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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
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All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast today.
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It is the one and only, Wesley Huff.
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Yes, we got Wesley Huff on the show.
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You guys have been blowing me up.
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Got to give a shout out right from the beginning
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to loop the bear from apology or radio.
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I call it in a favor to him and he got us connected.
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So if you don't know who Wesley Huff is,
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it's because you haven't been listening to my show
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or paying attention to anything that's going on
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in the interwebs, but he is a Christian apologist,
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writer, speaker, and scholar.
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He is the central candidate, director for apologetics,
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Canada, and his specialty is biblical manuscripts
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in Christian theology.
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So he holds a BA in sociology from York University,
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a masters of theology, theological studies
1:00
from Tyndale University.
1:01
And he's currently doing a PhD in New Testament
1:03
at the University of Toronto's Wycliffe College.
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So this guy went mega viral because he had an interaction
1:10
with a supposed expert on ancient peoples
1:12
and ancient civilizations and ancient language, Billy Carson.
1:15
And so he did a debate on a podcast, Billy Carson
1:18
just absolutely looked foolish and Wesley Huff
1:22
just looked like he was very controlled and polite,
1:24
but just absolutely pants, Billy Carson.
1:26
I did a breakdown of this on an episode I did
1:28
of this podcast a month or so ago because that podcast
1:33
led to him going on the Joe Rogan experience, okay?
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And so on this podcast, on this interview today,
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I talked to Wes about, okay, what was it like
1:40
in the Billy Carson thing?
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What was the lead up like?
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What was it like whenever it was happening?
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What about what happened thereafter?
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Like, how did you get reached out to you?
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How did Joe Rogan's team get in touch with you?
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What was it like preparing for the Joe Rogan experience?
1:51
And then you arrive, what's it like once you're in there?
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What did you think Joe was gonna say but he didn't say,
1:55
but he brought this up and you maybe weren't ready for that.
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What about people that said you didn't really give
2:00
an explicit gospel presentation to Joe Rogan?
2:02
What about the people that said that you did?
2:04
So we talked about all the behind the scenes stuff
2:06
of everything he did on the Billy Carson debate
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and with Joe Rogan.
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That's like the first half of this interview.
2:11
Then we start getting specific.
2:12
We talked about something off air he and I talked about
2:15
before this interview, about the theology of the body
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and how for him being an 11 year old
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and becoming a paraplegic at that age,
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but then experiencing a miraculous recovery,
2:24
what that kind of did to his overall thoughts
2:26
about how we should treat our bodies
2:28
and how our bodies are like an act of worship.
2:30
And so we talked specifically about that,
2:32
how that is expressed in culture
2:34
and expressed within Christendom right now.
2:37
Then we got into some of his work
2:38
with Apologetics Canada and his YouTube series,
2:40
"Can I Trust the Bible?"
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Talked about why Egypt's important,
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but then we got into a bunch of different subjects guys.
2:46
How can the Bible be an errant and God breathed,
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but then there also be contradictions and issues
2:52
with translations and textual variants
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and the lack of the original manuscripts
2:56
or autographs or things like that.
2:58
And then we got into some different areas
3:00
about these other people that claim,
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but there were these other first century messianic figures
3:06
that died and then the people claimed
3:08
that they rose for the dead.
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And then also what about all these other ancient stories
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where it's just like, oh, well, this guy had 12 disciples
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and this guy was born of a virgin
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and this guy and all that.
3:17
I really, really enjoyed his answer on that.
3:19
We talked about the differences
3:20
between the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible
3:22
and how that even goes back to the Council of Nicaea.
3:25
Where do we get the Nicene creed?
3:27
What exactly happened in the Council of Nicaea?
3:30
Did Dan Brown really nail it with something like
3:32
the Da Vinci Code or something like that?
3:34
And then towards the end, we talked about different things
3:37
that would make him disbelieve in Christianity.
3:40
Like what would he have to see to where if you were being
3:42
intellectually honest, you would say,
3:43
yeah, I can't really defend that.
3:45
I couldn't really go that route.
3:47
But also, are we in the middle or at the beginning
3:50
of a great awakening, right?
3:51
So we see him on the Joe Rogan experience.
3:53
We see the stuff that Jordan Peterson has talked about
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publicly.
3:56
We see people like Ion Hershey Ali
3:57
and Russell Brand becoming Christians.
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Richard Dawkins saying he's at least culturally a Christian.
4:03
And then he told me about some stuff off here,
4:04
about some people that you would just not believe
4:07
that are going to church right now, right?
4:09
And so that there are probably gonna be people
4:10
in the next few years that you would have never believed
4:12
in a million years would become Christians that actually,
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that's exactly what they're gonna do.
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And you know, some people they are celebrated for coming out
4:18
as a different gender or a different this or that
4:21
or a different, you know, particular sexual persuasion.
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But now we're gonna have people
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that are gonna be coming out as Christians
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and living bold lives for the sake of Christ.
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And these are people that are, you know,
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militantly atheist right now or something like that.
4:32
But we talked about a lot of different subjects today.
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We went way over time, but he was really cool about it.
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He kind of knew we would go over time
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and he kind of planned for that.
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So it's a long one a day buckle up.
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It's one of my favorite conversations
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we've ever done for the show.
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So without further ado, let's get into it.
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Wes Huff, welcome done Dawn to Life of Man's podcast.
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- It's great to be here.
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- Now I just told you off here
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that we're gonna be getting in trouble today.
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But here's the thing, I recognize that background, sir.
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And the last time I saw you in front of that background,
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you were destroying someone's career.
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So is that what you plan on doing today?
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Or are you gonna be well-behaved?
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- I'll try to be as well-behaved as I possibly can,
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but I'm not making any promises.
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- All right, I think that we should be able
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to have a good enough time, but obviously,
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there's a lot of places we could start,
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but we would be remiss if we didn't start out
5:17
with the whole Billy Carson situation.
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So just to give you a little bit of a background,
5:21
'cause I did a full breakdown of yours and his,
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I guess you could call it a debate.
5:25
And then your appearance on Joe Rogan and guys,
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we're gonna be getting into all that.
5:28
But I first became aware of him
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through like random TikTok videos.
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Of course, they're like super produced
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and highly overdone.
5:36
And the thing is, is he sounds very sure of himself
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and very compelling, which is easy to do on TikTok.
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And then last year he goes on the Joe Rogan experience
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and he seemed rather convincing for several hours.
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And he said a lot of things were like, shoot,
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if I was sitting with him,
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I don't know how I would answer that.
5:50
But then you get on and do this debate
5:53
and you're on this podcast, elevating beyond,
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you're given 24 hours notice,
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this wasn't like super formal, and you just pants the guy.
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Like it was just, it was an absolute shellacking.
6:02
Like I've never seen somebody be exposed as a charlatan.
6:06
So like quickly and also categorically,
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but for you, you didn't just become aware of Billy Carson,
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you know, a week or two before that or even the day of,
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you had been aware of this guy and his work for some time
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because you had been making videos about him
6:21
and about some of the things that he was saying publicly.
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So for you, how did you become aware of Billy Carson
6:26
and then we'll work our way to the debate y'all did?
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- Yeah, so the background to that was that
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it couldn't have been more than six months prior
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to my actual interaction with Billy.
6:35
But in and around that time, just before the summer,
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of last year, I was coordinating
6:41
with a friend of mine, Melissa Doherty,
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who is a former new thought, new age individual,
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good friend of mine, she just actually wrote a book
6:49
on kind of her journey in outlining some of the dangers
6:52
of that stuff, Happy Lies, it's called
6:54
for people who are interested in that.
6:55
And we were talking, throwing around this idea
6:58
of doing this video we were gonna do,
7:01
that we were gonna call the gospel according to TikTok
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and do exactly what you just said.
7:06
You know, dig into some of these kind of TikTok-esque videos
7:09
or Instagram reels.
7:11
And so we just came up with a doc where we pulled
7:14
some of these kind of crazier things
7:16
that float around on the internet.
7:17
I don't know if you know this, Kyle,
7:18
but crazy things float around on the internet.
7:20
And so, yeah, I'm aware, we pulled some of these clips
7:24
and in and amongst the kind of mess of these people
7:29
saying these outlandish and ridiculous things
7:31
about the Bible was a number of Billy Carson videos.
7:34
Now, I really had no idea who he was
7:37
and they just kind of sat in that document
7:40
and a few things transpired where we never ended
7:42
up making the video, but then Billy appeared
7:46
on three particularly large podcasts,
7:49
The Joe Rogan Experience, Patrick Beth David
7:52
and Andrew Schultz's Flagrant.
7:54
And in these three podcasts between them,
7:57
he made a number of statements definitively
8:01
about the Bible, church history, Christianity,
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biblical languages that people kept sending me
8:07
because I've been making online nerdy content
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in my area of speciality in terms of biblical manuscripts,
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biblical languages, church history for a while.
8:17
And I had people who were followed me
8:19
and also some friends send me this stuff
8:21
and say, what is this guy talking about?
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And so that's when he kind of got on my radar
8:25
and there was one night where I was having trouble sleeping,
8:28
I just went through some of those clips, I pulled them
8:31
and I wrote out kind of a point form note document
8:36
that outlined, okay, if I were sitting in the room
8:39
with them, here's what I would say to them.
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And then the next day just hopped on, recorded,
8:43
threw it together and posted it on YouTube.
8:46
And then I took those clips and one by one
8:49
edited them up into smaller videos that I put on Instagram
8:54
and that started to gain traction.
8:56
And that's when I really noticed, okay,
8:58
this isn't just another person online.
9:02
This is someone who actually has a really big following.
9:04
I hadn't actually looked at his following
9:06
at that point in time.
9:07
All I knew were these clips that had been sent to me.
9:10
But this was over the summer leading up to the fall,
9:13
which is when I actually got the opportunity
9:16
to talk to Billy himself.
9:18
- And so you get invited to go on this podcast.
9:20
You've talked about this for a while
9:22
and again, my audience is very well aware of this
9:24
'cause I've made them aware of it.
9:25
But you go on this podcast and I really wanna know
9:28
how you were feeling going into it
9:30
because I know how I feel going into a situation like that
9:33
'cause I'm default aggressive.
9:35
So I have to really pull myself back to be like, okay,
9:38
be calm, be winsome, but be forceful and be pointed
9:41
all at the same time, which is sometimes an impossible
9:45
needle for me to thread, I guess you could say.
9:47
But for you going into this conversation,
9:49
were you expecting a fight?
9:51
Were you expecting him to say some of the stuff
9:54
that he's normally said and just not be ready
9:56
for your responses, what were you feeling going into it?
9:58
- That's a good question.
9:59
I don't know if I really went in with any expectations
10:03
other than there were some topics
10:05
that I definitely wanted to address,
10:08
most of which I think we didn't actually address.
10:11
But whatever I went in, whatever expectation
10:15
was floating around my head, what transpired was not that.
10:18
'Cause I think Mr. Confident, if you ever watch his stuff,
10:22
he's very like, yeah, I don't know
10:27
whether another word other than Confident would be it,
10:29
but he speaks very quickly, he kind of throws out words
10:32
and dates and things like that.
10:34
And so I was expecting some pushback,
10:38
or at least any pushback.
10:40
And when there was no pushback,
10:43
that really caught me off guard and then kind of set up
10:48
the rest of the conversation where I realized
10:50
he doesn't actually want to interact,
10:52
he just wants to move on.
10:54
And so I had to pull him back on some topics
10:58
as anyone who's watched the video knows
11:00
there were some technical difficulties
11:01
and there were some things that he said
11:02
that I just didn't even catch 'cause I wasn't aware
11:05
of what was being said.
11:07
But it was a very unusual situation.
11:10
Actually, if you listen to Mark Minard,
11:13
whose podcast it was on, his follow up videos
11:16
from this whole situation, he himself even says,
11:19
and he said this to me afterwards,
11:21
that he too was so surprised,
11:24
and he's kind of gotten some flack,
11:25
which some of it is merited, but I think most of it is not.
11:29
But part of the reason why it sounds like he came
11:31
to Billy's aid during that conversation was
11:33
because what he told me was that he was just so surprised
11:37
that Billy collapsed completely
11:40
and that he felt sorry for Billy to some degree
11:43
in that he just didn't know what was going on
11:46
and he felt like he almost had to come to the aid of his friend
11:49
in that moment, and that the energy in the room
11:52
with him and Billy being there was just very, very strange.
11:56
- Well, you could just tell he folded like cheap laundry,
11:59
like I remember thinking watching it like,
12:01
sometimes in the Jiu Jitsu world,
12:03
you don't really know what your night's gonna be like
12:05
until you first get your hands on somebody
12:08
and I've been trained Jiu Jitsu for a long time.
12:10
And so there are people where it's like,
12:11
as soon as I get my hands on them, I'm like,
12:12
oh my gosh, they might as well be a child,
12:14
like they don't know anything.
12:15
And then there's other times when you grab somebody
12:16
and it's like grabbing a wall made out of granite
12:19
and you're like, oh God, like this is just gonna be terrible.
12:21
And it was like, you didn't really know what to expect,
12:24
but there had to have been a point
12:26
because you did the same thing on Joe Rogan.
12:27
You just can't help, but like the edges of your mouth
12:30
come up just a little bit when you hear something
12:32
where you're just like, oh my gosh,
12:33
he has no idea what he just did.
12:34
Is there a point where you're like, I got him?
12:37
Like not that you were going in there
12:39
to get him necessarily.
12:40
It wasn't like you were trying to come out with Goliath's head,
12:43
but was there a particular point in the debate
12:45
where you're like, nah, this is it,
12:47
I'm about to crush this dude.
12:49
- The moment he started talking about Codexonaticus.
12:52
So the moment he mentioned right off the bat,
12:54
the first question, Billy, why do you deny the crucifixion?
12:58
The moment he said the words the Sinai Bible,
13:01
I knew it was pretty much over
13:03
because that was probably in the grand scheme
13:07
of a lot of the things he says
13:09
that are pretty weak and demonstrably false.
13:12
That's probably the easiest amongst quite a few
13:16
that are very easy to refute,
13:18
but it was the easiest, if for no other reason,
13:21
then not only am I well aware of Codexonaticus,
13:25
the Sinai Bible as he calls it,
13:26
but I have multiple different copies of it in my office.
13:31
And so I happen to have, and had, and currently have,
13:35
the New Testament facsimile of Codexonaticus.
13:38
I have an entire Codexonaticus facsimile,
13:42
it's about 40 pounds, so I don't technically,
13:44
and I don't usually just carry it around with me,
13:47
but I have the New Testament directly behind me.
13:48
So I knew all I have to do is turn around
13:51
and pull this thing off the shelf and ask him,
13:53
where do you want me to look?
13:55
And so it was pretty early on
13:59
when we actually started to interact with one another
14:01
that I knew, so there's a debate tactic
14:05
if you study debate format called leading someone
14:09
down the garden path.
