← All episodes

FRANK TUREK | Equipping Men to Push Back Atheism (Ep. 325)

June 28, 2022 1h 20m Full transcript available
FRANK TUREK | Equipping Men to Push Back Atheism (Ep. 325)
0:00 / 1h 20m
In this episode, Kyle Thompson sits down with Frank Turek, a leading Christian apologist, to discuss equipping men to push back against atheism. They dive into the importance of strong biblical manhood, the challenges faced by the church today, and how to effectively engage with skeptics using reason and evidence.
Transcript
924 segments
0:00 LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business.
0:03 We cannot stop your new clients from emailing you at 3 a.m.
0:07 We can help you sell, market and hire in one place.
0:12 We cannot help you be in three places at once.
0:15 And while we can't help you organize your calendar,
0:19 LinkedIn can help you land more clients so you have a calendar to organize.
0:24 Grow your small business on LinkedIn.
0:26 Learn more at linkedin.com/smallbusiness.
0:30 [MUSIC]
0:42 This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51 I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52 Let's get into it.
0:53 All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:55 His name is Frank Turic, so Frank is one of the biggest and best Christian speakers
0:59 authors, radio and television host and apologist on planet Earth.
1:03 He often speaks at churches, schools and universities and has done public debates
1:07 with noted atheists like Christopher Hitchens and David Silverman.
1:10 And there are a bunch of other guys, like he's done a lot of these debates,
1:14 but he's also authored books like I don't have enough faith to be an atheist
1:17 and stealing from God.
1:18 Why atheists need God to make their case.
1:20 And he also has a new book that he co-wrote with his son, Zach,
1:23 called Hollywood Heroes, How Your Favorite Movies Reveal God.
1:26 And we talk about that a little bit in this episode.
1:28 He goes into all these different stories from the superhero movies and comics and Hollywood
1:32 and how that basically points to Christ.
1:33 He's also the founder and president of the Christian apologetics ministry crossexamine.org.
1:38 He's the host of, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist television show
1:41 in the host of cross-examine with Frank Turic radio show.
1:44 So this was a really, really fun interview.
1:46 Anytime that I set up an interview to go in a particular way and it doesn't go that way,
1:49 it's typically a good thing because I basically set it up where it's like,
1:52 okay, if they're just giving me road answers, I'll just work my way through here and it'll be fine.
1:56 But we kept going off on these different tangents.
1:58 We didn't get to really interject a lot of time with a lot of his books.
2:01 So that's why I have the books in the show notes guys.
2:02 You can go there through the website.
2:04 It's all there in the show notes.
2:05 I'll go over that obviously at the very end.
2:07 But we talk about manhood in the church.
2:09 We talk about how he used, he grew up Catholic and then he ended up,
2:12 you know, while he was in the military becoming an aviator,
2:14 how he became Protestant and what that looks like.
2:16 What his debate with Christopher Hitchens was like, how he prepares for these debates.
2:20 But also we spend a lot of time going into different arguments that atheists and agnostics use
2:25 and how you can be equipped to deal with those arguments.
2:28 Again, we equipment to push back darkness here.
2:29 So it's guys like Frank Turk that will help you with the arguments with the words to say,
2:32 but even better, the questions to ask these people to get to bedrock about their views.
2:37 I talked about his connection with Robbie Zacharias and then we got into a epic, epic.
2:41 What would you say to someone that said segment?
2:42 But guys, I'm not going to keep him from you any longer.
2:45 So without further ado, let's get into it.
2:47 Frank Turk, welcome to Indaunted Life of Man's podcast.
2:51 Thanks, Kyle. Great being with you.
2:52 Hey, we're going to cover a lot of ground and we are going to scrape the edges of that big
2:56 old brain ears in today's podcast. But before we get to that, every time I talk to somebody
3:00 on the podcast, that was a veteran. I like to kind of get a little bit of an idea as to why that
3:05 was because I grew up around a lot of military, but that wasn't the route that I went. I'm kind of,
3:09 you know, a little bit ashamed of that, but it's just the route that I took is the path God had for me.
3:13 But, you know, before we get into your current profession, which is awesome,
3:16 you used to be an aviator in the United States Navy.
3:18 And that's pretty cool. So what drew you to the military and specifically what drew you to being
3:23 an aviator? Well, the first time I took an airplane ride when I was 15, I said, I want to fly.
3:28 And so when I got out of high school, I was always told that the Navy had more planes than the Air
3:34 Force. And at the time, that was true. I don't know if it still is true. But anyway, so I
3:38 decided to go to Naval ROTC. And I went to University of Rochester because the head of the ROTC unit
3:45 there said, if you'd get good grades here, I can get you a scholarship. So I got good grades.
3:50 My first semester got a scholarship. And then I graduated there four years later and went into
3:57 the Navy. I was a navigator on a P3, which is a big ugly turboprop that went out in 100 submarines.
4:02 And did that from 1984 to 1992. So I got out of the Navy after eight years. And Navy, by the way,
4:10 stands for never again volunteer yourself. Never again volunteer yourself. Everybody should know
4:14 that by now. But it does make it very interesting for some of your presentations. There are some
4:19 three points. You use the story of Mikey Mansour diving on a grenade. Obviously, US Navy SEAL that
4:24 has had a tremendous impact on how we do warfare and how we just think of heroism. So we'll certainly
4:29 get into that. But I hate asking broad questions. But for those in our audience that don't know kind
4:33 of who you are and what you do in the broadest way possible. So my audience can get a sense of who
4:37 you are. How did you become a Protestant? Because my understanding is that you grew up Catholic.
4:41 If I'm incorrect on that, please let me know. But how did you become a Protestant? And then I
4:45 guess what drew you to the world of Christian apologetics? Because there's a lot of people that
4:49 just stop at Protestant and they don't go any further. So give us the story.
4:53 Right. Yeah. Good question. Well, I was brought up in New Jersey, which means by law, I had to be
4:58 Catholic. Of course. Catholic or Jewish, one of the two. And but when I went through Catholic high
5:03 school, I just really never knew who Jesus was. And when I was in the Navy and flight school,
5:07 I ran into the son of a Methodist minister. And I always believed in God. I knew there had to be
5:12 a first cause. Right. This stuff just doesn't happen. Right. There was a creation. There's got
5:16 to be a creator out there. I just didn't know who Jesus was. And I had so many questions for
5:20 this guy about Christianity that he finally said, look, you just need to get Josh McDowell books,
5:26 evidence that demands a verdict and more than a carpenter. These are books that give evidence
5:30 that Christianity is true. So I got those books. And when I got out of the Navy in 1992,
5:35 I wound up running into Norman Geisler, who at the time was sort of what we might call the Michael
5:40 Jordan of apologetics. Or maybe I'll update that Tom Brady of apologetics, right? The Steph Curry
5:46 of apologetics, the Tiger Woods. Well, now it's probably something else other than the Tiger. You
5:50 get the idea that the top guy in the field on evidence for the faith. And he was starting a
5:56 seminary here in Charlotte, North Carolina. So my wife and I and our three sons who were age five
6:01 and under at the time moved to Charlotte to attend this seminary back in 1993. And then
6:08 the Dr. Geisler and I began writing together. We wrote a couple of books. One's called
6:12 "Legislating Morality" and the other is called "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist."
6:17 And then I started a ministry in 2006 called cross-examined.org. That's cross-examined with
6:22 the D on the end of it.org. And it's devoted to going mostly to college campuses and high
6:28 schools to present evidence that Christianity is true from our book, "I Don't Have Enough Faith
6:32 to Be an Atheist." So I came to faith through evidence. And that's why I was interested in it
6:37 once I really understood who Jesus was. Yeah. And we're going to spend a whole lot more time
6:41 on that sidebar. You can use Michael Jordan as the example forever because that is the goat
6:47 of all goats. That doesn't need to be updated. That doesn't need to be changed. MJ for life.
6:52 But one thing that I want to talk about, you and I were talking about this off air. I talked about
6:56 this with John Cooper who's a mutual friend of ours and Lisa Childers. I think that there's a different
7:02 argument and there's a different fight than what maybe we saw 10 or 15 years ago. The fight used to
7:09 be seemingly, and you know, you can give me your perspective, between atheists and Christians,
7:14 between this worldview versus that worldview. But now, Frank, I feel like the fight is between
7:20 Bible-believing Christians and woke Christians, right? And so you could call that left right. You
7:26 could call that liberal conservative or progressive conservative. I feel like that's the fight because
7:31 we can't fight a battle against atheism if you look at it that way. If we have a divided front,
7:36 if we have people that don't fundamentally believe the same things. Now, John and Elisa
7:41 tended to agree with me on that particular topic because I feel like that is the battle now.
7:46 Do you feel the same way? Are you running into that? Yeah, I think it's, I think the battle continues
7:51 on all fronts. I think atheism is growing in the sense that there are people, maybe it's not best
7:59 to be known as atheism, but about a third of the people out there, what we call nuns, N-O-N-E-S,
8:05 not N-U-N-S, obviously, people that have no religious affiliation at all. So yes, there are
8:13 there are adamant atheists out there that are claiming all religion is evil and all these these
8:18 claims they make and all religion is false. But then there are other people, as you brought up a point
8:23 out, who are might maybe traditionally have been what we call Christians, but now have drifted left
8:31 in their ideology and their theology. And look, I just, I just have a personal policy. If somebody
8:38 claims to be a Christian and disagrees with Jesus, I say, why are you claiming to be a Christian?
8:43 And you're disagreeing with Jesus. That doesn't appear to make any sense to me. By definition,
8:47 if you're a Christian, you agree with Jesus, right? That's the whole point. But to say, no,
8:52 you know, I don't agree with Jesus on this, that or the other, I don't agree with his apostles,
8:56 stop calling yourself Christians because you're not struggling with weight loss.
