly where someone's coming from and whether they're credible or not.

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

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.

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

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

It's a wonderful trial lawyer tactic to just let someone speak. I remember having a doctor on the stand once who was dying to convince the jury that my client wasn't hurt, okay? And I just let him talk, which is, you know, the more he rambled on and on, the more ridiculous he sounded, you know?

And he wouldn't answer my questions, which even made it worse and I could see the jury was getting frustrated. 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's supposed to be objective and just state the facts.

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

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

Yeah, so your professional opinion then, before we move on to our next segment, people would want to know, right? This is a professional lawyer, trial lawyer like yourself, Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, is she guilty or is she innocent in your eyes?

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. I think that the result that the jury rendered is exactly the right result.

And really he won the court of public opinion because 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 going to want to date her because she's flat out crazy, right?

I mean, she just ruined her whole life. So whatever he tried to accomplish and she tried to accomplish, he was the clear winner. Public opinion is on his side. He spent a lot of money to clear his name and I think he succeeded.

Yeah.

Why the New Testament Is Reliable Eyewitness Testimony

Well, thank you for that. You wrote a book, folks might be interested that you wrote a book right now. You got 40 reviews on Amazon and it looks like just about all of them are really, really good. So I want to talk a little bit about your book because it is entitled, Consider the Evidence.

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

Okay, so real quick, Consider the Evidence. The entire title is, A Trial Lawyer Examines Eyewitness Testimony in Defense of the Reliability of the New Testament. So folks, if you're interested in defending the Bible and the reliability of the New Testament, you definitely want to check that out on Amazon.

I think, is it available on Kindle? Can someone get it on Kindle? I don't know. Okay, that's okay. Hey, paper books, man, that's the way to go too. If you like the smell of brand new pages, I know people who are obsessed with books, that's a thing.

Order the book now. I do have a copy of it somewhere. 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. But this book that you wrote, okay, what was your purpose?

Is it a general defense of the New Testament? What did that process look like for you when you were sitting down and writing this book? What were you trying to accomplish in writing this book?

Well, first of all, all apologetics eventually is going to come down to the New Testament, right? You agree with that, right? You got to start somewhere, but eventually you got to get them to the 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, 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 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 Christian, it's history for the Christian, it's actual events. And you could start with the New Testament, which is suppositional apologetics, or you could start somewhere else and get them there, but you got to get to the New Testament.

So what my goal was in writing the book was I had read a lot of apologetic books from the scholars. And honestly, some of them are so dense and so esoteric, big word, good scrabble word. You got the scholars up here arguing with each other, and they're arguing on a 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. Lawyers aren't so smart all the time, right? Lawyers are very practical. So especially trial lawyers, 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.

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

I just wanted to get people to support the reliability of the New Testament. I try to make it funny. I put some anecdotes in there. I told the story about the debate, with this guy, Lou, who's my friend to this date.

And I also have a lot more material to add to it. I need to do a revision of the book at some point. I'm collecting material. I have more evidence. But the idea here was to show, from a trial lawyer's perspective, that the credibility of the 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.

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

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

He wasn't born yet. John, however, was at the crucifixion. So you have the issue of competency. You have the issue of credibility. And you have the issue, if you're in courtroom, of admissibility, right?

Not hearsay, right? These guys were there in time and place. They're recounting what they experienced. They were cross-examined. It's recorded. I mean, you got Paul's trial testimony recorded several times in the book of Acts.

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.

But, you know, the idea of that book, Consider the Evidence, was to point people to the 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 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 want to believe it. It's clearly not a bunch of fairy tales. Anybody who's read the New Testament knows it purports to be an eyewitness account.

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. And so that's really the goal of the book, is to just

Why the New Testament Must Precede 70 AD

Sure, so the title is 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 New Testament is in fact eyewitness testimony.

How would you speak to that? How can we know that the New Testament documents, whether it's the Pauline Epistles or the Gospels, how can we know that this is actually eyewitness account?

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

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. And all that misses the really big question.

And the really big question is this, and God put it there for a reason, right? There's not a single book in the New Testament that mentions the destruction of the temple. And it's impossible, excuse me, it would be impossible to write a history of the 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 Jewish age to the Jewish people, his own did not receive him, but they rejected him. He prophesied that because of that, the temple was gonna be destroyed, that Jerusalem would be utterly wrecked and he cried over it, I long to gather you as a hen, as mother hen gathers her chicks in her arms, but you would not let me, therefore your house is left unto you desolate.

And there's so much Luke 21, Matthew 24, which talks about the destruction of the temple. It's a major prophetic thing. And the Bible talks about the end of the age, which is the end of the Jewish age.

And we get crickets in the entire New Testament about that happening, right? It clearly happened in 70 AD. I mean, Judaism was forever altered in 70 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?

The temple was the center of Jewish life. We don't appreciate it now, but there were sacrifices for everything. There were daily sacrifices, there were birthday sacrifices, there were anniversary sacrifices, there were holy day sacrifices, there were Sabbath day sacrifices.