14:10
And that's where you kind of ask leading questions
14:12
in order to get someone to get to a place
14:15
where then you've set up the strategy, like a fight.
14:20
You want to get your opponent into a place
14:26
where it's advantageous for you to then take him down,
14:32
knock him out, or come to a place where it reveals the,
14:41
that his position is illogical,
14:42
or maybe not educated, or something like that.
14:45
I didn't have to do that,
14:47
because Billy's statements do that for themselves.
14:51
And this became pretty evident throughout
14:53
the way that the conversation transpired.
14:56
- Right, so the conversation transpired,
14:58
how it transpired, obviously you guys can watch it,
15:00
we talked about it quite a bit on the show,
15:02
but it seemed like Billy kind of doubled down
15:04
on stupid afterwards, and he had never heard
15:06
of the Streisand effect, because he drew
15:09
more attention to it by trying to get the conversation
15:12
to go away, because Wes, that's how I became aware
15:15
of you, your work, and even this conversation
15:17
that had happened, was because of how he reacted.
15:20
And at this point, obviously, you've talked about
15:22
everyone's talked about it, so he, since you
15:25
was Seasoned to Sis Letter, he sent his buddy,
15:27
the podcast host, a Seasoned to Sis Letter,
15:29
went to his house in the middle of the night
15:30
to try to get this thing not to be released.
15:32
And then you do eventually release the entirety
15:35
of the debate without any interruptions or cuts
15:38
or anything like that on your YouTube channel.
15:40
And then it's like the world started to melt
15:43
around Billy Carson, and the fallout for him
15:47
going one direction, you going the other direction
15:49
was fairly significant.
15:50
So let's talk about the fallout, because obviously,
15:54
you're starting to go viral, clips of that interaction
15:57
are being put all over social media, you start blowing up,
16:01
and then everyone kind of realizes, holy crap,
16:04
it was like everyone got snapped out of the trance
16:06
all at once, that Billy Carson had them in,
16:09
which is like, oh, this guy knows something that I don't know,
16:11
and we're just obsessed with hidden knowledge,
16:13
that's kind of like a thing, there's curse of knowledge,
16:15
and then there's the obsession with hidden knowledge.
16:17
And so let's talk about his basically a media downfall,
16:21
and then you immediately skyrocketing out of the situation.
16:25
- Yeah, it's unfortunate that a lot of what transpired
16:28
was really Billy self sabotaging himself,
16:31
and that was pretty clearly evident.
16:33
So in order to just back up, Billy did not want the thing
16:36
put out, him and Mark went back and forth for a while,
16:39
and part of the catalyst of some things being released
16:42
by Mark himself was that people were accusing me
16:44
of making up the interaction.
16:46
I made a video, I said, when Mark told me,
16:49
I'm going to at least right now for the moment,
16:51
this very early stage, respect Billy's ask,
16:54
and not put the full debate out.
16:57
I said, that's fine, I want to do one thing,
17:01
and then I want to ask you a favor.
17:02
First, I'm going to put out a video,
17:03
and I'm going to say this interaction happened.
17:05
Second, I'm requesting that you send me
17:08
an unedited copy of the conversation.
17:10
And so those two things happened,
17:12
but after I put out my video and said,
17:13
I debated Billy Carson, I had a lot of people accusing me
17:16
of lying, that I'm a nobody from Toronto, Canada.
17:20
Billy Carson is the CEO of Forbin Knowledge.
17:22
He's been on the Joe Rogan experience, you're lying.
17:25
And so I just kind of said, hey, Mark, these,
17:29
I'm not trying to force your hand or anything,
17:32
but I am being accused of dishonesty.
17:34
And so then what Mark did is he put out a response video
17:37
where he said, this thing did happen,
17:39
and he in that video posted some of the things
17:44
in the conversation that happened.
17:46
And then a little bit later on,
17:49
Mark ended up actually posting the debate,
17:52
but for less than, I don't think it was up
17:54
for more than four hours.
17:55
- Right, took it down.
17:57
- And then he took it down, and that's the evening
17:59
that Billy Carson showed up at Mark's house at 2.30
18:02
in the morning.
18:03
And just after that is when Billy did a three-hour live stream
18:10
where he said he was going to expose Mark, myself,
18:15
and the media manager Anton, who brought everything in.
18:20
And that truly dug the hole for him.
18:23
So the Barbra Streisand effect had really taken its course
18:27
in that coming out
18:30
of my actual conversation with Billy Carson,
18:31
I didn't even think it would make that much of a splash.
18:33
I thought, okay, I could probably pull some clips from this,
18:35
but we really didn't get to all that much,
18:38
especially a lot of the stuff that I planned to get to.
18:41
And sure, I held his feet to the fire and he looked foolish,
18:44
but if he had just moved on,
18:47
I don't think that this really would have turned
18:49
into all that much.
18:51
But because he made it a big deal
18:54
by telling everybody he didn't want to put out,
18:56
and then by, like you said, the threatens of lawsuits,
19:01
the sending me a cease and desist letter,
19:03
but I think the icing on the cake was that he did
19:07
a three-hour live stream where he just made things up
19:11
about my supposed criminal activity,
19:14
about people who he'd been in contact with.
19:17
I mean, I live in Toronto, Canada.
19:20
And in this live stream, he had said that his people
19:22
had been in contact with the Vancouver Police Department.
19:26
Now, if you know anything about geography,
19:28
Vancouver is about, like, it's the equivalent of saying,
19:33
Kyle, you're in New York, I'm gonna contact the LAPD.
19:38
- Yeah.
19:39
- And you're like, okay, that's fine.
19:41
I'm not sure what the LAPD will do,
19:44
but I'm pretty far away from that, right?
19:46
So there was just like so many things, which was clear.
19:50
And I think, you know, I wish the best for Billy.
19:55
I truly do, 'cause I think he's in a hole.
19:58
And I think he's been in a hole for a long time.
20:00
He's just allowed himself to not be in situations
20:02
where people who could actually call him on the things
20:05
that he says and does could do to his face.
20:09
But I feel sorry for Billy because he continues to
20:13
exemplify that his level of both research
20:18
and then communicating truthfulness
20:22
are just not just lacking, but actually are dishonest.
20:27
- That's why there are people, Wes,
20:29
that kind of feel bad for Billy in this whole thing.
20:30
I was like, well, he's been doing deeply immoral things
20:34
by basically lying about his knowledge
20:36
and his understanding of things for a long time.
20:39
That darkness has to be exposed.
20:40
You know, in Dawn of Life, we're here to equip men
20:42
to push back darkness.
20:43
Well, you can't do that if you fail to recognize it,
20:46
if you refuse to look at it.
20:47
And so for one of those things, like obviously,
20:49
I would love for him to come to a true
20:51
and abiding faith in Christ and for him to turn his life
20:53
around for him to do all that.
20:54
But what he's doing right now, he's still digging, right?
20:57
You're in the hole, but he stopped digging,
20:59
stopped like you're just making everything worse.
21:01
But as soon as I became aware of this,
21:03
in this whole situation, I can see what's happening to him.
21:05
I can see what's happening to you.
21:06
One of my first thoughts was,
21:08
God, I hope Joe Rogan finds out about this.
21:10
Because I remember listening to the Joe Rogan interview
21:13
with Billy Carson last summer, I think it was summer of 2024.
21:17
And you know, he was just eating it up, right?
21:19
As any of us would, right?
21:21
That's not like a unique thing about Joe Rogan.
21:23
Most of us would just eat up the things that he was saying
21:25
because he sounded authoritative.
21:27
Sure.
21:27
But I remember in the past, Wes,
21:29
I remember this was before Robbie Zacharias died
21:32
before he became known as a, you know, horrible,
21:34
sexual deviant, but I remember working behind the scenes
21:38
trying to get Robbie Zacharias on the Joe Rogan experience
21:41
and just not really being successful.
21:42
And then he died and then it came out that he was,
21:45
you know, the stuff he was involved in.
21:46
I was like, okay, that's probably a good thing.
21:47
I didn't, I was unsuccessful.
21:49
But then, you know, people have talked about William Lang Craig
21:52
going on the show.
21:53
And like, because there are people that are like Christian
21:55
adjacent that have been on the Joe Rogan experience,
21:57
but no one that can give like a full-throated refutation
22:00
of some of the most basic anti-Christian
22:02
or anti-Bible slanders, I guess, that are out there.
22:05
And I was just like, that gummy.
22:07
It'd be really cool if Joe Rogan was made aware of this.
22:09
And then I see you post a picture of you and Joe and Joe's studio.
22:14
And my head melted along with everyone else's head,
22:17
but I'm an eternal pessimist, Wes.
22:19
And so I'm like, all right, they probably didn't even talk.
22:21
He probably just came in for a tour.
22:23
And then you said that y'all talked,
22:24
but then it took a couple of weeks for it to be released.
22:26
And I was like, okay, they're not going to release.
22:28
If something went wrong, like, you know,
22:30
and then it was actually a release.
22:31
We'll get into the actual conversation.
22:33
But when were you made aware that Joe was aware of you
22:37
and what you had been doing
22:38
and how y'all came to even schedule going on his show?
22:43
I had echoes from people who were in and around Joe's community,
22:48
who were contacting other people who I knew.
22:54
So Anton, who's the media manager for Mark,
22:57
who set up the interaction I had with Billy Carson,
22:59
him and I have become pretty good friends since all of this.
23:02
And Anton has been in the media world for a long time.
23:05
In fact, he at one point worked for Billy Carson's media team.
23:08
And so he has these connections.
23:11
And so he knew people who knew Joe Rogan
23:14
and there were whispers that Joe was paying attention.
23:17
And so there were a couple of things
23:23
that had kind of gotten on my radar that made me think,
23:26
'cause I was joking.
23:27
I was actually joking with people in our church
23:29
who, especially going into the new year,
23:31
the Sundays in December, leading up to Christmas,
23:36
people in my church would, you know, joke with me about,
23:38
you know, 2025, you're on Rogan, right, Wes?
23:41
And I would always respond, yeah, right,
23:43
after I talked to Donald Trump.
23:45
Because in my mind, I was like-
23:48
- Is that right? - I'm more likely
23:49
to talk to who was, at that time,
23:52
was most likely gonna be the president of the United States
23:54
and currently is the president of the United States.
23:56
I'm more likely to talk to that person than I am Joe Rogan.
23:58
Like Joe Rogan is pretty untouchable
24:00
in terms of getting in contact with him.
24:04
But in the back of my mind,
24:07
I always had this kind of nagging thing that like,
24:10
things are happening that I think
24:14
I can only chalk up to God laying down those breadcrumbs.
24:18
And so, now my idea, when Joe Rogan DM me on Instagram,
24:23
that really was when I was like, oh my goodness,
24:27
like what is happening here?
24:29
And that, as much as I kind of wondered,
24:35
it would be crazy if this happened,
24:36
but at this point, I feel like it's not off the table
24:39
when it actually did happen.
24:41
It still felt like it was miraculous
24:45
without using too much of a hyperbolic statement.
24:48
So yeah, it was something that I was like,
24:52
following the Billy Carson stuff so much had happened
24:54
in terms of my exposure and the people who were contacting me
24:57
that I thought nothing's off the table at this point.
25:01
But I didn't want to get my hopes up for something like that
25:07
because we're still talking about
25:09
the arguably biggest podcast in the world.
25:12
- Yeah, it's not just the biggest podcast.
25:14
He has his own gravitational pull when it comes to media
25:18
and we'll get more into that here in a second.
25:19
And so, you know, eventually it becomes clear
25:22
that Joe is paying attention.
25:23
He's talking to you directly, you get it scheduled
25:26
and you go to Austin, Texas.
25:28
I'd like to know what your preparation was like
25:30
going into the show because you can tell sometimes
25:33
when people go in there, there are people that go in there
25:35
with notes and laptops and all that
25:36
because they're really trying to make a point and all that.
25:38
And, you know, okay, and then they'll send Jamie
25:40
like an entire like lineup of links and different things.
25:43
And like sometimes it's like, oh, that's appreciated.
25:46
And other times it's like, what is this person doing?
25:48
You can tell Joe sometimes kind of missed by that.
25:50
He's like, can you just talk to me?
25:51
It seems like you're trying to get a point across
25:53
as opposed to just talking to me.
25:54
But you are without a doubt the first legitimate
25:57
Christian apologist that has gone on the show.
26:01
You're in your early 30s.
26:02
You're technically still young in your life and career
26:04
experience and wisdom and all that type of stuff.
26:06
But you know what you're talking about when it comes
26:08
to your areas of study and expertise.
26:11
But going into the show, what was the level of preparation
26:14
like and then take us all the way up to walking in the studio?
26:17
- Yeah, so there was less than a week between the time
26:21
that I was actually contacted in the time
26:23
that I was flying to Austin.
26:24
So it wasn't a long time.
26:25
And it was over, it was between Christmas and New Year's, right?
26:27
So not a slow time of the year.
26:31
So, and technically I was on vacation,
26:33
although none of my Christmas vacation ended up being vacation.
26:36
The preparation going into it, what I did is I went back
26:42
and I tried to figure out where Joe had talked
26:45
about Christianity or the Bible in the previous three years
26:50
and pull up the times where there was repeated statements
26:54
about particular things and how I would interact with them.
26:58
So I kind of mapped out, okay, here are things
27:03
that Joe frequently says about the Bible.
27:05
How would I then navigate a conversation
27:09
that could lead him in a direction
27:11
that would go in a more proactive way?
27:14
How could I interact with some of this, maybe misinformation
27:19
or maybe he's got like a component, right?
27:20
But it's kind of interwoven with a bunch of just things
27:25
that are not true.
27:27
And I mapped all that out and then tried to come up
27:30
with strategies where, so I mean, I'm an off again,
27:34
on again listener of the Joe Rogan experience.
27:36
So I knew there were certain things
27:37
that he was interested in.
27:38
So he's very interested in the Mongols.
27:40
So one of the things I did in terms of interacting
27:43
with early eyewitness testimony is I figured out
27:45
when the earliest biography of Genghis Khan was.
27:48
And then when that was written and when our earliest copy
27:52
that has survived came from and what its kind of level
27:56
of preservation is and then based on that,
28:00
I wrote down a comparative analysis between that
28:04
and what we're dealing with with the gospels.
28:06
To kind of play on what Joe Rogan would be generally interested
28:11
in and speak to him directly in something
28:14
that he could relate to and then relate that
28:18
in a comparative analysis to something like the gospels
28:20
and show, like we can have pretty good confidence
28:23
in the on-goings of the life of Genghis Khan
28:26
based on the biographical material.
28:28
And guess what, we can have even more confidence
28:31
with something like Jesus.
28:32
So I did a similar thing with Marcus Aurelius.
28:34
Now mind you, I didn't talk about any of that
28:36
on the Joe Rogan experience.
28:37
So in one way I was grossly over-prepared
28:42
but I didn't regret doing all of that
28:46
because I think what it did is it is going in,
28:49
it allowed me to have a level of okay, I'm okay.