9:00 Prolon's five day fasting mimicking diet is a clinically developed nutrition program
9:04 designed to promote fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Developed at USC's longevity
9:09 Institute, it assists the body in entering a fasting like state that helps reset metabolism
9:14 and target visceral fat. In just five days, Prolon offers a science-backed approach to weight loss
9:20 without extreme restriction or guesswork. Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe at
9:25 prolonlife.com/now. I think that's where we've gotten to because I had Ryan Burge on the show,
9:31 we talked about the nuns of America and the rise of the nuns. And one of the three points,
9:35 he didn't really agree with me on this. And he's definitely more left of center in terms of how he
9:38 does thing. And that does kind of tinge the work that he's done is that these squishy Christians,
9:44 so like I was born in Oklahoma. So my dent of being born on this red clay, I'm a Protestant Christian,
9:50 right? Even though there was no requirements on me, there was no expectations on belief or faith
9:55 or any of those types of things. It was just because I was born here. So there's a lot of people
9:59 that are Christians because of something like that, or they're Christians because, you know,
10:03 they got swept up in the emotion at an event and maybe raise their hand or something like that. But
10:08 then their life after that didn't show any fruit. And now we're kind of getting into these arguments
10:12 about Calvinism and, you know, are we seeing the fruits? Because I got to tell you, the more I look
10:18 into Calvinism, the less I feel saved, depending upon the hour, just because it's like, Oh my gosh,
10:22 is my fruit sweet enough? Is it big enough? Is it good enough? But do you feel like that's part
10:27 of the reason that we're seeing is we have this rise of this, you know, emotional movement,
10:32 this raise your hand and say a prayer move. Does that aid in this? Yeah. Yeah, people think that
10:35 if they just get the magic of that one little moment, guys, I did not add that in there.
10:43 He's got his own sound effects. That is the first time I own sound effects, man. If I say
10:47 something good, you're going to get around. I'm going to get around applause. That's all I'm saying.
10:51 Christianity is not about a feeling Christianity is about trusting in what you have good evidence
11:00 to believe is true. So you trust in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead died for you.
11:05 And by trusting in him, you're not only forgiven, you're given his righteousness, but you're trusting
11:10 in an historical event and a person. You're trusting in the person that came to earth, added humanity
11:16 to his deity, lived a perfect life and then died in rose again to vindicate his claim to be God.
11:22 That's what you're doing. And Paul says in Romans chapter 10, he says, if you confess with your mouth
11:28 and believe in your heart that Jesus has been risen from the dead, you will be saved. That's
11:32 how you get your sins forgiven. You're trusting in an historical person who came to earth, died
11:38 in rose again. That's, that's, it's a fact you can check out. It's just not some mystical event.
11:44 All right. It's not that. It's, it's, it's historical. You can look into it.
11:50 So two things. Number one, I immediately need to get sound effects for my own podcast.
11:55 You do. I have what you're doing, man. This is a subpar podcast. If you don't have sound effects,
12:00 in fact, it could be scary. If you get sound effects, Frank, I just need to apologize for not being
12:06 prepared enough for the grandeur of what you're already given to me in our first 10 minutes here.
12:10 But I do want to get to this. So, and people are probably going to get tired of me bringing this
12:13 up and going this route, but talking about reform folks or Calvinist folks, and I don't know where
12:18 you kind of stand on all that. So you can feel free to not be destined to be Calvinist. I was
12:21 telling you. Okay. Well, my question is, is when I've interacted with people that are Calvinists
12:26 or reformed, I will say, Hey, in one sentence, can you tell me how someone can be saved? And I asked
12:31 the guy that question. And I'm going to have him on the show later. So I don't want to put him on
12:34 blast. But I asked him that question. And he launched it. If I'm lying, I'm dying. He launched
12:39 into a 10 minute explanation of systematic theology based on, you know, basically the
12:45 understandings of Christianity by a guy in the 1500s named John Calvin. And I was like,
12:50 dude, you're kind of playing into my point here to where a lot of people are very, very confused
12:55 about whether or not they can actually be saved. And some of that's good, because it's like,
12:59 if you're not actually Christian, if you don't have true faith, it's good to kind of get to bedrock.
13:03 But for me, I was saved if you can use the term now as a 10th grader, because a guest preacher
13:09 came and spoke on a Sunday night at my church. And he was talking about, you know, the rising
13:14 amount of volcanoes and earthquakes. And you better get in now because, well, you know, while
13:18 the getting's good. And I stood up and raised my hand. And I was like, okay, let's get after it.
13:23 But then you hear people like John MacArthur, who I love or Vodie Bockham, who I love saying how,
13:28 like, you can't get saved that way just by raising your hand and saying a prayer. And I'm like,
13:32 Oh, no, did I do it wrong? Is that is that making sense?
13:34 Well, I would ask them, how do you get saved then? Because according to Paul, if you confess with
13:40 your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus has risen from the dead, then you will be saved.
13:45 That's what Romans 10 9 says. So I'm trying to figure out what they would mean if they say,
13:51 well, that's not how you get saved. Well, how do you get saved then? What is what is the the method
13:56 by which you need to go through or the claim you need to go through? Let me make sure I quote the
14:01 verse properly. Here's what it says. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your
14:05 heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved for with for with your heart. You
14:10 it's with your heart that you believe and are justified and with your mouth that you profess
14:14 your faith and are saved. So I don't I don't understand why it's so complicated. Now they may try and
14:18 say, and I'm not here to debate John MacArthur and Vodie Baucom. I just don't think Calvinism is true.
14:23 Okay. And I can I can give you two minutes on it if you want to. Hey, well, go ahead and launch
14:28 into the two minutes and then move on to other stuff as well. I'd like to hear your perspective.
14:32 Okay. Well, first of all, I think that there is election, but it's not election without our free
14:41 will. Let me put it this way. What people think is that if God knows what's going to happen,
14:46 he's causing it to happen. And we don't have free will. That's not the case. You can know
14:52 something's going to happen and not cause it. Like, for example, I'll just give you an illustration.
14:56 Suppose a young woman has a new baby. She brings the baby home from the hospital. She puts the baby
15:01 down for a nap or for or for the night. She knows at some point during the night that baby's going
15:07 to want to wake up and and get fed, right? She knows that. But because her knowing that, does that
15:13 mean she's causing the baby to wake up? No, knowledge does not imply causation. You can
15:19 know something's going to happen with certainty. And that doesn't mean you're causing it. You can
15:24 know tomorrow the sun's going to rise in the east. You can know that, but you're not causing it
15:29 to rise in the east. That's a fallacy in logic. And so people tend to think that if God knows all
15:35 things that we don't have free will, no, he knows what we're going to freely do, but he's not causing
15:40 us to do it. And so when the election part of it is this, when God elected to create this universe,
15:49 he elected the outcome. By definition, since he knows all things, he knows that whatever universe
15:56 he creates, he knows the outcome. He knows you're going to believe and say someone like Richard Dawkins,
16:01 probably the world's most famous atheist would not believe, but he's not causing you to believe,
16:05 and he's not causing Richard Dawkins to not believe. He is just allowing people to freely make their
16:11 choices. Now, you could ask the question, well, why did God create a universe where he knew people
16:15 would go to hell? Well, it's logically possible that God could create a universe where everyone
16:20 would believe, but it might not be actually achievable with free creatures, because by definition,
16:25 if people are free, God can't force them to believe one way or the other, because then they
16:28 wouldn't be free. So what he does is he creates a universe where the maximum number of people
16:34 freely come to know him, and he allows people to make their own choices. And God can still get his
16:40 will done even through people who don't obey him. Like, for example, Richard Dawkins, I just mentioned
16:45 writes a book called the God delusion. Christian picks it up, reads it and goes, oh, I hadn't heard
16:50 that argument before. I guess I got to get some more answers. By reading a book written by an
16:55 atheist, a Christian's getting closer to God, right? So God can get his will done even through
17:01 people who are not trusting in him. God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick,
17:06 and we're all crooked sticks, right? So yes, God predestines us, but yes, we're also free.
17:12 So we're chosen, but free. In fact, my co-author, Dr. Norman Geyser wrote a book.
17:16 Here it is for those watching the, for those watching the YouTube version of this chosen,
17:23 but free. Yes, we are chosen, but yes, we're also free. And to say that we don't have freedom,
17:29 that God does everything and we don't have any free choice. You know the problem with that, Kyle?
17:33 What's that? It makes God be author of evil. Yeah, that's the problem.
17:37 Well, and that's that's the pushback that we get in. I guess here's the thing so that we don't go
17:42 too often to do the weeds on theology. I really appreciate you giving me your perspective on that.
17:46 Part of it is these theological debates are fun that they're good to do kind of inside the
17:52 church. But I got to tell you, I listened to a debate between William Lane Craig and Dr. James White.
18:00 And I got to tell you there, and they were debating Molinism. And about halfway through Frank,
18:04 I didn't even know what the definition of Molinism was. And I'm like, these guys are just going back
18:10 and forth and, you know, making one intellectually snobby point after another and both of them being
18:14 rather smug. And I was like, who's gaining value out of these two brainiacs arguing about this?
18:20 And again, I'm not saying that these things aren't important. What I'm saying is like, when you're
18:23 sharing the gospel with somebody and you pull out this tome of systematic theology and try to beat
18:29 them over the head with it, it's going to maybe be a little bit too complicated. But I feel like
18:32 we're getting into some waters that aren't necessarily the point for today. One of the main things I
18:36 wanted to talk to you about is about manhood in the church, just in general. So at this ministry,
18:41 we equip men to push back darkness. Okay, one of the reasons that we do that is because their
18:46 pastors are not doing so. Their pastors don't have the men in mind when they're creating their
18:51 sermon content. The person who's singing the songs isn't concerned about the men in the crowd whenever
18:56 they're picking out the songs with particular lyrics or singing out a particular key. I don't
18:59 really know much about music, hopefully keys the right word. But it's a concern for me. And the
19:03 reason why we started what we're doing is because around the time I was learning to become a man,
19:07 I was learning to become a Christian. And I felt like the manly men were outside the church doing
19:12 man stuff. And all the godly men were inside the church doing godly stuff and that there was no
19:16 crossover. Now, we could argue whether or not that was actually true, but that was my paradigm.