28:55
Like this is the biggest platform in the world.
28:58
I felt quite a bit of weight in terms of what you just said.
29:01
He hasn't really had a Christian apologist on before.
29:04
He's had Christians, you had Stephen Meyer
29:06
who's a scientist who is a Christian
29:08
who you could call a Christian apologist
29:10
but not in the same way,
29:11
not in the areas of biblical studies,
29:14
church history or theology in that regard.
29:19
And so I kind of felt the weight of representing Christianity
29:22
as much as I was representing me,
29:24
my area of expertise and that kind of stuff.
29:26
And that felt daunting, but the preparation
29:28
and you know, heck of a lot of prayer going into this
29:34
and just saying okay, you know,
29:36
I can try to rely on my own understanding
29:38
but what does scripture say?
29:39
It says don't do that.
29:41
So understanding that I wasn't gonna get everything perfect
29:45
nor did I and the conversation was gonna go
29:48
the way the conversation goes
29:49
and being a Joe Rogan listener,
29:51
I knew that this was going to be a conversation
29:54
and that's exactly what it was, right?
29:56
It kind of meandered, it was non-linear.
29:59
We talked about all sorts of stuff
30:01
that had nothing to do with kind of anything
30:03
that even I have an like area of interest in
30:08
and that's okay.
30:09
And I think that's why something
30:10
like the Joe Rogan experience is as interesting as it is,
30:13
is that it's as much a conversation as it is an interview
30:18
and that's what makes it unique.
30:19
And so the prep was way overboard in terms of
30:24
what I could have done,
30:27
but it's better to be over-prepared
30:28
than it is to be under-prepared.
30:30
- Oh yeah, you'd rather have it not need it
30:32
than need it not have it.
30:32
And so being able to make sure you had those arrows
30:35
in your quiver is a big deal.
30:36
But let's talk about how the conversation itself went
30:40
because I remember being fairly disappointed
30:42
after listening to Stephen Meyer
30:45
and thinking to myself like,
30:46
oh gosh, he just didn't really push
30:48
where I thought he could have pushed.
30:50
I think he kind of, again,
30:52
I don't want to be too presumptuous,
30:53
but I think he kind of got lost in the moment
30:55
just a little bit.
30:57
And, but also I don't,
30:59
I've been in interviews before with atheists
31:01
that I've done these interactions
31:03
one I did with a good buddy of mine named Mike Ritalin
31:05
who is somewhere on the atheist agnostic scale.
31:08
And I remember people that love Christian apologetics,
31:11
they were not happy after my conversation with him
31:13
because they're like, well, when he said this,
31:15
you should have said this because I learned that
31:17
whenever I read this apologetics book
31:19
and why didn't you do that?
31:19
And I'm like, look dude,
31:21
it's me and him in a room having a conversation
31:24
and we just don't happen to have cameras and microphones on.
31:26
And we've had a lot of conversations
31:28
after the cameras and microphones turned off.
31:31
Like this is, yes, I get that you're listening
31:34
and it didn't go your way,
31:35
but hey, how about you build your own platform
31:37
and get invited on the Joe Rogan experience
31:39
or get invited on the microp podcast
31:40
and do it your own self.
31:42
But there was something from the beginning, Wes,
31:45
I was expecting combativeness or dismissiveness
31:48
from Joe Rogan and there just wasn't any of that
31:51
because again, he just kind of hand waves over
31:54
whether or not Jesus of Nazareth was a real person
31:57
from history, which is a very historically ignorant thing
32:00
to say, basically perhaps the most historically ignorant thing
32:03
you could say about antiquity.
32:05
But we just didn't see that from the beginning
32:08
and I don't really recognize anything
32:10
that you did necessarily at the beginning
32:12
to take any of the sting out.
32:14
It just seemed like from the very beginning,
32:16
he was very receptive to what you had done.
32:18
I think it's because he saw how well you handled yourself
32:21
with Billy.
32:22
So did you kind of get that sense and take us through?
32:24
Okay, now we're in the conversation, like we're chat
32:27
and we're going all over the place.
32:28
I'm comfortable, okay, I got my headphones
32:30
on my microphone in front of my face.
32:31
Like how did it feel as the conversation was moving?
32:35
- Oh yeah, I was definitely pleasantly surprised
32:37
at how receptive Joe was.
32:40
I didn't necessarily expect animosity.
32:43
I think I anticipated pushback on certain things
32:46
that I assumed would come up.
32:48
But I, the reception and even just the overall vibe
32:53
that Joe gave, I was greatly encouraged during after
32:59
and then like kind of ruminating on it going forward
33:03
in that there's clearly something going on
33:06
behind the scenes in Joe Rogan's life
33:07
that I think the spirit is doing
33:09
and that not only was he more receptive than I ever
33:13
imagined he would be, but the things that he was saying
33:16
about atheism or broadly, I think were spot on
33:20
in terms of pointing out some of the blind spots
33:22
and inconsistencies and the biases that exist there.
33:25
And I was very, I felt like we were far more
33:29
on the same page than I anticipated going into the conversation.
33:34
And he's clearly grown in the perspectives
33:38
that he's held even, I think a couple of years ago,
33:40
like you said, some of the statements he said
33:42
about the historical Jesus.
33:43
I think he's realized that there are people out there
33:46
who have answers to these questions
33:49
and when he said that he'd watch 20 hours of my content,
33:53
I believed him because of the nature of the conversations
33:55
that we had before, during and after
33:58
in that he had clearly seen, oh, not only are there people
34:03
who look into this stuff, but Wes has looked into this stuff
34:07
and this is relatively persuasive.
34:10
And so there was clearly something going on there
34:15
and I was pleasantly surprised, it was interesting
34:18
'cause I really, as the conversation kind of transpired,
34:21
we talked about all sorts of things
34:22
that I never thought we would talk about.
34:24
And of all the things that have been kind of nitpicked
34:28
by pick a group, atheist, skeptics, Mormons, whatever
34:34
that have made quote unquote response videos online,
34:38
they aren't actually the topics that I thought,
34:40
ah, I'm probably gonna get, you know,
34:44
people are gonna try to get me on this thing.
34:48
It hasn't been that.
34:49
And I think, I think that where the things
34:54
that matter in that conversation matter,
34:57
I think we're really important to say.
35:01
And there was, I mean, you know, I've seen some videos
35:05
that kind of question you did Wes present the gospel.
35:09
And I think, you know, I think I did, albeit,
35:12
like you said, you know, it's so easy to assume
35:17
that you would have done something
35:18
in a particular situation.
35:19
- That's right.
35:20
- And I had, I had, you know, someone who I've been contacting
35:24
with since all of this, who I kind of looked up to
35:28
in academia, who has been in some of these situations
35:31
where you're in a room with someone for three hours.
35:33
And he said, you know, nobody has any idea
35:36
what they would say.
35:37
So if you say, well, I would have done it like this
35:39
if I were Wes, what he said was, no, you wouldn't have.
35:43
You have no idea what you would have said.
35:45
- Right.
35:46
- And I felt a lot of kind of sympathy
35:49
and erring on the side of caution going forward
35:52
in a way that I don't know if I would have had
35:54
to the same degree before this, realizing that
35:59
in those types of conversations, you can be prepared,
36:02
but you really don't know how the conversation is gonna go
36:05
and what you're gonna say exactly.
36:07
And so it's so easy to nitpick
36:12
and assume you would have done a better job.
36:14
- Well, that's a derivative of when people are watching sports
36:18
and they're like, I wouldn't have missed that slap shot.
36:20
I wouldn't have let strike three go by.
36:22
I mean, it's the exact same style and the exact same thing.
36:24
- Yeah, armchair athletics.
36:26
- Oh my gosh, and dude, raise your hand if you've done it.
36:28
Every one of us has done it.
36:30
Like, oh, it'd be different if I had spent my entire life
36:33
dedicated to a single sport and end up in that one moment
36:35
and I would have performed well.
36:37
But the thing was, is the entire time from the moment
36:41
I found out you were going on Joe Rogan,
36:43
to the moment I knew that the episode was released,
36:45
it took me a couple of days to get to it.
36:47
And to be honest, I was a little nervous.
36:48
Like, I was like, 'cause I have to cover this.
36:50
I have to cover this on my show.
36:53
There was, you know, you and I hadn't met yet.
36:55
I clearly didn't realize that you were gonna be watching
36:57
that video and listening to it at some point
36:59
to my breakdown of your talk on Joe Rogan.
37:01
And so I wouldn't have said anything differently, by the way.
37:04
But I was like, oh my gosh, is he gonna share the gospel?
37:06
Oh my gosh, is he gonna share the explicit gospel?
37:08
Oh my gosh, is he just gonna go the way of, you know,
37:11
Dr. Meyer and kind of just meander around it
37:13
and pick at the edges.
37:14
And by the time we got to, oh, is it a three hour
37:17
and five minute mark, I could tell you since,
37:21
this is about to wrap up.
37:23
I've gotta ask him what he thinks about Jesus,
37:26
what he thinks about the true historical Jesus,
37:29
which inherent in the question is that,
37:30
yes, he's a real man that existed, we can move past that.
37:33
And okay, we can only judge the way you asked the question,
37:37
not necessarily how it was received.
37:40
So Joe kind of meandered around, he talked about
37:44
how we're all kind of the son of God in a way
37:46
and how we're all kind of connected.
37:48
It was very avatar, hook your ponytail to a tree type stuff.
37:51
He never really gave an answer.
37:54
But for my money, and I told this to my audience,
37:56
I do think that the explicit gospel was brought to him
37:59
and you kept the door open to a return.
38:03
Because I got some comments,
38:04
and I'm sure you got some comments
38:05
from some of the more fundamentalist, you know,
38:08
mustachioed, hyperkalvinist guys that just wanted you
38:11
to go in there with your Bible open
38:12
and just punch the Bible for three hours and say,
38:14
"Joe, you're depraved, you're a depraved sinner.
38:17
Repent, say Christ is Lord, say Christ is Lord."
38:20
Like that's what they wanted you to become.
38:22
But you were so winsome that you left the door open
38:25
to a return, and also you've already mentioned
38:27
and I do want to ask you the conversations beforehand,
38:30
the conversation during and the conversations after.
38:32
It seems like this isn't gonna be your last appearance
38:35
on the show, so let's talk about the gospel presentation
38:39
that you felt like you gave him.
38:41
And then let's talk about, okay, afterwards,
38:44
what was Joe like?
38:45
Was there discussion of, okay, no, let's really,
38:47
let's get another, let's get an atheist scholar in here,
38:49
whatever that is.
38:50
And then let's have this discussion.
38:51
Hey, let's get you and Jordan Pearson linked ups
38:54
'cause he's a cultural academic Christian,
38:56
but not a Christian in the Christian sense, right?
38:59
What was that like post gospel presentation to Joe?
39:03
- Yeah, well, let me back up and just say like,
39:06
when I asked that question to Joe,
39:07
you're exactly right, in that I knew,
39:10
I couldn't tell how long we'd been talking,
39:12
but I knew I'm like, we're well over two hours
39:14
into this thing.
39:15
I don't want to waste this opportunity.
39:17
And so when I asked Joe that question,
39:19
he kind of gave the answer.
39:20
I was actually pretty pleased with his answer
39:23
in that he didn't expect it.
39:26
And I think that was clear in the way that he answered.
39:28
But the way that he answered was kind of in a Mark chapter eight,
39:32
who do you say that I am way?
39:34
Very, not unlike the apostles.
39:36
When the apostles, when the Jesus is in media disciples,
39:39
answer that question, they also meander.
39:41
Well, some say you're Elijah, some say you're a prophet.
39:45
And I think, of course, Peter then says,
39:51
you are the son of the living God.
39:53
But I actually felt like Joe was like the disciples
39:58
in that moment, in that he is going,
40:02
most likely going through something
40:04
where there are people in his life.
40:05
Well, he articulated that too,
40:07
that the Christians around him make him see this kind of,
40:12
there's this great place Pascal quote where Pascal says
40:17
that people are afraid of religion
40:19
because they are afraid it might be true.
40:21
And so the response to that is to show them
40:24
that religion is not contrary to reason.
40:26
And then show them that it's true and that it's good
40:29
and then make them want to believe it.
40:32
And then back it up with the evidence
40:34
and that they don't just want to believe it,
40:37
but that it's actually based in reality.
40:39
And that's kind of how I felt like Joe is in that
40:41
intermediate period, that he is a seeker
40:45
in sort of the broad general understanding of the word
40:47
and that he is just interested in a whole bunch of stuff.
40:50
But I think at the end of the day,
40:51
he is interested in what is true.
40:54
And that has led him to all sorts of places
40:56
that I think are not the actual path to what is true,
41:01
but are ways that the world kind of points
41:07
in directionally could be true.
41:10
And so he's been through a number of different iterations
41:15
of trying to find that destination.
41:18
And so I was not unhappy with the way
41:21
that he answered the question at all.
41:22
I was actually very encouraged in that day.
41:24
He's clearly wrestling with who that is.
41:28
And then ultimately what it came down to was,
41:31
and this kind of led into my response,
41:33
was a, well, Jesus was such a good person
41:36
and maybe we should just live like he did.
41:38
And I knew that that was insufficient.
41:41
And so trying to remove the kind of pressure
41:46
of Joe being on the hot seat
41:48
and aiming it at other individuals like Tom Holland
41:51
and Douglas Murray and particularly Jordan Peterson.
41:54
In an effort not to put my sights on Jordan Peterson,
41:58
but ultimately because I didn't want in the way
42:01
that I interacted with what Joe said,
42:03
for Joe to feel attacked.
42:05
And so Peterson kind of became a good,
42:11
a good kind of person to deflect that too,
42:16
because I think Peterson does what Joe is articulating,
42:19
but in a far more well-versed and academic way.
42:24
And so going out from that,
42:30
there wasn't actually much conversation afterwards.
42:33
There was, I think, I mean,
42:34
Joe struck me as an incredibly busy guy.
42:38
And so there was kind of a blur after, you know,
42:42
it ended, we were talking for a little bit,
42:43
we took the picture and then I laughed,
42:46
but Joe has been in contact sets
42:48
and there's been an ongoing conversation off and on.
42:53
And I think that I hope, you know,
42:57
there will be a further opportunity
42:58
to go back in the future
43:00
and extrapolate on some of those things.
43:03
And now that him and I have developed some rapport,
43:08
you know, over the conversation that we had,
43:09
that's really what the first two hours was, right?
43:12
Now I tried to talk about Jesus
43:13
as much as I possibly could have in those first two hours
43:15
'cause I really wanted Joe to understand
43:18
that Joe, that Jesus was a historical character.
43:21
He was no less than historical character
43:23
'cause he's so much more than historical character.
43:25
But I think my prayer is that there will be an opportunity
43:30
going forward for that foundation to be built on
43:33
in a much more proactive and concrete way.