19:21 And that's the paradigm of a lot of people. I've talked to hundreds of men that agree with that.
19:26 Hundreds of men who hear their pastor talk about lame, God, lame, God, grace, grace,
19:30 never talk about lion of Judah, never talk about truth. They don't want to touch Jesus going in
19:34 and doing premeditated violence on people on the temple. And I feel like a lot of men are being
19:39 pushed away and the church is basically communicating to these men. We're not doing this for you. This
19:43 is not for you. And the men are like, great, I'll go mess around in the garage. I'll hit the golf
19:48 course. You know, I'll hit the shooting range. I'll do something else because you don't want me here.
19:52 What is your read on modern Christianity, Christianity, and specifically how it, you know,
19:58 rejects or accepts manhood and masculinity? Well, I think you're right. The church has been made
20:03 for women. Basically, it is much more fallen love with Jesus type stuff and men are going,
20:09 fall in love with Jesus. What the heck does that even mean? It sounds weird. Yeah, yeah, it sounds
20:13 weird. It's why the church is 65 to maybe 70% women because it does not appeal to men. And I think
20:19 we've bought into the idea that Jesus is some kind of Barney figure, you know, he's just like,
20:24 can't we all get a long boys and girls? When this is the guy that came and said,
20:29 don't don't think I came to bring peace. I came to bring a sword. I came to divide the divide
20:35 people. You're going to have mother divided from daughter, father from son, right? This is what
20:40 my name is going to do. Now, that doesn't mean that God wants us to be divided. He's simply saying
20:47 that my ministry and the person who I am is going to create division. And I always tell people,
20:54 if you think Jesus was a sweet guy who's never said a bad word about anyone, you have not read
21:00 John chapter two, John chapter eight or Matthew chapter 23. For example, John chapter two,
21:06 what does Jesus do? You just referred to it. He makes a whip and he goes and he jacks people up
21:11 in the temple. What sweet and gentle Jesus did this? Yes. Right. And then in John chapter eight,
21:16 he's having an argument with the Pharisees and who were the Pharisees? The Pharisees were the
21:21 politicians of Jesus's day. They were on the Sanhedrin. Some of them were. And the Sanhedrin was the
21:28 Jewish ruling counsel to him to whom Rome delegated much of the day to day lawmaking authority to.
21:36 So these were the people that Jesus went after. They were the religious politicians. Are you
21:42 telling me Jesus got involved in politics? Yes. Absolutely. And he wasn't so nice doing it.
21:47 In fact, in John chapter eight, he's arguing with these religious politicians and right in the middle
21:53 of the congregation and right in the middle of the conversation with him, he says, "Your father is
21:58 the devil." Jesus, you can't say that. That's not very Christ-like. Excuse me, I am Christ. I mean,
22:04 come on. Can you imagine having an argument with somebody and you stop right in the middle and you
22:08 go, "Your father is the devil." Never try that with a sibling, by the way. Anyway, so Jesus is tough.
22:15 And then in Matthew 23, he's going after these same Pharisees, these same politicians. And what
22:21 does he say? "Woe do you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites? You strain out a net and swallow
22:26 a camel. Oh, you look great on the outside. You're whitewashed tombs, but on the inside, you're full
22:30 of dead man's bones. You go a mile to make a convert. And then once you make them a convert,
22:36 you make them twice as much a son of hell as you are. How will you avoid being condemned to hell?"
22:43 And you go, "What? Sweet and gentle Jesus said this." He was not Mr. Rogers, right? He didn't go around
22:51 saying, "This sermon brought to you by the letter E." Jesus was tough. In fact, why did they kill him?
22:58 Two reasons. Number one, he claimed to be God, which was blasphemy to the Jews
23:04 and sedition to the Romans. If you want the two power figures to come after you,
23:09 tell them you're God because that's going to get you stoned by the Jews and executed by the Romans
23:17 because who was God? Well, the emperor was God. And the God figures of Rome. The gods of Rome were
23:23 supposed to be gods, not some guy walking around like Jesus. So he was killed because he claimed
23:30 to be God. And number two, he spoke truth to power, particularly to somebody like Caiaphas,
23:35 who knew that he would be out of a job of Jesus succeeded. In fact, Caiaphas, I think Caiaphas,
23:41 I think Caiaphas had good evidence that Jesus was the Messiah. He knew that Jesus had raised
23:46 Lazarus from the dead. And what does he say right after he raised his Lazarus from the dead?
23:50 What does Caiaphas say? He says, "It's better that one innocent man died than the whole nation
23:56 perish." In other words, Caiaphas said, "It's better for us to murder this guy than us to lose
24:02 our privileged position here at the temple." So Jesus was tough. Don't buy into this
24:08 wimpified sixties hippie version of Jesus. Jesus was a tough guy. That's why he was killed.
24:14 Yeah, he was a rough and tumble Middle Eastern Jew. He didn't look like a Danish guy. He didn't
24:19 look like me. He looked a whole lot closer to Osama bin Laden than he did to either one of us.
24:23 And the thing about it is, I think it's right to look at Jesus appropriately. And I think
24:28 that's one of the things that modern church has done a really, really bad job of. And I don't just
24:31 mean in the artwork or in the expression in the music, which I have a massive, massive issue with
24:34 the music. But it's like, as a man, you don't understand the fullness of Christ unless you
24:38 understand grace and truth. And in this culture, we think of things as 50/50, like, oh, he's 50%
24:43 grace and 50% truth. That makes 100% Jesus. Nope. He was 100% grace, 100% truth in order to be 100%
24:50 Jesus. He was just as much lion of Judah. That's why he's over my shoulder as he was lamb of God.
24:55 And so part, this is one of the things that I would say, and I want to get your opinion on this.
25:00 One of the ways that I think that pastors can change, and one of the ways that I think men like me
25:07 can help change the really christiandom in the West, is to go to their pastors and talk to them
25:13 about some of their concerns about the church not being man friendly enough and to tell their
25:17 pastors, guess what? If you start making this church man friendly, if you start equipping us
25:20 to push back darkness, if you start talking about, you know, cultural topics that people don't like
25:24 to touch like abortion or LGBTQ issues or Black Lives Matter or Marxism or name a thing, I've got your
25:30 back. I know some slings and arrows are going to come your way, but guess what? I've got my I got
25:34 your back. And guess what? There's a dozen dudes in the lobby that have meetings set up with you
25:38 after after mine. And they're all going to tell you the exact same thing. Pastor, we've got your
25:42 back. Let's do this. Like, let's actually physically push back darkness. Let's storm the gates of hell
25:48 as much as we possibly can. I think one of the reasons that pastors are afraid to do that, Kyle,
25:55 is because we bought into the wrong idea that the church is for unbelievers. And that's why
26:02 pastors think, oh, I can't speak on controversial issues because I might offend unbelievers and
26:08 then they won't become Christians. Well, the church was never designed to be for unbelievers.
26:13 I mean, we welcome unbelievers. Don't get me wrong. But we don't preach to the lowest common
26:18 denominator, which are unbelievers. We should be equipping Christians to become disciples.
26:23 And that means you preach the truth regardless of who's in the audience. That's why you're there.
26:29 You're not there to pamper the culture. You're there to transform the culture. And the problem
26:35 is is we have too many people out there that are being influenced more by the culture than we are
26:42 influencing the culture. That's the problem. Oh, they think they also think, oh, you know,
26:46 if I preach on these hard issues, we're going to lose people. You know what you are, right? You're
26:50 going to lose people, but you're going to gain a whole bunch more who are going to be fired up
26:55 and true disciples. You can look at the stats for that. You're going to initially lose some people,
27:00 but they're chaff anyway. They're not true Christians anyway. They don't want to know the truth.
27:05 They want to be cultural Christians. You want the people in there who want to be disciples who
27:10 are going to go to battle for truth and do it in a gracious way. Let's talk about that phrase you
27:15 use or that term, you use true disciples. Okay, let's talk about true disciples because that's one thing.
27:20 I attended one of the largest mega churches in America was the largest mega church in America
27:24 for over 10 years. That's life church here in Edmond or in Oklahoma City, Edmond. That's Craig
27:29 Rochelle. Yeah, they were like one of the first churches to do multi side and they invented
27:34 Churchill line and all that. They've done some great things. You version Bible app, all of this.
27:37 But again, they do the highly production, you know, easy Skittles Church. I come in, listen to your
27:44 concert, listen to your TED talk with a few Bible verses sprinkled on top. And then we're going to
27:48 make you raise your hand now and raise your hand now, except Jesus now. And then you raise your hand
27:53 and they count up the hands and then they put it in their annual report every year about how many
27:56 tens of thousands of people got safe. But one thing the church has done poorly enough talked
28:00 about this publicly. There's no such thing as discipleship at that church. They don't really
28:04 worry about making true disciples. And again, I attended for over 12 years. I did leadership.
28:07 I did volunteerism. I ran some of the men stuff that they were doing there. They basically pawned
28:11 off the discipleship to what they call life groups, which are basically, you know, these home groups
28:16 and things like that. And there's been some issues with the home groups. That's not what we're here
28:19 to talk about today. But there's no discipleship from from any of the folks that are in leadership.