43:36
And to show the resources that can encourage Joe Rogan
43:40
not to just conceptually understand
43:44
what historical Christianity in the Bible has always said,
43:47
but come to a place of,
43:49
now this is, this actually means something for my life, right?
43:53
The whole C.S. Lewis, if Christianity is false
43:56
is of no importance and if true is of infinite importance,
43:59
the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
44:00
And so you can be in the position
44:03
of the gray area of moderately important,
44:05
but Jesus doesn't actually give you the grounds
44:08
to be in that place.
44:10
- Hey guys, real quick.
44:11
I know a lot of you guys are really doing everything you can
44:14
to have a consistent workout routine,
44:15
but the problem is, is you work out at a global gym.
44:18
And so there's 17 guys on the bench that you need
44:20
and there's people doing bicep curls on the squat rack
44:22
and the biggest problem is not your schedule.
44:25
It's actually where you're trying to get your work in.
44:27
How about you guys stop making excuses
44:29
and build yourself a home gym?
44:31
And when you do, make sure you use Sorenex.
44:35
So Sorenex is a family owned and operated business
44:37
that builds some of the most impressive workout facilities
44:40
in the entire world.
44:41
They've built gyms for teams in the NFL,
44:44
MLB, NBA, NHL and even the UFC.
44:48
They've also built gyms for some of the biggest
44:50
and most successful collegiate and high school athletic programs
44:52
in the country, but in addition to that,
44:55
they make the highest quality home gym products
44:58
that I've ever seen on the market.
45:00
In my personal home gym, I have the Sorenex Outfitter Rack,
45:04
the heavy version in military green.
45:06
Also, I have some of their center mass bells.
45:08
I've got their Nordic Glute Ham developer
45:10
and their patented landmine attached to my rack.
45:13
So guys, stop fighting the riff-rath at your local gym
45:16
or bench or squat rack or whatever.
45:19
And if you're going to build out a home gym,
45:21
you may as well get one that will last you
45:23
and one that you could even pass down to your kids.
45:26
Begin your build out by going to Sorenex.com,
45:29
that is Sorenex.com, S-O-R-I-N-E-X.com.
45:34
Take control of where and when you work out Sorenex.com.
45:39
- I just had a very similar conversation
45:40
with a good friend of Jordan Peterson's Greg Hurwitz
45:43
who's a number one New York Times best-selling novelist
45:46
and thriller writer.
45:46
And that's kind of what I said.
45:48
It's like Jesus doesn't really give you that middle ground.
45:50
He doesn't give you that middle road.
45:52
And I talk similarly about political things.
45:54
So some of the most divisive cultural topics,
45:57
like say abortion or transgenderism for children
45:59
in those surgeries and those things are.
46:01
I'm like, what precisely is the middle position on these?
46:04
Well, we can only cut off one breast and not the other.
46:06
Is that the middle position?
46:07
Or is it like, this is outright a moral good
46:09
or outright a moral negative, those types of things.
46:12
But let's just generically as we put a bow
46:14
on the Billy Carson stuff and the Joe Rogan stuff.
46:16
And then we're going to get into the stuff
46:17
that you actually get paid to do.
46:19
What has life been like afterwards?
46:20
Because obviously Lot's been made about
46:22
what your Instagram account looked like before Joe
46:25
and after Joe and your YouTube subscriptions before Joe
46:28
and after Joe and all those types of things.
46:30
But even when you and I got connected by Luke
46:33
with Apologia, you know, we were initially trying
46:35
to figure out a way to get this done in person.
46:36
And you were basically like, dude, if 2027
46:39
are you available?
46:40
It's like, you were already busy.
46:42
You were already booked for stuff
46:44
before the Billy Carson debate.
46:46
And now it's just gotten to a preposterous level.
46:48
But give our audience a peek behind the curtain
46:50
as to kind of what has life been like
46:52
since you appeared on Joe Rogan.
46:54
- Yeah, yeah.
46:55
Well, like my calendar for 2025 was full
47:00
before the end of 2024.
47:02
And I had told my wife, I will not add any more traveling dates
47:07
to my 2025 calendar.
47:08
Now she kind of mockingly reminds me of that all the time now
47:12
because that got blown out of the water a long time ago.
47:18
- And it is in a weird place where the ripple effect
47:21
of Rogan is so, so big that it's truly hard
47:26
to understand and weird to say, like, I feel bad.
47:31
I feel bad not talking to you in person.
47:34
I feel bad turning down podcasts that six months ago,
47:38
I would have felt like we're make or break opportunities.
47:41
But it's just you have to understand your limits
47:44
and I live here in Toronto.
47:48
I have three kids.
47:50
My wife is pregnant with our fourth.
47:53
We're gonna have to be moving in the next few months.
47:56
I have responsibilities in the leadership
47:57
as being an active elder in my church.
48:00
I'm trying to finish a PhD dissertation.
48:03
And I already have a number of relatively big projects
48:06
with what I do with apologetics Canada
48:08
as a director, an active director, provincially.
48:11
So there's a lot going on.
48:14
And it's a bit of kind of a weird situation
48:18
in that Billy Carson may blew things up.
48:22
Joe Rogan absolutely, tommically blew things up.
48:26
And yet, things at home are very normal.
48:31
And in terms of like, I still gotta get my kids
48:35
to calm down in the evening, put them to bed.
48:37
I'm still changing diapers.
48:38
Like, you know, clean up the kitchen at the end of the day.
48:42
It's so, it's a weird place to be in when
48:46
I think I had 12,000 YouTube subscribers six months ago.
48:51
You know, when this comes out, I'll probably have half a million.
48:56
I'm like, easily on the trajectory of that.
49:00
And that, those are numbers that you kind of get desensitized to
49:05
because at a certain point, if your Instagram
49:10
is going up by 10,000 a week, it doesn't feel real.
49:15
Like it doesn't, those numbers don't compute.
49:17
So it's a weird place to be in.
49:20
And it definitely has changed a lot.
49:23
But like I said, at the exact same time,
49:26
so much of regular life has not changed.
49:31
And the busyness of, you know, trying to find a place
49:35
to live in the next few months that can accommodate
49:38
for children is the problem I had before all this, right?
49:43
So it's a very weird place to be situated in.
49:49
But at the exact same time, undeniably a God thing.
49:54
There's undeniably that there are none of this
49:59
from the start of just happening to make a couple of response
50:03
videos to Billy Carson, to being able to talk to Billy Carson,
50:05
to Billy Carson, deciding he didn't want that to go out
50:07
to Joe Rogan catching wind of that and inviting me on his podcast.
50:12
I could not have my girl manager orchestrated
50:15
any one of those things on my own.
50:17
So I have to chalk up all of what's transpired
50:23
and the impact that it's had on me, on my family.
50:26
And there have been negatives, but I think I was talking
50:28
to someone we had over at our house last night.
50:31
And the net positive has far outweighed the negative.
50:36
You know, all the response videos online and the critiques
50:39
and getting lost in periods of time where you shouldn't be
50:43
reading the comments and you're reading the comments.
50:45
And and that, you know, the stress of feeling like you're
50:48
turning down opportunities that you feel like you shouldn't turn down.
50:51
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there
50:54
have been hundreds of people who have contacted me
50:57
and the ministry I work for and said I'm completely changed
51:03
in my worldview that I am I was saved.
51:07
I'm reading the Bible.
51:08
I'm going to church.
51:09
I've felt like I have a new lease on life because of learning
51:14
about these things and that there are there are good reasons
51:17
to believe in the Christian worldview.
51:19
And and that far outweighs any of the other things
51:25
in in terms of the negativity that's being thrown around online.
51:28
If it was for one person that would be enough, but it's it's actually
51:32
hundreds of people who are contacting me, which I have no doubt
51:35
means that there are hundreds of people who haven't contacted me.
51:37
I mean, Wes, I mean, praise God from whom all blessings flow.
51:41
I mean, this is again, I think it's a perfect way to describe it.
51:44
Had you been the one orchestrating it, you would not have done it
51:47
the way that you've done it and look at the the positive outcomes
51:50
that it's had and you do seem to still have a grip on reality.
51:53
I don't know if you have a Rolls Royce parked in the driveway,
51:55
but I'm assuming you don't like, you know, you still you're still humble
51:58
about what you've done, but I do think it is important.
52:01
And I know you're just going to kind of shirk this, but it is important
52:03
to congratulate those that do incredible things.
52:06
Wes, you're you're an overnight sensation, but you've been doing
52:09
this for over a decade.
52:10
That's the thing that people don't realize is people like, Oh, you know,
52:13
it's your 15 minutes fame or you're an overnight sensation.
52:15
Yeah, you're an overnight sensation that's been doing this for a very, very
52:18
long time.
52:19
You can port it yourself very well in the interview with Billy Carson
52:22
or the debate with Billy Carson, the interview with Joe Rogan.
52:24
And these are the fruits of your labor and the fruits of God's
52:28
blessing and provision that he's given you in your life.
52:30
Because your conversation with Joe Rogan up to now, and I'm happy
52:34
to be corrected if somebody has a different viewpoint is the biggest
52:38
gospel centered conversation in the history of media by virtue
52:42
of the amount of people that have just listened to Joe Rogan on Apple
52:46
podcast or Spotify, the people that have watched it on Spotify or YouTube,
52:49
the individuals that are clipping it and putting it out everywhere
52:53
else. And it's the biggest conversation.
52:55
And you have people that are wrestling with the truth of the gospel
52:58
and with the gospel message that otherwise would have never done that.
53:01
And so congratulations to you.
53:03
I'm very happy to be in this conversation and to know that
53:06
guys like you were out there and ready to go.
53:08
But we do need to shift gears to some other things that we'd like to
53:11
talk about.
53:11
So there's all the red meat for everybody that went in all the behind
53:14
the scenes stuff, but there was one thing in particular that you did
53:17
talk about with Joe Rogan. And that's at the age of 11.
53:20
You're diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that left you
53:24
as a paraplegic, you were paralyzed, and then you experience
53:28
something that was nothing short of a miracle as it pertained to your
53:32
recovery. And when looking at you, it was almost as if it had never
53:35
happened. So even the doctors were left as gobsmacked, trying to
53:39
understand and explain how this could be something that happened
53:43
and trying to explain away the miracle side.
53:46
But then when you and I were talking, you know, preparing for this
53:48
interview and things like that, you mentioned a phrase, the theology
53:51
of the body. Okay, so a lot of guys, my audience, I talk about
53:53
cultivating physical resilience, obviously fitness is very important
53:56
to me. I think most Christians are not really focusing in that area
54:01
as much. But let's go back to the neurological condition that that
54:06
you suffered and kind of what that changed in terms of your viewpoint
54:09
and the trajectory of you and how you can glorify God in your body.
54:13
Yeah, I definitely felt convicted coming out of that as much as you
54:16
can as a, you know, 11, 12 year old, that God had allowed me to
54:21
experience something where I took advantage of walking into a
54:25
room and not really understanding the profundity of something so
54:31
simple. And going out from that, you know, I had a relatively naive
54:35
faith, but I did feel a conviction that I need to do something with
54:40
this that will communicate a worship centered attitude. Now, I
54:47
don't know if I would have expressed it in that way when I
54:49
was that young, but that's really what kind of looking back was
54:52
what I wanted to do. And so getting involved in athletics and
54:55
track and field and competing competitively throughout high
54:59
school and then going to university and running varsity
55:02
track and field as a sprinter, there was a conviction all the
55:05
way along to make sure that I was stewarding the gifts that God
55:11
had given me physically in order to be able to show that this is
55:16
something that I should care about. And you know, I don't think
55:21
you have to go through something as drastic as a neurological
55:25
condition that leaves you as a paraplegic. I think in terms of
55:28
what you and I are going to extrapolate on is that I think a
55:34
lot of people don't realize how the Christian worldview
55:38
actually views the body in that we are holistic beings where the
55:43
spiritual and the physical is intricately linked in a way that
55:47
I think to divide them is actually to commit ancient
55:50
heresies to say that either the spiritual is good and the
55:54
physical is bad or vice versa. You know, the naturalist says
55:58
that it's only the physical and the spiritual realm is just a
56:01
myth. And we can look at that and say, well, that's wrong. We are
56:06
spiritual beings and inadvertently say things like, well,
56:13
you're not a body that has a spirit, your spirit that has a
56:16
body and not realize that that is an inherently anti-biblical
56:20
thing to say because what is our eternal hope? It's in a
56:23
physical resurrection. Heaven is a layover. It is a place
56:28
between the hope that we have in the final resurrection and our
56:35
intermediary state here in a beautifully a broken world. And
56:40
just because our hope is in a resurrection doesn't mean that
56:43
the thing we have now doesn't matter. Because if you start
56:47
from the very beginning of the Bible, what does it say about
56:49
creation? It says that it's good. It's an and ended off with
56:53
saying that it's very good. Now, the caveat to that is that it's
56:56
a mark by sin. But I think we can often as human beings, and
57:00
especially as human beings, you know, Kyle, you and I living in
57:04
the West, we have just, we have a an availability to treat our
57:10
bodies badly in a way that I don't think has ever existed in
57:13
the world. And that foods that can cause abuse to our physical
57:23
realities, and allow us to out of convenience, not steward that
57:30
which God has given us is just way too easy to get our hands
57:35
on. Or, you know, living a lifestyle that is basically a
57:41
sedentary, you know, that's these are things that I think are
57:45
unique to our particular time and space and dispensation that
57:49
were not in the same sort of vein as the way that they would have
57:53
been articulated in the past. But the ancient Gnostic heresy
57:58
of saying that the spiritual is good and the physical is bad and
58:01
that you essentially just live in a meat prison. And, you know,
58:04
we're all trying to get out of here in terms of having our
58:08
spirit leave this body and go somewhere better. Well, we can,
58:13
we can, like I said before, inadvertently swallow that ancient
58:16
lie and say something about the good creation that God has
58:23
entrusted to us to have dominion over, that is false, and that
58:28
is ultimately saying something not just that is untrue about us,
58:34
but is it untrue about the good that God has created?