28:24 You might get a book from a pastor. You might say, you know, Hey, you might get a meeting here or
28:28 there. But I find that to be a major, major issue with these enormous churches is it's impossible to
28:34 be known. If something were to happen to you or happen to your family, the church has the resources
28:38 to come around you, but they don't have the knowledge to really even come around you. And again,
28:42 I'm painting with such a broad brush here and a lot of life churches listen to this and I appreciate
28:46 you guys. But gosh, it concerns me that people are quote unquote getting saved that actually aren't
28:51 that, you know, they're checking a box on a welcome card, but they're not actually growing in the
28:55 faith at all. Do you see that? Because I know you get invited to speak at some of these enormous
28:59 churches. So you don't want to, you know, [inaudible] in the pool that you're, you know, using to make
29:02 your business. But it's very concerning to me, Frank. Yeah, it is concerning. It's a hard problem.
29:07 It's not an easy problem. Because once you get, you know, more than say two or three hundred,
29:12 you can't know everybody and you can't really be involved in their lives as a pastor. And then
29:17 you've got to start delegating to other people kind of like Moses did in Exodus. You know, God told
29:21 him to get some judges around him, get some elders around him to teach the people. But remember,
29:26 the goal of the church is to equip the saints to do ministry. And in order to equip the saints
29:32 to do ministry, you have to make those saints disciples, right? Remember Jesus said, go
29:37 therefore make disciples of all nations. He didn't say make believers. And so it is a hard problem.
29:43 I don't, I don't have an answer. I don't have a way. Well, here's how you do it. You know,
29:47 if you're going to use life groups, you better make sure those life group leaders are trained.
29:52 And they are the people that can disciple the people in a small group environment.
29:57 But unfortunately, even that's hard to do. How do you train people? How do you get people
30:02 to know what the pastor knows without them going to seminary and without them being
30:06 folks that have time to study all this? It's a really hard problem.
30:11 And in fact, early churches, as you know, were house churches for a reason. Well, first of all,
30:16 they'd be persecuted if they came out in public. But secondly, in a house church,
30:22 you can get to know everybody and you can live life and really disciple one another. It is
30:27 admittedly hard to do. And I don't know much about Craig. I know they have done some good
30:31 things. As you mentioned, I haven't watched many of his sermons and he's obviously a good speaker.
30:35 But if it doesn't go deeper than any Sunday morning, they're not really making disciples.
30:40 And it is a hard problem. Well, it really is. And again, I was under his leadership and I
30:44 guess two words you could say for, for, I think it was 12 years I attended that church. And again,
30:48 like I'm being critical about someone that's not here to defend themselves. So I know what's
30:51 inherently wrong with that. But you know, it just kind of is what it is. Part of the issue is,
30:55 he's been talked about before, like, why don't you go deeper? Why don't you exegete the scriptures?
30:59 Why don't you like really go a whole lot farther? Why don't why does it seem like you build this
31:03 four week series and then back into the scripture, you know, you know, to make your other life
31:08 points that you're wanting to make? And he said this kind of piffy comment that gets a lot of
31:11 claps from the seals on the crowd, which is basically, as soon as y'all get the easy stuff,
31:15 I'll get into the deep stuff, which is a way of saying I'm never going to get into the deep stuff,
31:20 right? That's kind of the admission there. But I guess the problem is, is it's the church growth
31:24 model, which is modeled off of being a startup. So when you're a startup, everything you do is
31:30 about growth, right? And then you're trying to package it to sell it and all that kind of stuff.
31:33 But everything is about growth. And anything that stunts growth is something that you will
31:37 avoid and something that you will not deal with. And so if you're running this church model where
31:41 it's like, okay, we're going to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. And then we're going to,
31:44 you know, plant another another campus. Otherwise known as, you know, planting another franchise,
31:48 it's just another Arby Arby's or just another Burger King or something like that. You're just
31:52 basically creating this model where everything has this cult of personality under one person,
31:57 could be Craig could be, you know, name another multi site church. And then it just splinters off
32:01 from there. If something happens to that main guy, we don't know what happens to the church.
32:05 I was talking to church leadership. And if Craig got, you know, hit by a bus or attacked by,
32:09 you know, pack of seagulls and got carried off and died, they didn't have a plan for what would
32:13 happen to all of these churches. They wouldn't be able to operate autonomously. And so I kind of
32:18 want to get off that because, you know, it's, it's just kind of one of my own bugaboos. It is a concern
32:22 that I have for the future. And I do want to kind of move right now, Frank, into some other areas.
32:26 And we're just not going to be able to get really into all your books. I'm going to put
32:29 those in the show notes guys, you know, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist and, you know,
32:33 a stealing from God in your new book Hollywood heroes. These books are all fantastic. We're
32:37 not going to give enough attention to those today. You guys have to go and buy them. They're in
32:41 the show notes. Don't be a loser. Buy them, read them, listen to them, whatever you got to do.
32:44 I do want to get into your debate style though, because that is something that I feel like is
32:48 very important as a Christian apologist. They're a Christian apologist that are great at retrieving
32:53 facts when they're speaking in front of a, you know, a nice crowd of nice polite people at a church.
32:58 And then there's those that are dogs that they're going to get out there in a debate with someone
33:01 that hates them and a crowd that's hostile and they get after it. And you yourself did two public
33:06 debates with one of the, you know, four so-called horsemen of new atheism, Christopher Hitchens.
33:12 And so I guess my question for you is, is you're obviously a bombastic guy. You're a smart guy.
33:17 You're a funny guy. But how do you go about preparing for a debate like that with, with somebody that
33:22 Christopher Hitchens, who I don't seem to be, I don't see him as a very impressive person.
33:26 I feel like his accent is why most people thought he was super, duper smart, like just to be honest
33:30 personally. But you know, how do you think those debates went with Christopher Hitchens? You know,
33:35 what was kind of the critical reception and how do you prepare for one of those?
33:38 Yeah. Well, the way you prepare for them is you read what the guy wrote and he had a book called
33:42 "God is not great. How religion poisons everything." So I read his book and that was my first debate
33:48 ever other than the several debates I've had with my wife and I never win any of those. But, you know,
33:54 the first public debate was with Christopher Hitchens. You might as well go big or stay home,
33:57 right? So that was in Richmond back in 2008. Then I debated him again in 2009. I mean,
34:04 I think they went fine. You know, I'll let others decide how they went. You can go to our YouTube
34:12 channel, look for the cross-examined YouTube channel. You can see both those debates. I will
34:18 say this and I think most people would agree with this as you just pointed out, Hitchens is a great,
34:23 is great at rhetoric because he had the British accent, right? He sounded more brilliant than he
34:27 was with the British accent. And he was a writer. He was a journalist. So he's really good at rhetoric.
34:31 So if you listen to a debate with Hitchens or watch a debate with Hitchens, you're going to
34:34 go, I like this guy and I like them. I mean, I like them personally. But if you read a debate
34:39 with Hitchens, if you read the transcript, you're going to go, what the heck is this guy talking
34:44 about? Exactly. It has nothing to do with the topic. In fact, the first debate we had was,
34:47 does God exist? And his opening statement had to do with what a bad person Mother Teresa was.
34:53 And you're going, what does this have to do with what Mother Teresa could have been the best or
34:58 worst person in history? But what does this have to do with whether or not God exists?
35:02 Right. I mean, he was just getting up there and basically saying he didn't like what Christians
35:08 had done in history, to which I responded, you know, Christopher, you're right. A lot of Christians
35:12 have done a lot of evil in history. But if there is no God, none of that was evil. Because if there's
35:18 no standard of good, there's no standard of evil. And if there's no standard of evil,
35:21 then what are you complaining about? You know, you have to steal from God in order to argue against
35:26 Him. You have to steal a standard of good, which is God's nature, to say that Christians have done
35:30 evil. So if Christians have done evil, God exists. If God doesn't exist, they haven't done evil,
35:36 because there's no such thing as good or evil. And so you can watch the debates for yourself,
35:41 but you got to read a lot. You got to be ready. You got to anticipate what he's going to say.
35:46 That's how I get ready for debates. And I've debated about, I've had about 10 public debates,
35:49 a couple with Michael Schurmer. He's another famous skeptic or atheist, and probably several
35:56 others with maybe people you haven't heard of. Well, guys, in the show notes, we'll have a link
36:00 to the cross examine YouTube page so you guys can go and check those out. But it kind of reminds
36:05 me when I listen to some of those debates, Frank, it kind of reminds me of thank you for smoking.
36:09 When the lead character in that movie was talking to his son, and this guy is like a
36:12 lobbyist for big tobacco, right? And you know, he's talking about a debate and he's trying to
36:16 explain to his son, you know, hey, dad, you didn't answer the question that that lady journalists
36:20 asked you, I believe was the scene. And he goes, well, I'm answering the question that I want to answer.
36:25 That's right. Not their question. And so when you hear these people like that scene smart,
36:28 like a hitchens or a Dawkins or, you know, name another famous atheist, they're not actually answering
36:34 the question and they're not going to bedrock. But there was an interesting thing that happened
36:38 recently on Justin Briarley show over in the UK, it was the big conversation. And it was between
36:42 Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins, exactly. And there was an interesting admission there
36:49 to where Dawkins basically admitted that the fine tuning of the universe is perhaps the only
36:56 road to him to believe in some sort of a creator, maybe that would lead into deism or to something
37:02 like that said the same thing that was the best argument that theist had. Yeah, well,
37:05 let's talk about that. Because many atheists that are intellectually consistent and intellectually
37:09 honest, which seemingly there's not many of those, they will actually admit that the fine tuning of
37:14 our universe is probably the best argument for creator God. Is that is that the best argument
37:19 that we can give to atheists as to why belief in God is a reasonable thing?