58:37
One was, I think there's, there's a lot of things for people
58:41
to be disappointed in as it pertains to Christianity and
58:43
Christendom, but you know, you have divorce rates in the church
58:47
that are very similar to divorce rates that are outside the
58:49
church. You have kids that are absolute messes inside the
58:52
church and kids that are absolutely messes outside the
58:54
church. There's not this huge delineating line. And also, I've
58:57
been very critical of pastors that are just slovenly and lazy
59:02
and overweight and obese. And it's for all those reasons that
59:04
you said, like we're, we're so busy that we're driven to a
59:06
sedentary lifestyle, we're not working the fields, we're
59:08
working in an air conditioned office, we're sitting down all
59:11
day, we're eating foods like some of the poorest among us are the
59:13
ones that are the fattest, like that is a complete upending of
59:17
any type of order that we've seen in terms of hierarchy of
59:20
availability of food and the entirety of human history. But
59:23
it's when you see a pastor that is so sloppy. And yet, they're
59:26
telling someone else, hey, you know, pick your favorite varsity
59:30
sin, they're never going to talk about slothfulness or, or, you
59:34
know, overeating or any of those types of things. And I think
59:36
also, people will put different emphasis on particular
59:39
scriptures where the scripture does not really allow for that
59:42
emphasis. So I think a first Timothy 48, for while bodily
59:45
training is of some value is how they would read it. Godliness is
59:50
of value in every way as it holds promise for the present life
59:53
and also for the life to come. Inherent in that is that it is a
59:57
value, right? But if you are spending the real corollaries, if
1:00:01
you are spending 10 hours a week working on your physical body,
1:00:05
so you can maintain a certain level of body fat and to be able
1:00:08
to see your abs whenever you're walking around outside on the
1:00:10
beach. But you're not spending, you know, at one hour in the
1:00:14
scriptures or praying or taking care of widows or orphans or
1:00:17
any of those types of things. There's a tremendous imbalance. And
1:00:21
so I guess for for ministries like mine or just for ministries in
1:00:25
general, what would your message be for these people that are
1:00:27
just like, I, you know, I'm a Christian. This is a deteriorating
1:00:30
body. Anyway, it really doesn't matter. This is just my meat
1:00:33
prison. You know, I'm gonna have a glorified body someday. So I
1:00:35
need to be doing setups right now. Yeah, I would want to steward
1:00:40
that person in a direction to see how God has created the world
1:00:45
good and that I don't see a disunity between the body that we
1:00:50
have now and the body that we will have in the resurrection in
1:00:55
that it will be glorified. It will be sanctified. It will be
1:00:59
justified in a very profound way. But I don't know if it will be
1:01:04
all that different than the body you have now. Like, I think
1:01:09
that there's something about who God has created you to be
1:01:13
here and now in this reality that will be very true in the next
1:01:17
reality in the resurrection. And I think we need to take that
1:01:20
seriously and how we then take care of our bodies and not think
1:01:26
flippantly about well, it's just going to be all created new
1:01:29
anyways in the same way that I think there's a there's a concept
1:01:34
of creation care that is very similar. We can have an
1:01:37
attitude that you know, this is this whole this whole shtick
1:01:40
is just going to go up in flames anyways. And I think what
1:01:43
that misses is that creation is created for God's glory. I was
1:01:48
talking to someone about this recently when I was, you know,
1:01:50
they were kind of pushing back on this kind of idea of why I
1:01:54
think appropriately, so they were looking at environmental
1:01:57
activism. And they were kind of confusing and conflating that
1:02:00
with something like creation care. And I was saying, you know,
1:02:01
I totally get the over politicization and the imbalance of
1:02:06
something like, like environmental activism. I think
1:02:09
that there's there's a true and a danger in that. However, the
1:02:15
exact same time, my son is obsessed with animals and we're
1:02:19
looking through this animal encyclopedia head and he was
1:02:21
looking at this picture of a blobfish. And he was like, Dad,
1:02:25
why is there a blobfish? And you know, because I think we can
1:02:29
often look at at at creation as as needing to have utility. And
1:02:34
that if it doesn't have utility, then it's it can't be good. And
1:02:37
really, what I said to my son was, the blobfish exists to
1:02:40
glorify God. Even though it has, I cannot eat a blobfish. It is
1:02:44
like, no, it's kind of meat. I'm assuming is pretty lousy. And
1:02:48
it's ugly as all anything, right? So, so why does the blobfish
1:02:53
exist? The blobfish exists because God created it to glorify
1:02:56
himself. And likewise, I hope we look better than a blobfish. I
1:03:01
hope I'm hoping everybody listening is not thinking of
1:03:04
themselves now like a sleeve to a blobfish. But the I think we
1:03:08
can look at ourselves and saying, you know, how do I glorify
1:03:10
God through my intellect? How do I glorify God through my
1:03:15
work? How do I glorify God through my body? How does my body
1:03:21
exemplify to me and to others that I think this world matters
1:03:27
that God created good that God created with purpose and
1:03:29
intention? You know, we talk about that when we talk about
1:03:32
being created in the image of God, and not having extrinsic
1:03:35
value, that that human humans have worth by by nature of them
1:03:41
being human, right? This is why we're we're so tenacious about
1:03:45
the lives of the unborn. This is why we're so tenacious about
1:03:47
something like euthanasia. And because ultimately what those
1:03:51
two kind of ideological perspectives hold is that if you
1:03:55
are unwanted, you therefore don't actually have any value and
1:03:59
you should just be eliminated. Anyways, yeah, but we can give
1:04:03
into that line with ourselves in saying that, you know, well, I
1:04:08
don't really have to care about my body because the you like I
1:04:14
don't need to work on a farm. I don't need to run a hundred
1:04:19
meters in nine seconds. I don't need to dunk a basketball. I
1:04:23
need to sit in a chair. And I need to type. And I think that
1:04:28
that ultimately says something about the holistic nature of
1:04:33
our lives as worshipful beings that is saying something that is
1:04:39
untrue about how our existence is intrinsically beautiful. And
1:04:45
yet that intrinsic nature should then be an outpouring in the
1:04:51
way that we live, in the things that we say, in the attitudes
1:04:56
that we have. And I think ultimately the encouragement and
1:04:59
the conviction should be in how we steward ourselves to want to
1:05:03
live a life that is healthy, and that allows us to be the best
1:05:10
we can be, not just in our workplace, but in longevity of
1:05:15
living, in being able to care for those around us, and in in just
1:05:20
being able to have the energy and the vitality to live on a daily
1:05:26
basis. I think there's an inherent theological conviction
1:05:31
that we should feel in all those things, not to, you know, harp
1:05:34
on someone who genuinely struggles with weight because of
1:05:37
say, a disease or something like that. But in that person, you
1:05:42
also want them to be healthy. And health might look different
1:05:47
for them in that regard. But being overweight because of just
1:05:53
poor diet and exercise. Well, that is, that's not ultimately
1:05:59
living a life that is exemplifying something about the
1:06:03
goodness of creation in a way that I think should convince
1:06:06
can convict us, ultimately, about what it means to be an image
1:06:12
bearer of God.
1:06:13
I think you're spot on here. I've talked about so many
1:06:16
different times, like you walk around and you look sloppy and
1:06:19
slovenly. That's a reflection on your creator. If you make
1:06:22
terrible art, right? So I think Christian should make the best
1:06:25
music, the best paintings, because you should understand the
1:06:27
beauty of creation, because you understand where it comes
1:06:29
from. So I don't, I don't give people passes like, oh, I'm
1:06:33
supposed to like this terrible corny movie, just because it was
1:06:35
made by a Christian, you know, Christian group, even though most
1:06:39
of the people working on the film, most people in the set aren't
1:06:41
Christians, I'm just supposed to like it just because of this
1:06:43
musical and the Christian radio that it just absolutely drives
1:06:45
me and saying, I'm supposed to like it just because it's
1:06:47
Christian, like I don't really buy that. And Wes, I remember
1:06:49
talking to a buddy of mine, because he was overweight and not
1:06:52
taking care of himself. And he's like, Oh, man, I'm just I'm
1:06:54
just too busy with, you know, the family and the kids and the
1:06:57
business and all that. I was like, Okay, so you're deleting 10
1:06:59
years off the end of your life, all things being equal and you
1:07:02
not getting like attacked by a pack of wolves. Oh, and you're
1:07:04
deleting your ability to be have any vitality later in life and
1:07:07
you're blaming it on your family right now. I was like, you're
1:07:10
gonna have to excuse me because I don't really accept that. I
1:07:13
don't think that's a good idea because we need to have an
1:07:14
inside out view of how our bodies are. Because we inherently
1:07:17
know we shouldn't be violent tennis and people. We shouldn't
1:07:20
you know, kill babies in the womb. We shouldn't we shouldn't
1:07:24
have sex with people that we're not married to we shouldn't
1:07:27
support euthanasia. But when you don't care about your
1:07:29
personal body, it makes me not believe you when you give me
1:07:32
dictates about what other people should do with theirs, right?
1:07:35
Or what we should do as it pertains to those other
1:07:39
people's and their bodies. And so I appreciate your thoughts on
1:07:42
that. I mean, I feel like we could have filled up an hour and
1:07:44
a half just by talking about that. But I do want to get into
1:07:47
some other stuff because obviously with your work, you are an
1:07:50
expert in a lot of different areas. You're gonna be getting
1:07:53
your PhD here soon. But you do have a two part series that is
1:07:56
going to be expanded in the future on your YouTube channel
1:07:58
called can I trust the Bible you're doing that? Actually, it's
1:08:00
with the apologetics Canada, YouTube channel. And so this is
1:08:04
you and a partner going around different places, Egypt, you
1:08:07
really kind of explained the importance of Egypt to our
1:08:10
understanding of how we got the Bible in modernity. But I'm
1:08:12
going to go right into some common objections, because this
1:08:16
this episode guys, if you're here still listening an hour in
1:08:19
there should be some practical nuggets and takeaways. Because
1:08:22
there are some things that are hard for people to give in a
1:08:25
polygia for to give an answer for whenever an objection does
1:08:28
come up. And one of those comes in the relationship between
1:08:32
inerrancy and the God breed nature of scripture, along with
1:08:37
textual variants and translation issues. And so there are people
1:08:41
that are like, wait a minute, how can there be so many different
1:08:44
variants of the text and variants of points of view, even on
1:08:48
singular events like the resurrection, and it all be in
1:08:52
the air. And because if I said, Oh, yeah, I saw two people
1:08:54
there, and you said I saw three, we both can't be right. We have
1:08:57
different perspectives, but we both can't be right. One of us
1:09:00
is in error. And so that is kind of a decently broad place to
1:09:04
start. And we can we can maybe go go fairly deep down the rabbit
1:09:08
hole in any of these that you find interesting. But let's talk
1:09:10
about that relationship between the God breed and errancy of
1:09:13
scripture, but then textual variants and any translation
1:09:17
issues that we've experienced in history.
1:09:20
Yeah, I think ultimately when we're talking about the
1:09:21
theological perspectives as something like inspiration or
1:09:24
inerrancy or infallibility, what we're talking about is that
1:09:28
which God originally gave to the authors of scripture. And so
1:09:32
there's a separate conversation about did God allow and inspire
1:09:37
Paul to write the book of Romans and the copies that then
1:09:40
happened over the last two millennia. And do the does the
1:09:44
fact that we have error ridden copies error in the sense of
1:09:48
scribal mistakes, not air in the sense of like factual errors
1:09:51
about history. But scribal mistakes does that then compromise
1:09:57
the doctrine of inspiration. And I would say no, it doesn't
1:10:01
because inspiration. And if we're like ascribing two things
1:10:05
like inerrancy and infallibility, have to do with that, which is
1:10:09
what is sometimes called the original autograph. And this
1:10:12
is also a kind of a useful caveat in that I think a lot of
1:10:15
people will hear that and they'll say, well, okay, but we don't
1:10:17
have the original autograph. We don't have the original that
1:10:19
say, Paul wrote to the church in Rome. And I would say what that
1:10:25
ultimately misses is that the autograph is the text. It's not
1:10:29
necessarily the piece of papyrus or the piece of leather that
1:10:31
Paul wrote on. And although we do not have that original material,
1:10:36
we 100% have that original text. And so in a very concrete way,
1:10:41
when scholars talk about the autograph, they're not
1:10:44
necessarily talking about the physical artifact. Although a lot
1:10:48
of people make that accusation. Well, it's irrelevant to talk
1:10:51
about the original being inspired because you don't have the
1:10:53
original. And I would say no, we do. We do have the original. And
1:10:57
it's because of those copies that we know we have the original.
1:11:00
And ironically, it's because of the mistakes in the copies,
1:11:05
those textual variants, those textual mistakes that copy us
1:11:09
and scribes make that we know we have the original. And this is
1:11:13
what we go into in episode two of the kind of trust the Bible
1:11:15
series, in that we have such a diverse manuscript tradition of
1:11:22
particularly the biblical New Testament, that the Christians
1:11:25
were very eager for people within the ancient world to have
1:11:29
say copies of the gospels. And so they if you wanted a copy of
1:11:34
the gospel of Matthew, they were not going to ask for your
1:11:37
scribal qualifications, you know, your diploma, your CV, your
1:11:41
resume, to then copy it. And in fact, we know we have copies
1:11:45
that were written by people who couldn't even read because they
1:11:48
make mistakes that if you could read you wouldn't make, but that
1:11:50
you can see this person didn't know they were copying like what
1:11:54
the letters looked like, but they didn't add they couldn't
1:11:56
actually read them. And so you make different mistakes in that
1:11:59
regard. But what this resulted in is two things. First, it meant
1:12:03
that Christianity went very far, very fast, because Christians
1:12:08
were tenacious to be able to get the text out. So within a
1:12:11
couple of, you know, within decades, and then a first couple of
1:12:14
centuries, you have the Christian message and the gospels and
1:12:18
the epistles and large sections of the Old Testament going out as
1:12:23
far as Asia and the British Isles all over North Africa, the
1:12:26
Middle East, like it goes really far, really fast. And what
1:12:29
that means is that no one single group or person could have
1:12:33
controlled the text of scripture at any one single point in time. So
1:12:38
an accusation of wholesale corruption, say, like in the
1:12:41
da Vinci Code, when it says that at the Council of Nicene 325,
1:12:45
that Constantine inserted the divinity of Christ. Well, if
1:12:49
Constantine had wanted to do that, which he definitely did not, if
1:12:54
he wanted to do that, he would have had to have go gone and find
1:12:59
copies in the British Isles that, right, you know, were, you
1:13:04
know, walled up in someone's house, or copies that were buried
1:13:08
in the sands of Egypt, and corrected them and then put them
1:13:12
back. Is that what I think is happening? Well, no, that's
1:13:15
impossible. And when we do see these mistakes, the vast, vast
1:13:21
majority of which have no impact on the meaning of the text, and
1:13:24
actually have no impact on the translation. You know, if most
1:13:29
of these are things like spelling errors or word order changes
1:13:32
that when you translate them from something like Greek to
1:13:35
English, it means the same thing. If I spell Kyle with two
1:13:40
L's or one L, we can still figure out his Kyle, right? And
1:13:45
these differences, because we have such a diverse manuscript
1:13:49
tradition, tend to be geographically located. So we can
1:13:53
see when they happen, and why they happen, and where they
1:13:57
happen. And because of this, we can compare the manuscripts. And
1:14:03
that allows us to then say, okay, well, the this is obviously
1:14:07
the stuff that's been added or the stuff that's been affected. So
1:14:10
what does that leave us with? Well, that leaves us with an
1:14:13
incredible degree of confidence to be able to trace what the
1:14:16
original authors wrote. And so in the Can I Trust the Bible series
1:14:19
in episode two, the text of the Bible, I give the analogy, which
1:14:23
I'm actually I've borrowed from a scholar named Rob Bowman, where
1:14:26
he uses this illustration of the text of the Bible being a
1:14:30
puzzle, a puzzle with 100,000 pieces. And you open up the box
1:14:34
and you find out that it actually has 100,100 pieces. However,
1:14:39
when you start to put the puzzle together, and the picture
1:14:44
comes into view, you can see where added pieces are kind of
1:14:48
thrown into the box or pieces of another puzzle are
1:14:51
accidentally or purposefully for some reason or another are put
1:14:54
in that box. And so it's easy to figure out where those extra
1:14:59
100 pieces are. And that's what we have with the Bible. When we
1:15:02
look at the breadth of the manuscript tradition, we don't
1:15:05
have a 100% of the text, we have 110% of the text. And because
1:15:09
of the our ability to analyze the whole spectrum of what the
1:15:14
text is, we can figure out where that 10% is. And that allows
1:15:18
us to say we have 100% of the text is just in the midst of all
1:15:22
this other stuff, but we can, you know, cut off the fat.