37:24 Well, there's three that I give. One is the argument from the beginning of the universe,
37:27 known as the cosmological argument. The second is the argument from design known as the teleological
37:32 argument. And that that deals with the fine tuning of the universe and also the design we
37:36 find in living things, the genetic code, for example. And the third is the moral argument,
37:41 because if there's no God, nothing's ultimately right or wrong, everything's just a matter of
37:45 opinion. But we all know say the Nazis were wrong. Well, if the Nazis are wrong, God must
37:50 exist. Why? Because there has to be a standard beyond us and the Nazis, that's God's nature that
37:55 says this is the standard of righteousness and anyone that deviates from that would be wrong or
38:00 would be evil. So those three arguments, the cosmological, teleological and moral arguments
38:05 show that God exists. And I always start with the cosmological. Why? Because if the universe had a
38:11 beginning, if space matter and time had a beginning, which even atheists are admitting,
38:16 then whatever created space matter and time can't be made of space matter and time. In other words,
38:21 the cause must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful to create the universe out of nothing,
38:27 personal in order to choose to create and also intelligent, to have a mind to create. So from
38:32 one argument, Kyle, you get six attributes for what appears to be God, a spaceless, timeless,
38:38 immaterial, powerful, personal, intelligent cause. Now, at this point, you don't know that you don't
38:43 know if this is Jesus or Allah or some other theistic God, right? Or deistic God as Richard Dawkins
38:49 would say, God who just creates the universe and then leaves it. But we've got six arguments
38:53 from one argument. The argument you're talking about is the fine tuning of the universe.
38:57 And let me just give you two quick points on this. Stephen Hawking, who was probably the most
39:03 famous atheist, uh, physicist until he died about five years ago, put it this way with regard to the
39:08 expansion of the universe. He said, if the expansion of the universe was different by one part in a
39:17 thousand million million, a second after the Big Bang, the universe would have collapsed back
39:22 on itself or never developed galaxies. In other words, if the expansion rate was that infinitesimally
39:27 different from the very beginning, none of us would be here. Now, you can't make any evolutionary
39:32 argument or explanation for this. You can't say, well, the expansion rate evolved to this
39:36 point by chance after a certain period of time. Why? Because this is the initial expansion rate.
39:41 This happened at the very beginning of the universe. It was just where it needed to be.
39:45 Seems to me, the same being that created space matter and time is the same being that fine-tuned
39:51 the expansion rate to be precisely what it needed to be at the very beginning. Anything different,
39:56 none of us would be here. One other point that I find very intriguing, and there's about a dozen
40:01 of these aspects about our universe that if you change any one of them, none of us would be here.
40:08 There'd be no universe. If the strong nuclear force was different by one part in 10 to the 40th
40:17 power compared to the gravitational force, if the gravitational force was different
40:22 from the strong nuclear force, by that one in 10 to the 40th power, we wouldn't be here.
40:26 Now, what's one in 10 to the 40th power? That's one part in one with 40 zeros following it. You
40:35 say, well, Frank, I can't get my head around that number. Let me just give you a brief illustration
40:38 to show you the precision of this number. Take the entire North American continent and pile
40:46 dimes on it all the way to the moon. That's over 200,000 miles, right? And do that on a
40:52 billion other North American continents, dimes all the way to the moon. Mark one dime in all those
40:59 piles, red, mix it all in to all those piles, then blindfold your friend, throw them in that
41:05 one huge pile and tell them to pick one dime at random. The chance that he would pick the one
41:12 red dime is one chance in 10 to the 40th power. What are the odds you think he's going to pick
41:17 that? He's not, right? Forget about it. Never going to happen because there are too many dimes
41:25 that aren't marked. There's only one that is. That's one in 10 to the 40th precision,
41:30 which means that if the ratio between the gravitational force and the strong force
41:36 were different by that infinitesimal amount, we wouldn't be here. So there's only two explanations
41:42 for why that value is where it is. It was designed to be there or it wasn't. I always ask people,
41:47 what's more reasonable? Right. And if it wasn't part, you're also positing that something came
41:53 from nothing, that all things came from nothing. And you do a great job in, you know, in all your
41:58 presentations and in your books of really going at that. And that's one thing I guess I like about
42:02 your approach is that you try to get people to bedrock. And that's what I feel like a lot of debates,
42:07 Christians or conservatives or whoever, they're too nice with the other people. And they don't
42:11 hold their feet to the fire. So that's why I like your explanation. Eric Metax has just wrote a book
42:15 called is atheism dead, like a third of the book deals with some of those numbers in terms of
42:19 fine tuning of the universe, because there is not a logical explanation. And again, these people
42:24 will say that we're just, you know, this random coalition of atoms that kind of came together.
42:28 So why would we trust our brain impulses to begin with? And yet they're making these appeals
42:32 to logic and other types of argumentation? I did want to have you engage a little bit with this
42:37 because again, here at undaunted life in order to equipment to push back darkness, we need to make
42:41 sure that we have some of our apologetics knowledge ready to go whenever we're talking with people,
42:46 whether it's at the water cooler or in a debate of ourselves. And so there's a lot of very popular
42:50 arguments I wrote down like 10 of them, but we'll just go through it two or three or so. But I guess
42:54 the big one and you've alluded to it a little bit, but I want to be more explicit is the problem of
42:58 evil. You know, why do bad things happen to good people? So just just kind of give us the 30,000 foot
43:03 flyover. Why do you know how you answer that as a Christian apologist? Well, it doesn't disprove
43:08 God. It actually shows God does exist. You say how so? Because evil presupposes good and good
43:14 presupposes God. You see, evil doesn't exist on its own. Evil exists only as a privation or a lack
43:20 in a good thing. For example, evil is like cancer. If you take all the cancer out of a good body,
43:26 you got a better body, right? What happens if you take all the body out of the cancer?
43:30 You got nothing, right? It doesn't exist on its own. Evil is like rust in a car. If you take all
43:36 the rust out of a car, you got a better car. What happens if you take all the car out of the rust?
43:39 No car. You got a pinto, right? Yeah, it doesn't exist. Okay. So evil only exists as a lack in a good
43:47 thing. So if evil exists, then good exists. But for good to exist, God has to exist. Otherwise,
43:54 it's just your opinion, because the standard of good is God's nature. So evil doesn't disprove
43:59 God. It may prove there's a devil out there, but it can't disprove God because there'd be no such
44:04 thing as evil unless there was good and there'd be no such thing as good unless God existed.
44:08 Now, we cover this in the book, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist stealing from God.
44:12 And a fun way of looking at this problem is to get the book Hollywood Heroes because we talk about
44:17 this in the context of movies. Okay. In fact, one of the, one of the movies Batman versus Superman,
44:24 which a lot of people didn't like. They're like, why is Batman fighting Superman? Well,
44:27 the reason Batman is fighting Superman is because Lex Luthor thinks that Superman is
44:33 the God of his world and he's a bad God. Why? Because Superman didn't stop Lex Luthor's father
44:38 from abusing him as a kid, right? So he's saying, you're a bad God. Well, here's the problem.
44:43 Notice Lex Luthor is mad at that at Superman at God for not stopping Lex Luthor's father from
44:51 abusing Lex Luthor. But you know what Lex Luthor isn't mad about? He's not mad that Superman hasn't
44:56 stopped Lex Luthor from doing evil to other people. Why is that? Why are we always mad at God for
45:03 him not stopping evil that other people are doing? But we never say, God, why don't you stop me from
45:09 doing evil? Why don't you stop me? Okay, we never say that. Where we say, God, why don't you stop him?
45:14 Why don't you stop her? I always ask people, look, if God were to stop evil at midnight tonight,
45:19 would you still be alive at 1201? I wouldn't be, right? Nobody's got a lie evil because he allows
45:24 free will. Why does he allow free will? So we can love without free will, you can't love. The problem
45:29 is with free will, we can also do evil. But what does God do? He redeems evil. What did God ultimately
45:35 do about evil? He took evil upon himself and the person of Christ. And one day he's going to
45:40 quarantine all evil. He's not going to take away free will. He's just going to take all the people
45:45 who want to continue to do evil and put them in a place called hell so they can't interfere
45:49 with the people that want to be with Christ and their loved ones in a place called heaven.
45:55 So evil will ultimately be quarantined. And those that have done evil, which is all of us,
46:02 won't have their sins punished because if we accept what Christ has done, God has taken or
46:09 put the punishment that is due us on him. That's how he can remain just and also justify sinners.
46:16 Absolutely. He goes back to what C.S. Lewis said in mere Christianity, like a world full of automatons
46:20 would not be a world worth creating. There's no love in a world like that. And so, and guys,
46:23 yes, you've got to go out and get I don't have enough faith to be an atheist to get stealing from
46:27 God. And in the new book, just another little commercial for Hollywood heroes, how your favorite
46:31 movies reveal God. If you have a movie, a superhero movie that you like, whether it's Batman versus
46:36 Superman, you know, whether it's, you know, the Spiderman stuff or the Harry Potter's or, you know,
46:40 any of the other, you know, chapters, Iron Man, yeah, Iron Man, any of the other chapters of that
46:44 book, they're all stealing from the story of Jesus, from the story of God. There's so many
46:50 through points and you do a great job in that book, you and your son, you co-wrote that with you,
46:54 one of your sons. And it's a great way for you to do that. So guys, it's an accessible book for
46:58 you as an adult male, it's an accessible book for your teenagers. You can sit down and watch these
47:02 movies, read the chapter together, and then go into some of the deeper level like, Oh, I didn't
47:06 realize that that was part of the theme here. But I think that gets into Frank, one of the other,
47:10 I guess dilemmas that you'll run into when you're arguing with atheists and agnostics when you're
47:15 arguing from the Bible, people will just say that, you know, that the Bible, what's described in the
47:20 Christian Bible, it's just another myth. It's just another mythical story that that was borrowed from
47:25 other mythical stories that even came before the Old Testament and before those types of things.