1:15:25
When I appreciate that answer, because I was going to ask about
1:15:28
the lack of the original manuscripts or autographs, some
1:15:31
of the contradictions therein, you brought up something that I
1:15:33
wasn't going to go go into, but it is something that is brought
1:15:36
up a lot. So let's talk about the Council of Nicaea, because
1:15:38
most people the first time they heard of the Council of Nicias,
1:15:41
when they read the Da Vinci Code or watch the movie, I mean,
1:15:44
fantastic book, fantastic movie, whatever you think, I went into
1:15:47
that movie and that book thinking, this isn't the Bible, this
1:15:50
is an entertainment piece, right? So I'm not going to change my
1:15:52
theology based on Robert Landen's character and, you know, any
1:15:56
of the stuff that's happening therein. But for the Council of
1:15:58
Nicaea, specifically talk about what happened there, because
1:16:03
there's any number of things. Oh, Constantine just quote unquote
1:16:06
converted to Christianity because it was convenient, right? Or
1:16:10
because he could he could read the tea leaf somehow and he would
1:16:13
know that this, you know, sect was going to grow to be the
1:16:15
biggest and most important thing ever. And he wanted to be on
1:16:17
the right side of history. It's almost like this post enlightenment
1:16:20
thinking that we put on top of something that happened 1700
1:16:23
years ago or something like that. So I don't really know how
1:16:26
people can can surmise that. But the Council of Nicaea, why was
1:16:30
it called? And what did they do there?
1:16:32
Yeah, so the Council of Nicaea was actually the first Council of
1:16:36
Nicaea. There was another one after that. But the first Council
1:16:38
of Nicaea, it took place between May and August of 325 A.D.
1:16:42
And what is now is Nick Turkey. And so it is the first what's
1:16:46
referred to as an ecumenical Council. And it was called to
1:16:49
deal with a specific theological problem. And that problem was
1:16:54
what's referred to as the Aryan controversy, which is a
1:16:57
Trinitarian heresy, which was promoted by a presbyter, a
1:17:01
church leader in North Africa named Arias. And so he was
1:17:04
teaching not only that the son of God was eternally subordinate
1:17:09
to the father, but that the son was not everlasting, but
1:17:12
created by the father at a specific point in time. And so Arias,
1:17:16
in his letter to Alexandria, wrote that the son being
1:17:21
begotten apart from time by the father and being created,
1:17:25
founded before ages did not exist before his generation, that
1:17:28
the son is not eternal or co-equal or co-originate with the
1:17:33
father. So it's sometimes said that, that Arias didn't believe
1:17:38
that Jesus was God. That's not actually true. Everybody the
1:17:40
council of Nicaea believed Jesus was God. The question was, how do
1:17:43
we parse that out in our language? And how do we show that
1:17:47
Jesus is co-equal and co-eternal with the father? So when the
1:17:51
council of Nicaea is called, it's called by Constantine, but
1:17:56
it's called by Constantine more as a response to the fact that he
1:18:01
had decriminalized Christianity a few years earlier in 312 at the
1:18:04
piece of the church, he had made it no longer illegal to be a
1:18:08
Christian to possess Christian documents and to worship
1:18:12
publicly as a Christian. And so he sees that, okay, Christians
1:18:15
are coming out of the woodwork, and they have these
1:18:17
disagreements for the piece of the empire. You guys need to sort
1:18:21
out these agreements or these disagreements. So Constantine
1:18:25
calls the council, but he actually doesn't have any part
1:18:29
within the council itself. And one of the reasons why we can be
1:18:33
pretty sure about that is because he doesn't take credit for
1:18:35
anything that happens. And Roman emperors love to take credit
1:18:39
for all sorts of things. And so if he does not take credit, that
1:18:44
points strongly to the fact that he probably did not have a
1:18:48
direct involvement because he could have then taken
1:18:51
responsibility for say, condemning areas and fixing the
1:18:57
issues of historical Christianity. But he doesn't do
1:19:00
that. And we could also, you know, like you said, Kyle, the
1:19:03
accusation that, oh, well, his conversion to Christianity
1:19:06
was convenient. It was for power. It was to rule over the
1:19:09
people. Well, if you look at the historical framework, it
1:19:13
actually was not advantageous for Constantine to become a
1:19:15
Christian. Exactly. And it was not only a detriment to his
1:19:21
power, because it was a minority religion at the time. And
1:19:25
more people were pagans of the Roman persuasion than they
1:19:29
were not. But if Constantine was looking for a power grab, all
1:19:34
he would have had to have done is what the Roman emperors
1:19:37
before him done had done and said, actually, not only are
1:19:41
the, you know, Roman pantheon, not only do those God exists, but
1:19:45
I'm a God too. And so if you disagree with me or disagreeing
1:19:48
with the God, and if you disagree with the God, it's easy
1:19:51
death penalty, which is what Roman emperors previous to him
1:19:55
did. So the power grab one I always think is a little bit
1:19:58
humorous in that not only does he start worshiping a
1:20:03
crucified savior who tells you to become a servant. But if you
1:20:08
wanted to seize control and to manipulate people via religion,
1:20:13
he could have just done what say Diocletian, a couple of
1:20:17
emperors before him did and say, I'm God, you have to actually
1:20:21
worship me. And if you don't worship me, you can't really do
1:20:23
much in the empire. So that's right. The council nice, he was
1:20:27
very important, right? The end result of the assembly was what's
1:20:31
known as the Nicene Creed, and it actually, along with 20
1:20:35
canon decrees, so canon not in the sense of like the canon
1:20:37
scripture, but in like teaching decrees. And then there was a
1:20:41
sent out epistle along with the creed, the creedal statement.
1:20:43
But this then becomes like the driving force of despite all of
1:20:50
the different variations that exist today within Christendom,
1:20:54
you know, the Coptic, the Ethiopian, the Eastern Orthodox,
1:20:58
Roman Catholic Protestant. If we all agree on something, it's the
1:21:02
Nicene Creed, because the Nicene Creed is basically like if you
1:21:05
boil down the very basics of who Jesus was, that's expressed
1:21:10
in the Nicene Creed. So all the other things that we disagree on
1:21:12
are very important. But if you want to like boil it down to its
1:21:17
very, very basics apart from the teachings of scripture itself,
1:21:20
the place outside of scripture that could very well articulate
1:21:24
that is the Nicene Creed. So it was arguably one of, if not the
1:21:28
most important kind of things that happened outside of the
1:21:33
apostolic period within historical Christianity.
1:21:35
One less, I know you didn't go there, but you did, you know,
1:21:39
just invariably give your co-signing of the importance of
1:21:42
creeds because there are people that are like, wait a minute,
1:21:44
creeds are not scripture, we're not going to have any creeds or
1:21:47
any of those types of things. But I think people get out over
1:21:49
their skis a little bit too much with that, with that argument,
1:21:51
especially in the fundamentalist space. But you did bring up some
1:21:54
different variations of biblical texts, but also there are
1:21:57
variations of biblical canon, probably the most, most
1:22:00
misunderstood and also the most confusing, frankly, is the
1:22:04
difference between the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible.
1:22:07
Okay, so inside the Catholic Bible, I think there are seven
1:22:10
additional books of what we refer to in Protestantism as the
1:22:14
apocrypha, there are seven additional books in there. And
1:22:16
I've heard Protestant pastors talk about things in first and
1:22:20
second Maccabees, and you know, they're like, look, you know,
1:22:22
they're kind of like, hey, you know, this is something that was
1:22:25
written down, we don't see it as God breathed scripture. But hey,
1:22:27
there's an important lesson here. But there's a very, there's a
1:22:30
weirdness there. And when you talk to a Catholic, there's no
1:22:33
bend for Catholics, unless it's the pope, because you know, he
1:22:37
just kind of does whatever he wants, apparently. But like, when
1:22:39
it comes to a Protestant like me, who grew up steeped in Christian
1:22:43
culture, but not being a Christian, right? So I grew up in
1:22:45
Oklahoma. So I don't know if you know this West, but if you
1:22:47
grow up in Oklahoma, if you're born in this precious red dirt,
1:22:50
the fact that your parents listen to country music occasionally
1:22:52
vote Republican. And if your grandma got baptized, that means
1:22:55
you are a Christian upon arrival, right? And so I wasn't
1:22:59
steeped in all the tradition of the Bible and kind of where it
1:23:02
came from. And oh, you know, King James is really the Bible in
1:23:05
IVs, not in all those types of things. But then you start
1:23:08
getting out into the well, Catholics don't have the real
1:23:10
Bible and you're like, well, why not? Why aren't those seven
1:23:12
books that are in the Apocrypha in my Protestant Bible? So
1:23:16
there's a lot of different ways that you could go there. But
1:23:18
let's just keep going down that rabbit hole of the canon of
1:23:21
Scripture and what we accept today and should accept.
1:23:23
Yeah, just to backtrack a little bit, commenting on your your
1:23:29
your comment about creeds. Ironically, when people say those
1:23:33
things, what they're giving is a creed is just a very poor
1:23:35
creed. So that's right. So they still have a cradle statement,
1:23:39
they just have a very inadequate one. But yeah, I
1:23:42
think this is a good question. And I actually I have I have two
1:23:45
talks that I would point people to or two videos on my channel.
1:23:48
One is actually addressing the discussion of why do Protestants
1:23:52
and Roman Catholics have different books in their
1:23:54
Old Testament. And the other one is a really great talk that was
1:23:56
given last year at our apologetics Canada Conference on the West
1:24:00
Coast in British Columbia by a friend of mine, Dr. John Mead,
1:24:03
who wrote one of the definitive books on this in that he wrote
1:24:07
the Oxford published book on early Christian canon lists. So he
1:24:12
goes through why and how the disagreements kind of played
1:24:16
out in the first few centuries with an early Christianity. But
1:24:19
basically, the conversation is is something to do with this in
1:24:22
that the New Testament canon was largely agreed upon. And
1:24:27
although there was a process by which the books that made up
1:24:31
to 27 books of the New Testament transpired with some books
1:24:35
being, you know, unanimously agreed upon and then others
1:24:37
having some dust to settle on them. There was virtually no
1:24:41
disagreement like by the end of the second going into the third
1:24:44
century. And then we have these official canon lists. The Old
1:24:49
Testament, however, there was a lot more conversation that was
1:24:52
going on. And part of that was that you had the we have, you
1:24:59
know, the 39 books of our Old Testament, which actually have
1:25:01
the same number of books in if you go to a say a JPS, a Jewish
1:25:05
publication society volume of what's called the Tanakh, the
1:25:08
Torah, the nephew and the Ketovine, we would call that the Old
1:25:10
Testament. Modern Jews read the same books that we Protestant
1:25:15
do as their their Bible. So our Old Testament is the Jewish
1:25:21
Bible, it is the same books, they ordered them differently. So
1:25:24
we have first and second Chronicles, first and second
1:25:26
Kings, they just have Chronicles and Kings, we order the
1:25:28
prophets differently. So they actually have a different number
1:25:30
of books, but it it's not different books. And I think we
1:25:35
can say, particularly within the timeframe of Jesus's day that
1:25:39
the conversation on what was scripture had pretty much been
1:25:42
brought to a close, we can look at individuals like Philo and
1:25:45
Josephus, Josephus, who is a late first early second century,
1:25:49
very, excuse me, very influential Jewish writer actually
1:25:53
talks about the canon of scripture and talks about the
1:25:55
books that he describes as being laid up in the temple, and
1:25:59
gives us a particular number. And that number is the one that
1:26:02
matches the books that modern Jews operate with today, we can
1:26:07
also look at comparative statements about what is being
1:26:10
used in the New Testament and quoted upon as scripture. So
1:26:15
that gives us a picture. However, outside of those books that
1:26:19
the Old Testament, oral Testament, and you know, the
1:26:22
ancient Jews viewed as scripture, there were other books that
1:26:25
had been written within the time period, say between the end of
1:26:29
our Old Testament at the beginning of the New Testament, in
1:26:31
this period of time, we call the intertestamental period, books
1:26:34
like first, second, third Maccabees, Tobit, Bell and the
1:26:38
dragon. And those were books that the Jews considered important.
1:26:42
And a lot of them very valuable historically, they say, tell us
1:26:47
about the Maccabees, tell us about the story of Hanukkah and the
1:26:50
rededication of the temple. And you know, we see even in the book
1:26:53
of John, Jesus goes to Jerusalem to celebrate the rededication of
1:26:57
the feast of the rededication, which is Hanukkah. And so we have
1:27:00
a background to the New Testament period from some of these
1:27:04
books itself, historically. So these are valuable books. But
1:27:08
the question becomes, okay, well, are they valuable enough to be
1:27:12
considered inspired? Now, for the Jews, that was less of a
1:27:15
conversation that had really been drawn to a close in and around
1:27:19
the time that Jesus was on the scene. However, for early
1:27:21
Christians, they were collecting some of these books, and they're
1:27:25
particularly collecting them in a collection of Jewish writings
1:27:30
in Greek called the Septuagint. So the Septuagint is a group that
1:27:35
includes the Greek translation of the Old Testament, but also
1:27:37
includes a host of other books, some of which, you know, modern
1:27:41
Roman Catholics consider scripture today, and some of which
1:27:43
they don't know group around the world that I'm aware of in
1:27:47
terms of broader Christian Christendom believes that third
1:27:51
Maccabees is scripture. And yet that was part of the Septuagint.