47:30 And the thing about that, Frank, is for a lot of Christians, that stops them dead in their
47:34 tracks. They're like, yeah, wait a minute, what? There's Egyptian stories that are just like the
47:38 Jesus story. There are other stories, like, how do you deal with an argument like that?
47:43 Well, first of all, there are no stories just like Jesus that came before Jesus. There are,
47:48 in Egypt, there was a story about Osiris, but Osiris wasn't resurrected into this world.
47:56 Osiris became some sort of figure in the netherworld. It wasn't a resurrection story.
48:02 The stories about dying and rising gods predominantly came after Christianity. And one of the things
48:08 that J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings series, convinced C.S. Lewis, who was an
48:14 atheist at the time, is Tolkien said to Lewis, Jack, that's what they call C.S. Lewis, Jack, Jack,
48:21 you're enthralled with these stories, these myths about dying and rising gods. These are
48:28 stories that came after Christianity. But you're not enthralled about reading a dying and rising
48:35 god in the pages of the New Testament. Why is that? Why are you enthralled with these myths
48:40 when the true myth, the thing that really happened, the story that really happened, Jesus
48:47 rising from the dead, you're not enthralled with it all. But, you know, Jack, that really happened.
48:51 And Lewis checked into it and realized, wow, there's historical evidence for this. It did really
48:56 happen. And then he became a Christian and became the top apologist of the 20th century.
49:01 And so Tolkien said, the true myth is Christianity. It really happened. All these other myths made
49:07 point to Christianity, but the true myth really happened. That's why so many of these movies we
49:12 watch, whether it's Captain America, Iron Man, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Batman,
49:18 Wonder Woman, Star Wars, these movies are pointing, at least are partially copied from Christianity.
49:26 And the heroes in these movies point to the ultimate hero, Jesus of Nazareth. In fact,
49:30 if you were to ask, what is the one characteristic that so many of the heroes express in these movies
49:37 that is consistent with Jesus, they all sacrifice. Absolutely. They all sacrifice themselves for the
49:42 greater good. And I think that's one of the great things I heard you talk about in another interview,
49:48 which is like, you know, spoiler alert for anybody that hasn't seen in-game. And I'm not a big,
49:52 you know, Marvel movie person, but you know, Iron Man gives up his life in order to so that the
49:57 world could continue. So he gave up his life so that life could continue. And for him, this is a
50:01 very selfish, kind of playboy billionaire type guy in a real life, you know, I guess a fake version
50:06 of Elon Musk or something like that. And then he ends up getting to a place where he gives himself
50:10 up. So even in that story, it's an incredibly imperfect person that gives himself up and sacrifice,
50:16 which is very different than Jesus, who was a perfect person. But again, as I think you've pointed
50:20 this out, or maybe it was your son, it's just like how lame would that story have been if Iron Man
50:25 had the capability, right, of ending this of, you know, he basically chose, you know, I could give up
50:32 my life to save humanity. But man, I really, really like my life. My wife is smoking hot. I've got
50:36 all these sports cars and all these great helicopters. I can't really do that. That wouldn't have made
50:40 sense to us as an audience would not have bought that. And you know, the movie wouldn't have done
50:44 as well, because it wouldn't have been as enthralling of an ending. It wouldn't have, it would have been
50:48 like, Oh, all this great stuff took her Shindo into a nonsense pile. And so all that does kind of go to
50:53 something that I know you've talked about. And you know, our buddy Jay Warner Wallace has talked
50:57 about in his book, Person of Interest and other things like that, is being able to actually trust
51:02 the Bible. Because whenever you hear someone so like, you know, the biggest podcast host on the
51:06 planet, Joe Rogan, he has said multiple times on his show, man, you can't even like trust the
51:10 Bible. It's been translated so many different times. We have none of the original manuscripts
51:14 and all those different things. He gives way to an incredible level of ignorance on the issue.
51:18 But he's sitting across from somebody that also agrees with him. And there's tens of millions of
51:23 people that listen to his podcast that just take that whole cloth. Like, I guess the Bible can't be
51:27 true because Joe Rogan said so because of all that. And he's not doing it maliciously. He's doing
51:31 that because he's ignorant, because he's uninformed. But how do you deal with that when people talk
51:35 about, Hey, it's been translated so many times. We don't have the original manuscripts. How could
51:39 we know this hasn't just been changed by the Council of Nicaea or something like that?
51:42 Well, the two questions, there's two questions there. How do we know what the original said?
51:46 And then secondly, how do we know the originals telling the truth? All right.
51:50 Now, to the first question, how do we know what the original said? Everybody agrees,
51:54 we know what the original said. Even skeptics like Bart Erman who teaches at UNC Chapel Hill,
51:59 who wrote the book, Miss quoting Jesus, even he admits that by comparing all the manuscript
52:05 evidence that we have, which are nearly 6,000 handwritten Greek manuscripts. And there's like
52:10 another 14,000 from other languages. We know what the original said because we can cross check all
52:16 of those manuscripts and reconstruct the original with more than 99.5% accuracy. And the 0.5% we're
52:23 not exactly sure of has no effect on any theology, right? So we know what the original said. So
52:29 question one, how do we know what the original said? We know what the original said. The more
52:34 interesting question is, did the original tell the truth? That's really, you know, did Jesus really
52:41 rise from the dead? So when Rogan or somebody says, well, the Bible's been translated so many
52:45 times, first of all, translations have nothing to do with it. Okay, translations are going from
52:49 the original Greek or Hebrew into English. You can go back to the original Greek for the new
52:54 Testament and the Hebrew and a little bit of Aramaic for the Old Testament. And you can look
52:59 at those manuscripts and figure out what the original said. So translations have zipped zero
53:03 nada to do anything with whether or not we know what the original said. Okay, translations are just
53:07 at translations into different languages. Okay, but the question, how do we know that the new
53:12 Testament writers told the truth? We go through a lot of evidence in the books that they did. Let
53:16 me just give you a couple of reasons to think they did. And there's about 10 of them in the book.
53:20 One is they put embarrassing stories throughout the text. They never would have invented. I always
53:27 ask audiences. How many people here have ever lied to make yourself look good? And everybody
53:35 raises their hands. And those that don't raise their hands, I say, if you don't have your hand up
53:40 right now, you're lying to make yourself look good. Because we know you've done that, right? You will
53:44 lie to make yourself look good, but you will never lie to embarrass yourself. You will never lie to
53:50 make yourself look bad unless you're a pool shark or something. You know, you get the idea, right?
53:54 You're trying to set somebody up. Most of the time, you will never lie to embarrass yourself.
53:59 That's why historians know that when they're reading something that's embarrassing to the
54:04 author or authors, it's probably true. It probably really happened. And the New Testament writers
54:10 have filled the New Testament with embarrassing details they never would have made up. For example,
54:14 they would never depict themselves as dimwitted. They do that routinely. They would never have run
54:19 away at the crucifixion, right? And have the women be the first witnesses. What man is going to make
54:25 up that he ran away for fear of the Jews, why the women were the brave ones who discovered the
54:30 empty tomb? No man would make that up, right? You would never have the women be the first witnesses
54:36 in that culture because their testimony was not considered on par with that of a man. These are
54:41 not made up. You would never have their leader, Peter denied Christ three times, right? They never
54:47 would have invented this. They never would have called Jesus a drunkard. They never would have
54:52 said Jesus was called demon possessed. They never would have had his feet wiped with the hair of
54:56 a prostitute, which easy could have been seen as a sexual advance. And oh, by the way, they wouldn't
55:00 have two prostitutes in the Messiah's bloodline, Rahab and Tamar. Who would have made this up?
55:06 This is not a made up story. It's too embarrassing, right? So they're telling the truth about those
55:13 things. The second reason I know they're telling the truth is they, many of them went and died for
55:18 it. Who would have died for saying that Jesus had risen from the dead when they had no expectation
55:25 a man would claim to be God that was considered blasphemy to the Jews. And they wouldn't say
55:32 a man rose from the dead. They thought there would be a resurrection at the end of time,
55:35 according to Daniel 12, there would be a resurrection at the end of time, but not in the middle of time.
55:40 So yet here are these Jewish believers in Yahweh who have suddenly changed their worldview
55:44 completely to say a man claimed to be God and rose from the dead and they're willing to die for
55:49 this. Now, who would have done this on a myth? Nobody would have done this on a myth, right?
55:56 Now, you might say, well, Frank, are you telling me that, uh, that martyred improves Christianity?
56:00 If that's the case, don't you have to say that martyred improves Islam? No. Why? There's a big
56:05 difference between the Muslim martyrs of today and the New Testament martyrs of New Testament
56:10 times. The Muslim martyrs of today don't have evidence that Islam is true. They haven't witnessed
56:15 anything. They just taken on faith that Islam is true, but the New Testament writers who were all
56:21 Jewish with the exception of Luke, they're all Jews. They saw Jesus. They touched Jesus. They
56:27 ate with Jesus. They verified he had risen from the dead. You see, many people will die for a lie.
56:32 They think is the truth. Nobody will die for a lie. They know is a lie. And the New Testament
56:37 writers were in a position to know whether it was a lie or not. And they went to their deaths anyway.
56:41 So you can't get better evidence than that unless you were there yourself. Frank, I think that's
56:45 one of the most compelling things that I don't see a good secular answer to, which is why do we not
56:50 have any reports of these people were counting what they claimed as they never did, right?
56:55 And again, like there, there has to be some sort of secular historian that just hated Christians.
57:01 And you know, but was, but was an honest person somehow and said, yeah, there was this one person
57:06 that was a disciple for a little bit. And then whenever it became came time for the gallows or
57:10 for the cross, they decided, no, no, no, no, all this was fake. We don't see that anywhere that is
57:13 such, such compelling evidence. And to be honest with you, Frank, the world is smaller than we've
57:17 ever recognized like we're, we're typically about one degree of separation from everybody.
57:21 We got to get you on the Joe Rogan experience somehow because I'm like losing my mind. I'm like
57:25 pulling my hair out because it's like he goes and says these things have cocked and goes unchecked
57:31 on a lot of these things. And that doesn't mean he's all sudden going to become, you know,
57:34 the next Billy Graham and have this major conversion, but he might, but just I want somebody on that
57:39 show that could actually give that other side. And this kind of does dovetail into what I wanted
57:42 to talk about because for years on my show and everywhere that would listen to me, I would say,
57:47 I wanted that person to be Ravi Zacharias. If we could just give Ravi Zacharias on the Joe Rogan
57:52 experience and have him engage with him, you know, Ravi went on, you know, Ben Shapiro show and
57:57 Ben Shapiro's an Orthodox Jew. And oh, that's such a big deal and all those different things.
58:00 And then obviously everything that we know now about what Ravi was doing while he was still alive
58:05 has come out. And that would have been a disaster area if I had gotten my way. And you obviously had
58:10 an affiliation with Ravi Zacharias. You work directly with him in certain cases. But he's just one
58:15 of a myriad of very prominent pastors that have fallen to some form of sexual sin. So you've got
58:21 Carl Linson, Brian Houston of Hillsong, you got Bill Hybels, you got Ravi, and you just kind of
58:26 fill in the blanks. So talk to me a little bit about your affiliation with Ravi. And you know,
58:30 after after what you learned about him, you know, kind of what that did, how that affected you,
58:34 did it affect your ministry in any way, but then just, you know, more broadly, what about these
58:39 prominent pastors that all these people put their faith in, and then they fall in such,
58:44 you know, direct sexual ways and why that constantly keeps happening.
58:48 I just ask him one question. If somebody plays Beethoven poorly, who do you blame?
58:52 Not Beethoven. Yeah, you don't blame Beethoven. You blame the player. So if somebody plays Christ
58:59 poorly, you don't blame Jesus. Look, you blame the person playing Jesus and we're all fallen.
59:06 We all have feet of clay. We are all at risk for sin. So when you see someone fall,
59:13 don't think that this means Christianity's fault. It doesn't. It's just actually it's
59:19 evidence that Christianity is true. Why? Because if we weren't fallen, we wouldn't even need a
59:22 Savior. Why do we need Jesus? We wouldn't even know what fallen this is. Yeah, that's right.
59:27 That's right. So there are, yes, there are hypocrites. In fact, when I debated Christopher
59:31 Hitchens and, you know, I was saying, you know, Christopher, a lot of what you have in your book
59:35 is true that religious people have done evil things. I agree with that, but you're sort of
59:42 proving our worldview. Why? Because if we hadn't done evil things, we wouldn't need a Savior. We
59:47 wouldn't need Jesus. And I said, look, Christopher, I'm a hypocrite. I can't live up to what Jesus
59:51 told me to live up to. But if I could, I wouldn't need him. And when people tell me, I can't go to
59:56 church, Chris, there's too many hypocrites down there. I always say, come on down, pal. We got room
1:00:00 for one more. We're all hypocrites. We're all fallen. We all need a Savior. Now, I try and live by what
1:00:09 the Billy Graham Manifesto, Modesto Manifesto was. Have you ever heard of that, Kyle? Modesto
1:00:14 Manifesto? I haven't heard that terminology. Is that just kind of how he dealt with women in public?
1:00:19 Yeah. Modesto Manifesto was back in the late 40s. He and his team were in Modesto, California,
1:00:24 and they said, look, there are three things that can get any of us in trouble. And this is true that
1:00:30 Jay Warner, while I was probably told you the same thing, when you had him on the program,
1:00:34 when he finds a dead body, he's a detective, right? He finds a murdered body. He knows that that guy
1:00:40 has been murdered for one of three reasons or a combination of these three, not a thousand reasons,
1:00:44 just one or one or more of these three. There was either a sex issue, a money issue, or a power
1:00:50 issue, sex, money, or power. Those are the three things that can cause people to murder.
1:00:55 There are also the three things that can influence any of us to sin. Why? Because sex,
1:00:59 money, and power are good things, but they're so good that we'll sometimes take shortcuts to get
1:01:04 them. That's what we'll do. We'll take shortcuts to get these things. And so we need to protect
1:01:09 ourselves from being tempted by sex, money, and power, or power. So what the Modesto Manifesto was,
1:01:16 is Billy Graham and his team came together and said, we got to protect ourselves from temptation.
1:01:20 So number one, we are never going to be in the presence of another woman who's not our wives
1:01:25 alone. Okay, we can be in the presence of other women with other people. That's fine. But never
1:01:30 alone in a room with someone who's not our wife, unless it's your mother, you get the idea,
1:01:35 right? Yeah, someone related to you is fine. Okay. So we want to protect ourselves from sexual
1:01:40 temptation. Number two, we are never going to handle the money. Okay. Other people are going to
1:01:45 handle the money. We're not in it for the money. We don't want to be caught with money. Any donations
1:01:51 go right to the ministry. They're not going to us personally. Okay. And number three, a power can
1:01:57 also go to our heads. So we are never going to say so many people were saved. We're going to go with
1:02:02 what the, we might say, this is how many people came forward, but we're never going to exaggerate
1:02:08 those numbers. We're never going to exaggerate the numbers of people that came. We're going to go
1:02:14 with whatever the police said. If the police said there were 10,000 people there, that's what we'll say.
1:02:18 Okay. So we're going to protect ourselves on those three fronts. Now, throughout BGEA,
1:02:24 the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which has been around for probably about 70 years now,
1:02:29 have you ever heard of any sexual money or power scandal? No, haven't. No. Why? Because they try
1:02:34 and live by the Modesto Manifesto with the Lord's help. I think we all need to put those boundaries
1:02:39 around us. Obviously, Robbie didn't do that. Okay. Now I didn't know Robbie very well. And you may
1:02:43 say I've worked directly with him. The only thing that Robbie and I ever did together was I asked him
1:02:48 to put the forward on our book, Stealing from God, which he did. He was gracious enough to do
1:02:53 that. And he and I were once on the stage together answering questions in a Q&A format. That's it.
1:02:59 And so when I, all this stuff came out about Robbie, I was shocked just like anybody else,
1:03:04 but it didn't waver my faith at all. In fact, it just showed me that we're all fallen and we all
1:03:09 need a savior. And it seemed to me that what, what, what got to Robbie said was he thought he was
1:03:14 above reproach. He didn't have to put any of those Modesto Manifesto accountability devices in his
1:03:20 life. He just decided he can handle it and he fell. And of course, any of us could fall.
1:03:25 Absolutely. Those things in your life, though. I think two important lessons. Number one,
1:03:29 you have to put those guardrails in your life for yourself. And the second thing is never put
1:03:32 your faith in a man. And you would include yourself in that. I include myself in that. I was like,
1:03:37 guys, please don't worship on Don to life. A man's podcast. Please don't do that. I'm not that good
1:03:42 like at any of this. And you know, don't worship cross examined or worship Frank Turk. But like,
1:03:47 that's the thing is when you have these people have these attacks of faith, when they realize
1:03:51 that Carl Lynch was a sexual deviant or that Robbie Zacharias was a sexual deviant. It's like,
1:03:56 if you got saved, if you came to faith in Christ at a Robbie Zacharias event and Robbie Zacharias
1:04:01 is an underpinned and crazy center, that doesn't mean that your faith individually is in vain.
1:04:06 Now, Frank, I feel like we could talk for the next like three or four hours, but we both got
1:04:10 stuff to do. So we got to go to the very, very end here. I like to do a segment towards the end
1:04:14 of my show. And I think you're going to be great at it. It's called what would you say
1:04:18 to someone that said? And so I'm going to say that. What would you say to someone that said?
1:04:23 And then I'm going to fill in the blank. But here's the deal. It's lightning round. So you get 30
1:04:27 seconds maximum to give me an answer, regardless of how big or small the topic is. So what would
1:04:32 you say to someone that said? Are you up for it? Go. All right, let's do the first one. What would
1:04:37 you say to someone that said, I can't figure out how to convince my friend to become a Christian?
1:04:41 First thing I'd say is, what do you mean by that? And where is your friend now? Okay, what is he
1:04:47 already believe? Ask him questions. Why do you think that's true? See, when somebody says something,
1:04:53 it's not your job to refute what they say. It's their job to support what they say.
1:04:57 So I would, I would get them my friend, Greg Coker's book tactics, because these are questions you
1:05:02 should ask. What do you mean by that? How'd you come to that conclusion? Why do you think
1:05:06 that atheism's true? Why do you think anything's true? What evidence do you have for that? That's
1:05:11 what I would ask them. The Colombo method tactics is a fantastic book. Right next one here. What
1:05:15 would you say to someone that said? Why does Frank yell so much? Because I'm from New Jersey.
1:05:20 We all knew the answer to that one before you even said, all right, next one here. What would
1:05:24 you say to someone that said, all Jews are going to hell? All people are going to hell if they
1:05:30 haven't accepted Christ. So not all Jews are going to hell because some Jews accept Jesus.
1:05:35 In fact, Paul even says in Romans 11, a disputed passage, all Israel will be saved. Who is all
1:05:40 Israel? I think all Israel are those that put their trust in the Messiah. That's the true Israel.
1:05:45 Okay. So everyone's going to hell without Jesus. Why? Because we're all sinners. So we need a
1:05:50 Savior and He's our Savior. All right. Next rapid fire question here. What would you say to someone
1:05:54 that said? All Catholics are going to hell. You can't say that because, well, first of all,
1:06:02 let's go back to Jews for a second. Some Jews are believing in Jesus so that not all Jews are going
1:06:07 to hell. Some Catholics are believing in Jesus. In fact, a lot of people, I was brought up Catholic.