1:27:54
And so I don't think it's simply, you know, some of my
1:27:57
Roman Catholic friends say, well, the Septuagint was the
1:28:00
scripture of the of the of the Jews. And so we should accept it
1:28:04
because it's part of this group. Well, I think ultimately,
1:28:06
that misunderstands what the Septuagint is, because it's not
1:28:09
one book, right? I have a copy of the Septuagint over there on my
1:28:12
desk in a single bound volume. But that's not how these things
1:28:17
existed in the ancient world. They were independent scrolls, and
1:28:20
there were books and our books in the Septuagintal collection
1:28:22
that nobody thinks are scripture. So it's not a, that's not a
1:28:25
single shot takedown. At the same time, by the time you get to
1:28:32
say the fourth, fifth centuries, everybody agrees upon the 66
1:28:35
books as scripture. But some people start to are still having
1:28:40
a conversation about these other books, right? These extra seven
1:28:43
books in particular that end up in the Catholic Bible. But that's
1:28:46
always an ongoing conversation. And it's always an open
1:28:50
conversation to the point where you can point to popes who
1:28:53
definitively write that they do not believe that those books
1:28:55
are scripture. And this is always an ongoing and open
1:28:59
conversation until we get to the Protestant Reformation, where
1:29:03
the Protestants look back at this conversation and they look at
1:29:06
key figures like Jerome who translated the Latin Vulgate,
1:29:09
right? He translated the Bible of the church from the Greek into
1:29:13
the Latin and Jerome himself did not want to include those other
1:29:17
books. And we see from his kind of conversation and the
1:29:20
conversations he has with other people that he probably does
1:29:24
so under duress. But that he himself did not believe that they
1:29:28
were divinely inspired, particularly because he saw Paul
1:29:32
talks about the scriptures being the oracles of God that were
1:29:35
entrusted to the Jews. And he says, well, they don't believe
1:29:38
their scripture. So if they were entrusted with the oracles of
1:29:40
God, why are we having this conversation? But the, the
1:29:44
reformers look at these conversations and they say, okay,
1:29:46
we're just gonna, we're gonna end the debate and we are going to
1:29:49
go with the 66 that everybody agrees upon, even if they have
1:29:52
more. This is the agreed upon canon by everybody. And whether
1:29:56
you have, you know, some icing on the edges, we can just shave
1:30:00
that off and go with what we know to be true. Now, a lot of
1:30:05
Roman Catholics don't know this, but some of the biggest
1:30:08
adversaries of Luther during the Reformation, guys like
1:30:13
Desiderus Erasmus, who was his first debate partner from the
1:30:17
Vatican, guys like Cardinal Kiatan and Cardinal Humanes, who
1:30:20
put Luther on trial, they themselves did not believe that
1:30:24
these other books were scripture. So it's not like
1:30:27
everybody agreed. And it was the reformers against, you know,
1:30:32
the papacy. No, there were people, key individuals in the
1:30:36
Protestant Reformation who on this particular issue were
1:30:39
actually on Luther side. And it is not, there is no official
1:30:44
delineation by a council on the canon of scripture until
1:30:49
Trent in the counter Reformation. I think that's
1:30:52
important to note. No council, although there are
1:30:56
councils throughout history who include canon lists, they are
1:31:00
never including those canon lists with a statement that says,
1:31:04
and we thus put the authority of these are the only books of
1:31:08
scripture, right? They just include the list that they at
1:31:11
that point in time are viewing as scripture, but it's not a
1:31:16
stamp of authority or approval until you get to Trent.
1:31:21
When the counter Reformation happens at that point in time, in
1:31:27
response to the Reformation, do they put the official stamp on
1:31:30
these other books, and then the term deuterocanonical second
1:31:33
canon. Now I think where my Catholics appropriately say this
1:31:36
is not second and authority but second interception until that
1:31:39
point in time, you do not get that official pronouncement.
1:31:42
Before that it was completely appropriate for the church and
1:31:46
key members of the church, Pope Stephen, to have disagreements
1:31:49
on those books and not consider them scripture. But following
1:31:52
that it's a lot more controversial.
1:31:53
Okay, so if I had three hours like Joe Rogan, I have like 17
1:31:59
follow questions to what you just said there, but I don't have
1:32:01
that amount of time. So I'm gonna have to take a big hard right
1:32:04
turn and get into a different subject matter, but it's still
1:32:06
tangentially related to everything that you even just said,
1:32:09
I just really appreciate you going to such detail in that
1:32:11
answer. So just yesterday, I was at an event with Greg Hurwitz,
1:32:16
where he was doing a stop on his book tour. And I'm kind of
1:32:18
meandering around this book store. And it's you can just tell
1:32:21
by some of the featured books, it's kind of a very left
1:32:23
leaning bookstore. And I mean, that's guess that's reflective
1:32:26
of a lot of bookstores. And so they don't really have like a
1:32:28
Christianity section, they don't really even have a religion
1:32:30
section. Everything is under the blanket category of philosophy,
1:32:34
right? So here I am going through the philosophy section. I see a
1:32:37
book I won't mention the author or the title because I don't want
1:32:41
to give any free press for no reason. But essentially, the
1:32:44
the center point of this book is that Jesus of Nazareth is one
1:32:49
of many people in and around the first century that claim to be
1:32:54
the son of God, that was killed for their trouble, and that they
1:32:57
had disciples afterwards that swore that they saw them alive
1:33:02
and that they were resurrected and that it was the evil Catholic
1:33:05
church or was somehow the evil this that and the other people
1:33:08
that just somehow had more cultural power. And they stamped
1:33:12
out those other people just by calling them heretics, right?
1:33:15
And again, there there's a reason why heresy hunter is a phrase
1:33:18
that we can use in this day because there are people that were
1:33:21
going around like the Pinkerton's trying to find heresy, and
1:33:23
they were going to stamp it out and not in polite ways and not
1:33:25
in polite debates. And so talk to me a little bit about that
1:33:29
because you'll hear somebody say that on Joe Rogan, or they'll
1:33:33
just say it colloquially as they're having a conversation with
1:33:35
some rando online or something like that, like, Oh, this is
1:33:38
Jesus guy's not even unique. Like his story is taken from this
1:33:42
thing from ancient Sumeria and this thing from ancient Egypt.
1:33:45
And then they just kind of all mushed it together. And then
1:33:47
everyone bought it and we have billions of idiots today that
1:33:50
actually believe it. And so I know again, we could really, really
1:33:53
go into the weeds here, but just give us kind of a 10,000 foot
1:33:57
flyover of these claims of other messianic figures that were
1:34:01
just stamped out out of convenience or power struggle or
1:34:04
something.
1:34:04
Yeah, so there's a lot going on in there, some of which I would
1:34:07
say is like partly true. And a lot of it, which I would say is
1:34:11
mostly false. So the partly true part is that there are actual
1:34:15
messianic figures within say the decades before Jesus in the
1:34:19
decades after that did claim to be a Jewish Messiah. So you have
1:34:23
individuals, individuals like sermon, Simon Bargiora in the first
1:34:26
century, Dossy Theos, the Samaritan in the first century,
1:34:30
Simon Barcoque, in the second century. However, the reason why
1:34:34
you probably don't recognize that name, those names is because
1:34:37
when they died, their movement died with them. And the
1:34:41
difference is with Jesus is that when Jesus dies, it does
1:34:45
actually look like his movement will die with him. When the
1:34:49
disciples are in the upper room, right, the 11, because
1:34:52
Judas has hanged himself, are hiding scared and afraid in the
1:34:57
upper room, they think their movement is done. And yet, why is
1:35:02
the movement not done? Well, because Jesus is not dead. He
1:35:05
rises from the grave, he walks into the room and then he
1:35:08
commissions them to go make disciples of all nations. So the
1:35:11
reason one of the best evidences for the resurrection is the
1:35:14
fact that you have heard about it. Because there's lots of
1:35:18
figures within the ancient world who claim to be messianic
1:35:20
figures, who you have no idea who they are. Other than, you
1:35:24
know, maybe if you're digging through the history textbooks,
1:35:27
and you happen to find an article about Simon Bargeora. So
1:35:32
it's not that these figures don't exist, but their impact is
1:35:36
is stamped out when they die. So that much is true. However,
1:35:43
the comparative analysis between them and Jesus is largely
1:35:47
lacking because they are almost exclusively political movements
1:35:51
and they did try to cause political uprisings. Whereas
1:35:54
Jesus was not attempting to create a political uprising, not in
1:35:57
the way of trying to overthrow Rome, he was trying to overthrow
1:36:01
not the slavery of Rome, but the slavery of sin. And so there's
1:36:04
a different motivation that had a lasting impact that completely
1:36:06
overthrew the Roman world in a way that, you know, someone like
1:36:09
Simon Bargeora could not have imagined. So that's true. However,
1:36:14
when we see these comparative analyses in what's sometimes
1:36:17
referred to as Jesus mythicism, where you have, okay, you have
1:36:20
Jesus was a born of a virgin. And oh, actually,
1:36:26
Mithras was born of a virgin and Horace was born of a virgin.
1:36:29
And Ramon was born of a virgin. Oh, and look, not only does
1:36:33
Jesus have 12 disciples, but these other people have 12
1:36:35
disciples. Oh, and they also were crucified in the rows on the
1:36:39
third day. Those types of arguments are made up wholesale.
1:36:43
And I cannot say that emphatically enough.
1:36:45
Those parallels do not exist when you actually go to the
1:36:50
historical documents when you go to the pyramid texts and look
1:36:53
about, look at the story of what we know about the divine figure
1:36:58
of Horace in ancient Egypt. None of those parallels are there.
1:37:02
And even the loose parallels that people try to make in
1:37:05
something like, well, Jesus was resurrected. Oh, and actually,
1:37:09
Osiris, the ancient Egyptian God, he was resurrected too. Well,
1:37:12
if you look at Osiris's quote, unquote, resurrection, he was
1:37:17
cut up into pieces thrown into the river Nile, and then his wife
1:37:21
Isis finds the pieces, collects them, and then wraps them
1:37:24
together. And he exists as the mummified God of the dead who
1:37:29
can't leave the underworld. Is that a resurrection?
1:37:32
Not sound like it. Not in the way we would understand that
1:37:36
term and phrase, right? Certainly not in any way that a
1:37:38
first century Jew would have understood the resurrection
1:37:40
happening. So the parallels are either non-existent or
1:37:45
strained to the point of being silly. When we look at a Jesus
1:37:49
myth theory, and if someone brings those up with me, I almost
1:37:55
immediately know two things. Either they have not looked into
1:37:59
these things themselves and are completely unaware of the
1:38:02
primary sources, or they're being purposefully dishonest.
1:38:07
Because there is no way, and I've done this, I've gone to
1:38:12
the primary sources, and I've read something like the
1:38:14
pyramid text to see if there are actually any parallels
1:38:17
between Horus and Osiris and Jesus. And it's just almost
1:38:22
laughable. The lack of parallels, and not just the lack
1:38:26
of parallels, but when the parallels do appear to be made,
1:38:30
it's like, Horus got on a boat and Jesus got on a boat.
1:38:33
You're like, okay, we need to talk about causation and
1:38:36
correlation here, because Kyle is in a studio, Wes is in a
1:38:41
studio, Kyle is Wes. Like, this is not a logical conclusion.
1:38:46
Right? So I think when we see those things, especially as
1:38:50
Christians, one of the most effective ways that I have
1:38:54
been able to interact with them when people bring them up is I
1:38:56
simply say, could you point me to a primary source? You know,
1:39:01
Jesus is just a parallel of Mithras. Can you tell me what we
1:39:07
know about the story of Mithras from the primary source?
1:39:10
Because the almost every time I have, I've yet to have
1:39:18
someone actually tell me what the source was that actually
1:39:21
talked about these individuals, and what the source actually
1:39:24
says from the primary source, not from, you know, Joe Schmo
1:39:28
wrote about it, but because that's not how we do history, right?
1:39:32
If what does the pyramid text say about Horus? Okay, does that
1:39:39
match Jesus? But 99.9% of the time, the people who are making
1:39:45
those parallels are not actually interacting with the
1:39:48
sources they say they're making the comparative analysis
1:39:50
from when they're also just parroting it because they heard
1:39:53
someone else say it online or someone else say it in a
1:39:56
random debate and it sounded good enough, it sounded
1:39:58
plausible. And so they went from plausibility to this
1:40:01
actually happened. Now, we're running up against our a lot of
1:40:03
time, I got a couple more questions, you got you got a
1:40:05
little bit extra time to go to here. Yeah, okay. So in
1:40:09
intellectual honesty is very important to me, as it should
1:40:11
be to everybody. And so that's why I'm okay with engaging with
1:40:15
content that disagrees with my position, because I want to
1:40:18
see what they are arguing so that I can, you know, potentially
1:40:21
solidify or update my position like, you know, we get
1:40:24
politicians problems for flip flop and I and I understand why.
1:40:28
But if you were given new information and you change your
1:40:31
position, isn't that an intellectually honest thing as
1:40:33
long as you weren't doing it for some sort of personal gain,
1:40:35
which gets back into why politicians do most of the things
1:40:37
that they do. But for me, one of the questions that I ask myself
1:40:41
and that I would ask of Christians as well, is what would
1:40:44
I have to see? What would have to be proven to me to
1:40:48
disbelieve in the resurrection of a Middle Eastern Jewish
1:40:51
construction worker named Jesus, who is from Nazareth. And so
1:40:55
for you, not just as a Christian apologist, not just as, you know,
1:40:59
a professional Christian as it were, but just as Wes Huff, what
1:41:02
would you have to see to where you would have to come to the
1:41:06
intellectually honest conclusion that actually, no, Jesus
1:41:09
is not the Messiah. This didn't happen. And now we need to
1:41:12
figure out how we can answer the most important questions about
1:41:16
where we go when we die.
1:41:17
It's a very good question, which I've thought about a lot in the
1:41:21
last few years. And I used to say, you know, I am open to being
1:41:25
wrong. And that if say this particular piece of evidence that
1:41:30
we found a tomb that had some bones in it, and it had inscribed
1:41:35
on the wall, here lies Jesus, Nazareth son of Mary and Joseph,
1:41:38
his followers stole his body away and put it here. And we could
1:41:42
trace that, you know, inscription and body of the first
1:41:44
century, something like that, that that would open me up to
1:41:47
doubting Christianity. I think my mind has changed on that
1:41:51
only because what that alone would require me to admit is that
1:41:57
the Christian worldview hangs on anyone single piece of
1:42:00
evidence. And I don't think that's true. I think Christianity
1:42:04
is a multivalent worldview perspective that has
1:42:08
philosophical, historical, scientific, sociological, all
1:42:12
of these things coming into view that are intersecting for the
1:42:16
truth claims of Christianity. And so the question, you know, what
1:42:21
would it take to change my mind? It would basically be all of
1:42:26
the things that have convinced me over the last, you know, how
1:42:30
many number of decades that have convinced me if those
1:42:32
disappeared, then I wouldn't believe. But it's kind of like
1:42:37
saying, Kyle, if you weren't in the room you're in right now,
1:42:40
would you believe that you weren't in the room you were in
1:42:42
right now? It's like, well, yeah, but I'm in the room. Right?
1:42:47
Yeah, like I'm here. So what what it would have to get me to
1:42:51
disbelieve in Christianity is not just to undo concrete
1:42:54
historical information, which I genuinely feel is overwhelming.