1:06:11 I know what the Catholic Church is about. I'm not a Catholic now. I'm a Protestant, but I speak
1:06:15 mostly of Protestant churches. And sometimes I get questions from Protestants saying, do you think
1:06:19 Catholics can be saved? And I always say, I even think some Baptists can be saved, right? Because
1:06:24 it's not where you go to church that saves you. It's whether or not you've accepted the free gift
1:06:27 of salvation. Now, some Catholics have accepted that. Many have not. And let me just say this. I've
1:06:33 been to hundreds of masses in my life. And I never, ever heard the gospel at a mass until
1:06:43 my father's funeral. When the priest said, I talked to Frank, he's accepted Jesus as a savior. So he's
1:06:50 on his way to heaven. Wow. That priest understood the gospel. But up to that point, I had never heard
1:06:57 it. Now, again, I'm not saying Catholics can't be saved. But in my experience, I have not seen the
1:07:02 Catholic Church be really clear about the gospel. Well, that's just fodder for our next conversation.
1:07:07 So I'd love to talk more about that. But we got, we got to ask these last few here. So what would
1:07:11 you say to someone that said, a loving God couldn't possibly send anyone to hell?
1:07:15 That's not true. A loving God judges sin. Because if you don't judge sin, you're not loving Mirasov
1:07:24 Wolf, who was a who is now teaches at Yale University. But early on in his life, I think he's from
1:07:30 originally Czechoslovakia or somewhere. He said, I can't believe in a God that would judge people.
1:07:36 But then when he saw the fruits of the, I think he's actually from Serbia, there was a war that
1:07:44 went on where he saw many people murdered and raped. And after that, he said, I can't believe
1:07:48 in a God that wouldn't judge sin. How can you believe in a God that wouldn't right all wrongs?
1:07:54 You have to write all wrongs. That's what justice is. And that's what God does.
1:07:58 Yeah, social justice comes from the idea that you don't believe in cosmic justice. All right,
1:08:02 next one here. What would you say to someone that said, I'm okay with God, but not the church?
1:08:06 I could agree with you because the church is full of sinners. And as I said earlier,
1:08:14 if if someone plays Beethoven poorly, you don't blame Beethoven. Okay. So yes, I think the church
1:08:21 is flawed, but the church is God's organization on earth, the group of believers who are there
1:08:27 to make disciples and to try and make disciples of all nations. So even though it's flawed,
1:08:33 it still is God's means of achieving his kingdom, of bringing more people into his kingdom.
1:08:41 So you shouldn't expect it to be perfect. It's full of flawed people like the rest of us,
1:08:46 but it's still God's way of getting things done here on earth. He gives us the dignity of causality
1:08:50 to actually affect time and eternity through what we do here on earth.
1:08:53 All right, just a few more left. What would you say to someone that said believing in a young earth
1:08:58 is silly? Well, I think Christians, when people ask, you know, how old is the earth,
1:09:03 they always say I'm absolutely convinced it's at least 60 years old. Okay. All right. I throw my
1:09:08 mom in there. It's at least 84. Okay. Christians argue over this. I think the evidence is better
1:09:14 that it's old, but no matter which view you take, you have to make assumptions you can't prove,
1:09:19 like the speed of the light from the stars. If the speed of light hasn't changed the earth appear,
1:09:24 or the universe appears to be 13.8 billion years old. If the speed of light has changed,
1:09:28 by that dating method, we don't know how old the earth is or the universe is,
1:09:31 but is it a good assumption to say the universe or the speed of light hasn't changed? The answer,
1:09:36 yeah, it's probably a good assumption. Why? Because if you change the speed of light,
1:09:39 you got to change all the other laws of physics with it. Right. So the universe appears to be old,
1:09:43 but I don't care how old it is really tell you the truth because you need a creator no matter
1:09:47 how far back you go. And if you want to ask a question about Genesis or what it means, we can,
1:09:51 but well, that's the thing. I think one day in heaven, we'll clink our glasses together and say,
1:09:56 Oh, Johnny was right or oh, Tim. I don't think it really matters. All right. A couple left and
1:10:00 we'll get you out of here. What would you say to someone that said, we can't believe in the
1:10:03 entire Bible because many of the stories have no historical or archaeological evidence supporting
1:10:09 them? Well, you can't prove everything in the Bible. Just like you can't prove anything,
1:10:14 everything in any historical work. You can't prove it. You can't prove that everything in a book
1:10:20 about World War II occurred either. All you can do is go on what the eyewitnesses have said. Okay.
1:10:26 So just because you can't confirm everything with archaeology doesn't mean it didn't happen.
1:10:31 And the reason I believe the entire Bible is true is because Jesus did. And I just have
1:10:35 a personal policy. If somebody dies, first of all, predicts and accomplishes his own
1:10:40 resurrection from the dead, I just trust whatever the guy says because he's validated his claim to
1:10:44 be God. And we have enough historical evidence to know that the things Jesus said about the Bible
1:10:49 really happened. So we're not using the Bible to prove the Bible. We're using the Bible documents,
1:10:55 the New Testament documents as historical documents to see if we have good evidence to believe
1:10:59 that what went on in those documents actually did go on. And I think we have good evidence for
1:11:04 that. That's what we cover and I don't have enough faith to be needed. Hey, we can't even fully prove
1:11:09 beyond a shadow of a doubt that Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon but I don't hear Joe Rogan
1:11:14 talking about how we don't even know if Julius Caesar existed. All right, last question of the day,
1:11:17 what would you say to someone that said, no matter what you say, Frank, I'll never believe in God.
1:11:22 Well, I will say then that's that's a volitional problem, not a head problem. You have a heart
1:11:30 problem, not a head problem. This is why I always ask people, particularly atheists on college
1:11:34 campuses, when they get up to the Q and A mic, if they express any hostility, I'll normally stop
1:11:38 and ask them if Christianity were true, would you become a Christian? And some of them will say no,
1:11:44 and then I'll say, well, why? Why wouldn't you believe something if it were true? That's that's
1:11:50 not reasonable, right? Well, of course, it has nothing to do with reason. It's not a head problem,
1:11:53 it's a heart problem. They don't want it to be true. They don't want God to exist. Why? Because
1:11:57 they want to be God of their own lives. They're not on a truth quest or on a happiness quest and
1:12:01 they're just going to believe whatever they think is going to make them happy. Here's the problem.
1:12:05 You can make yourself happy over the short term doing a lot of fun things, but over the long
1:12:09 term, it's a disaster. And anyone listening to us right now, Kyle, who's over 40 knows what we're
1:12:13 talking about, because many of us have tried it ourselves. Now, you just can't live any way you
1:12:17 want without consequence. If the only way to get true contentment is to go straight through truth,
1:12:22 then Jesus is the truth. So always ask people the question, if Christianity were true, would you
1:12:27 become a Christian? If they hesitate or say no, the problem's not a head problem, it's a hard
1:12:31 problem. And then it's pearls before swine at that point. And also asking that question. And in
1:12:35 addition, say, Hey, if you're wrong, would you want to know? Because some people don't, they love
1:12:41 the blissful ignorance that they live in. But Frank, I got to tell you, this was a great conversation.
1:12:45 I really, really enjoyed it. Guys, go get his books during the show notes. Make sure you subscribe
1:12:49 to YouTube and everything. And we're going to get into all that later. But as for now,
1:12:53 that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:12:55 No, just check out Cross Examined.org. Check out our podcast. I don't have enough faith to be an
1:13:01 atheist. It's once a week, 48 minutes. We also have a TV program, all that you can see across
1:13:07 examined.org. We have an app as well towards in the app store, cross examined. You can see the
1:13:11 TV show streaming layer streaming there that you podcast there. And as you mentioned, those books
1:13:16 you'll put in the show notes. So it'll all be there. Guys, check it out. Pick it up. Frank
1:13:21 Turk. Thank you for coming on Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. Thanks, Kyle. Great being with you.
1:13:25 There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my time with Frank Turk. But before we let you go,
1:13:29 we are going to do a quick resilience boost at Undaunted Life. Our mission is equipping
1:13:32 men to push back darkness with content that for just spiritual mental and physical resilience. So
1:13:36 here are the links I've got for you today. I've got a link to Frank's Cross Examined website.
1:13:40 And that will get you to his blog, his podcast, his YouTube channel and all that. I've got a link
1:13:44 to his Amazon page where you can pick up his books. I've got a link specifically to the Cross Examined
1:13:48 YouTube channel and then a very specific YouTube video. It's called I Don't Have Enough Faith to
1:13:52 be an atheist live from you of Texas. So this was a presentation, I believe he gave in 2021,
1:13:57 which you know, it's like three hours. So he does a bunch of Q&A, but then he gets into a lot of the
1:14:00 higher points of his books. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to the show. We do
1:14:03 appreciate it wherever you're listening to this. Please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive
1:14:06 five star review. If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an
1:14:10 email to info@Undaunted.life. That's iNFO@Undaunted.life. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook
1:14:16 and check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content like
1:14:20 this coming your way. Just go to www.Undaunted.life. And as always, we want to thank the band August
1:14:25 Burns Red for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music on this podcast is our song
1:14:29 Cutting the Ties, which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording of their album Leveler. The links are
1:14:34 in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging
1:14:40 spiritual, mental, and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:15:10 [Music]
Key quotes
2
Frank Turek
If God were to stop evil at midnight tonight, would you still be alive at 12:01?
Kyle Thompson
We need to equip men to push back darkness and have the conversations that matter.
Free Resource
31-Day Resilience Reset
If this episode hit, the next 31 days will be the reset. Free PDF, instant download.
START FREE →
Brotherhood
Apply to Dominion
Six pillars. Application only. The men's program Kyle built around the show.
APPLY NOW →
Dig Deeper
Ask the Archive
"Which episodes cover this topic?" Get answers grounded in all 940+ episodes.
START A CHAT →