1:42:58
But it would also have to overturn things that I can't
1:43:02
naturalistically explain. It would have to force me into a
1:43:06
place of saying the things that have transpired in my life as
1:43:11
something drastic as my healing from paralysis, but even
1:43:15
something as equally drastic, but maybe in a different way of
1:43:18
seeing a heart change in myself and others, where people who I
1:43:24
knew become different people when they are exposed to the
1:43:29
gospel. And I see something that can only be explained via the
1:43:34
words of Scripture of someone's heart of stone being removed
1:43:36
and them being given a heart of flesh and them living a new
1:43:39
life that's born again. So in one sense, there's an
1:43:43
intellectual honesty in the question and saying, you know,
1:43:47
our pursuit should be truth with the capital T over even above
1:43:51
Jesus because we need to pursue what is true. And there's no
1:43:54
contradiction there because I think the evidence points to
1:43:56
Jesus being that truth of the capital T. But at the exact same
1:44:00
time, there are so many adjoining factors from so many
1:44:06
disciplines at this point in time that have got me to where I am
1:44:09
today that if you were to remove a component of the fine tuning of
1:44:16
the universe or a component of some of the historical data that
1:44:20
points to the reliability of the gospel or a component of the
1:44:24
philosophical answers to the problem of evil or something
1:44:26
like that, it wouldn't bring down the entire web because there
1:44:33
are so many other strands that are connected to so many other
1:44:35
anchor points. So I've actually rethought the way that I
1:44:41
answer that question because just like the theology that I
1:44:45
believe from scripture does not come from any one text but
1:44:48
comes from the breadth of scripture as a whole in its
1:44:50
entirety, the worldview that I hold in terms of biblical
1:44:54
Christianity also doesn't come from any one thing. Now it may say
1:44:59
hang on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but even then the
1:45:03
resurrection of Jesus Christ is also tied to the reliability of
1:45:05
the Old Testament when it's prophesied that a Messiah would
1:45:10
come. And you know, that's what in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul
1:45:15
anchors it in that Christ died according to the scriptures,
1:45:18
there's buried and there's raised on the third day according to
1:45:20
the scriptures. And so they're so interrelated to one another
1:45:24
in terms of the historical reliability, but then theological
1:45:27
acumen and the philosophical grounding and then you have the
1:45:32
scientific evidence for a fine tune universe and the Goldilocks
1:45:37
zone of our planet and the expansion of the universe pointing
1:45:41
to a beginning origin that goes right back to in the beginning.
1:45:45
God created the heavens and the earth that I think there are so
1:45:48
many things that I don't know if there actually is a concrete
1:45:51
example of one thing that if you said, okay, Wes, if this thing
1:45:54
was untrue, would it under your worldview perspective? I think
1:45:57
it might make me questions certain aspects of it. But I don't
1:46:01
actually think it would anyone piece of evidence being
1:46:03
overturned would lead me to say, well, now I guess I have to
1:46:07
rethink being a Christian.
1:46:08
Well, if you question certain aspects of it, that doesn't mean
1:46:12
that you no longer get to look for more evidence that just means
1:46:15
you're on a new journey for capital T truth. That's part of
1:46:18
the problem. There's a myriad of problems with Andy Stanley and
1:46:20
his approach to ministry. But when he says we should unhitch from
1:46:22
the Old Testament, and the core of his argument is that our, you
1:46:25
know, our faith is not built on the Old Testament, it's built on
1:46:28
the resurrection of Jesus. It's like, okay, what you've done is
1:46:31
you've allowed someone to say if I could disprove the resurrection,
1:46:34
does the rest of the house of cards fall? And if he were to be
1:46:36
intellectually honest, he would have to answer that in the
1:46:38
affirmative. Yes, that's exactly what it means. But you're
1:46:40
right. It's not one piece of evidence that leads us to this
1:46:44
belief. It's one event, which is backed up by things like, Oh, say
1:46:49
the Old Testament, like, how can we even be looking for a
1:46:51
savior? How could we even be knowing? How could we even know
1:46:55
that we should be looking for a savior if not for Old
1:46:58
Testament prophecies, if not for what we see in the books of
1:47:00
Moses and in those types of things. But what all this is kind
1:47:04
of coming down to, which is going to be my last question
1:47:06
today. So a full on Christian apologist that knows what he's
1:47:10
saying that has a good affect and a good personality and good
1:47:13
information goes on the Joe Rogan experience. Great. Jordan
1:47:16
Peterson, one of the most popular, perhaps the most popular
1:47:19
public intellectual on the planet has openly said that he
1:47:23
believes a resurrection happened. And he believes that Jesus was
1:47:26
God. Now, it doesn't sound like he's put his faith in Christ
1:47:29
for their perpetuation of his sin debt yet. But he's he's
1:47:31
getting there. Richard Dawkins seems to be okay with calling
1:47:35
himself a cultural Christian. Russell Brand becomes an outright
1:47:39
Christian. People like I on her CLE becomes a Christian.
1:47:42
Something's going on, right? Bible sales are skyrocketing. All
1:47:47
of a sudden, people have found the the four horsemen of new
1:47:49
atheism. And they look back on them like, they're simple
1:47:52
tons like I can't believe I ever bought into these arguments. And
1:47:55
years ago, there was the asbury quote unquote revival. But it
1:47:59
seemed like an artificially long worship set. And then it just
1:48:02
kind of grew from there. And then they're like, Hey, let's move
1:48:04
it offside and give everyone Chick-fil-A. Which if it's a
1:48:06
revival, you don't necessarily need to do that. I don't want to
1:48:10
talk about revival. I think there's an awakening that's
1:48:12
legitimately happening. And I I try not to be hyperbolic. But
1:48:16
that's what it feels like in this post COVID world that we live
1:48:19
in, kind of coming into perhaps a post woke world where it seems
1:48:24
like Christians are waking up and saying, okay, I can still be
1:48:29
about the gospel and not be so polite to people that are okay
1:48:32
with spreading darkness all over this planet. I want to get your
1:48:35
read, because you're a part in this whether you want to be or
1:48:38
not, you're in this fight now. Okay, and you're you're early in
1:48:41
this game, because you know, if all things being equal, you're
1:48:44
going to be able to live out for several more decades and
1:48:46
continue to do the work that you're doing. What do you think's
1:48:49
happening? Do you think we're about to experience an awakening
1:48:51
or is this just it feels bigger because we have podcasts and
1:48:55
YouTube? I I'm optimistic. I definitely think something is
1:48:59
happening. And I think the groundwork was laying in what we
1:49:03
see with things like the new atheism in the early 2000s. I
1:49:07
think that needed to happen to really show people how vacuous
1:49:11
that worldview when pulled through to its ultimate
1:49:13
conclusion. It was, right? And so if you plant dead seeds and
1:49:19
they grow into dead rotting trees, and people try to eat that
1:49:22
fruit, it's going to be gross. It's going to be disgusting. It's
1:49:25
not going to be nourishing. And so I think that needed to
1:49:27
happen. The Daniel Denitz, the Sam Harris is and the Richard
1:49:30
Dawkins. And they needed to write what they wrote. And I think
1:49:35
that largely is what it was. It was a it was a movement within
1:49:38
print. I don't think it actually worked out in real worldview.
1:49:42
Day to day only in the ethereal. Yeah, totally. You don't you
1:49:46
don't walk around. Swallowing that you are just a product of
1:49:50
time plus matter plus chance and you have no ultimate value
1:49:52
because you're going to end at the heat death of the universe. We
1:49:54
don't live our lives like that. Any more than we live our lives
1:49:58
in subjective truth, in saying, you know, well, you know, the
1:50:03
stop sign, it could mean stop or it could actually mean go and I'm
1:50:07
a diabetic and I could need my insulin, but I could also not
1:50:12
need my insulin. Like we don't live like this. This is not
1:50:14
reality. And so I think these movements, you know, whether
1:50:17
it's the new atheism or whether it's the complete natural
1:50:22
materialistic subjectivity movement, or and I think we're
1:50:25
kind of entering into a new stage of that in more and more
1:50:28
people are described being described as spiritual but not
1:50:32
religious. And the new age, I think is way more popular than
1:50:36
the new atheism ever was. And that's a response to that. I
1:50:40
think if you tell someone your product time plus matter plus
1:50:42
chance, they realize that doesn't give you value. And so
1:50:45
they're when you when you look for anything you're going to fall
1:50:49
for everything. And so they don't want the accountability of
1:50:53
something that organized religion can give them. So they're just
1:50:56
kind of grab bagging it everything which ultimately makes
1:50:58
themselves God. That aside, I do think we're in a particularly
1:51:03
interesting era where it could be a result of we now have just
1:51:08
greater exposure of it. But I don't think that's why it feels
1:51:12
like it's bigger. I think that's part of the movement and
1:51:16
growth of it, is that we live in an era where the dissemination
1:51:21
of information can be put out into the world because of the
1:51:25
availability of the regular person being able to have a
1:51:28
sure mic and a camera. And all they need is, you know, just a
1:51:32
little bit of cash and now they can be a podcaster. And that
1:51:36
has a lot of downsides. But it also means that the ivory tower
1:51:42
of communication has been kind of toppled. And regular people
1:51:47
can talk to regular people and you don't need to be Oprah in
1:51:50
your mansion anymore. You can be Joe Rogan. You have stand up
1:51:54
comedian and be the most influential person in the world
1:51:57
and Chris and the next person who everybody should be looking
1:52:03
towards. But I do think that the Ironers Haileys, the Russell
1:52:09
Brands, and even the Jordan Peterson's and Douglas Murray's
1:52:13
and to a certain degree, the Richard Dawkins who are waking up
1:52:17
to, okay, some things here, the Tom Holland's right, not the
1:52:20
Spiderman actor, the historian, right, are recognizing certain
1:52:24
things that cannot be denied about the reality of the world
1:52:27
around us. And the political turmoil that that, you know,
1:52:34
falling on the spectrum of left and right and the ultimate
1:52:39
vacuousness of wokism and all those things. I think that God
1:52:45
is using all of these different areas to do something in the
1:52:50
lives of particularly noteworthy people. And I think we will be
1:52:53
really surprised in the coming years and who continues to become
1:52:59
publicly professed Christians. I think there are some I went on
1:53:03
the PBD podcast at the beginning of Oh boy, when was it I think
1:53:07
it was in December. And Patrick said, I think some really weird
1:53:12
people are going to come out as Christians in the next few
1:53:14
years. And I think he's exactly right because I'm hearing these
1:53:18
little buzzes here and there these whisperings of certain people
1:53:22
who are being spotted at churches. And I'm going really that so
1:53:29
and so and they're like, yeah. And so something is happening,
1:53:33
where I think they're looking at the world around them. And
1:53:36
they're seeing that they need to find an anchor point. And it's
1:53:40
not a new atheism. It's not in some generic spirituality. It's
1:53:45
not in a karma or it's certainly not in Islam. If you want
1:53:51
stability, you're not going to look towards Islam. And I think
1:53:54
they're realizing, okay, Christianity in terms of its
1:53:58
ability to have built the West. There's something there. And
1:54:03
so I'm optimistic, I'm optimistic with people who are across
1:54:06
that spectrum, whether it's Ironhurst, Ali, who's crossed that
1:54:09
line, whether it's Jordan Peterson, who's straddling that line,
1:54:11
or whether it's I think someone like Joe Rogan, who's very
1:54:17
sympathetic, I think at this point to it. And who knows where
1:54:20
that will lead him. But I would not, I would have no hesitation
1:54:26
saying that there is, what was the word you used? Not revival,
1:54:31
but awakening, awakening, yeah, yeah, I would have no hesitation
1:54:35
saying that we're we're seeing an awakening of something. And I
1:54:41
think that the end result of that is going to is going to be the
1:54:44
kingdom of God, really expanding in a public way that maybe we
1:54:50
haven't seen since, you know, the John Whitfield's and the Martin
1:54:54
Luther's of the world.
1:54:56
Well, Wes, your optimism is affecting this pessimist very
1:55:00
directly, but I do think it does come back to something that,
1:55:03
you know, Rob's Act rise did teach me every single worldview has
1:55:07
to answer the same four questions, origin, meaning,
1:55:09
morality, destiny, origin, where did everything come from?
1:55:13
Meaning, why is anything here morality? What's the difference
1:55:15
between good and evil? And how can we tell destiny? Where do you
1:55:18
go when you die? And if you read, you know, a book that
1:55:22
basically says, Hey, we're all just dancing to our DNA. There's
1:55:25
something in us innately that doesn't think that that is a
1:55:27
sufficient answer. And we could operate as if we think that's
1:55:31
true. But we end up just pretending in the end. But Wes,
1:55:33
we could have gone a lot more different directions in this
1:55:36
podcast. But we've weaved in and out of a bunch of different
1:55:38
subject matters. I'm just very, very thankful for your time.
1:55:41
But that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get
1:55:42
off your chest?
1:55:43
No, that's great. I really appreciate you having me on. If
1:55:45
people want to know more, they can go to apologetics, Canada
1:55:48
dot com and Wesley huff dot com. We're going to have some
1:55:51
exciting things coming up in the future. March 7th and 8th, I
1:55:56
believe are the dates. We're going to have our apologetics
1:55:57
Canada conference out in Abbotsford, BC, the topic is
1:56:01
theology of technology. And so we're going to be tackling
1:56:03
subjects like, will AI save us? Will AI be our downfall? And
1:56:08
things like that, I'm going to be speaking, my colleague,
1:56:11
Andy Banster is going to be speaking, Ruslan KD is going to
1:56:13
be coming up from California, he's going to be speaking. And
1:56:15
so it's just going to be a if you want to know about
1:56:18
conferences like that, where we are actively on the ground
1:56:22
talking about issues that matter. Or you want to find, you
1:56:25
know, the next episodes of can I trust the Bible, those are
1:56:27
going to be coming out in the coming year. And there's going
1:56:30
to be some exciting stuff coming down the pipeline with that.
1:56:32
Make sure you're going over to apologetics, Canada.com. And
1:56:35
you're seeing what we're doing. And if you want to see some of
1:56:37
the articles, infographics or videos that I make, Wesley
1:56:40
have calm is a place to go. Very good. All right, Wes, we'll talk
1:56:43
soon. We'll do. All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed my time with
1:56:46
West Huff, but before we let you go, we are going to do a quick
1:56:48
resilience boost add a don to life or mission is equipping men to
1:56:51
push back darkness with content that forges spiritual, mental
1:56:54
and physical resilience. I've got a link to Wesley's website. So
1:56:57
you can go and check him out at West Huff calm also link to his
1:57:00
YouTube page. And then I've got a link to the full unedited
1:57:03
unaltered version of his debate with Billy Carson. So if you
1:57:05
have not seen that, I would definitely suggest that you check
1:57:08
that out. And also YouTube link to his appearance on the Joe
1:57:10
Rogan experience. Thank you for listening to this podcast.
1:57:13
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and
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And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us
1:57:36
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1:57:39
podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self title
1:57:41
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1:57:44
description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep
1:57:48
pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and
1:57:52
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1:58:06
[Music]