Transcript of the Q&A:

MODERATOR: …now you get to scrutinize those claims. And we’ve come to the part of the evening which tends to be everyone’s favorite where we’re going to ask away at many of the claims that Jesus makes and give you an opportunity to put forth your curious questions and feed them Wes’s way. So, as we mentioned before, I’d love to invite you to come over to the microphone, line up, get ready for your question. We’ll have a couple of our team, David and James, just checking with to make sure that anyone who is visiting tonight, wrestling with the Christian story, maybe skeptical, will get priority and move to the front. But just while we’re setting up, let me give you a couple of words of encouragement about Q&A. Now, this is not a slight on Wes at all. He’s phenomenal. But Q&A will always leave you disappointed because the kinds of questions that people ask deserve way more than a simple two minute answer from people that aren’t necessarily experts in very much at all. At best, what we might try to do is be theological or apologetics GPS. You don’t walk into the GP’s office and walk out healed. No, you walk into the GP’s office and hopefully have a little bit more of a diagnosis on what’s going on when you leave. and they point you either towards a remedy or a specialist where you can go and get more help. And that’s largely what we’ll do tonight. Try and say one or two things by way of diagnosis and where to go and how to think about something, something that helps us, but then maybe point you to a resource. It could be one of the books that Wes recommends out at the Wandering Seller bookstore tonight that everyone will visit on their way out. It could be a video from Wes’s page or Wesleyhuff.com, an infographic on there. It may even be a humble video from questioning Christianity, but we’ll try and make sure we can connect with as many of these questions as we possibly can. Are we ready? Great. It’ be great to introduce yourself and then ask away.

JULIANO (Audience): Hi, Wes. Hi, Dan. My name is Juliano. I’m a believer and follower of Jesus. I just I have a question about ancient timelines and histories. So, some would say there’s timelines and histories out there from ancient civilizations such as I’ve heard about the Egypt an a little bit about the ancient Egyptian timeline and how it might be contrary to the Hebrew Bible. I was just curious about your thoughts around that and I know like obviously there’s intersections with histories to do with the Babylonian Empire and the Assyrian empires. Yeah. If you’ve compared any of the other ancient histories and how they compare to the Hebrew Bible. Thank you.

WES: Yeah, great question. Thank you so much for asking. I think what we can say and I say this as a non-egyptologist and a nonarchchaeologist but as someone who is very interested in ancient cultures and linguistics, languages and how the ancient world communicated itself. What we need to keep in the framework of understanding is that we actually know very very little about what happened within the ancient world. a fraction of what actually took place. And we’re continually expanding our understanding of the ancient world. And history is not mathematics. We cannot have a 100% certainty like we can with 2 plus 2 equaling four. It’s a probability. It’s an inference to the best explanation based on the evidence that we can look at from written sources and from artifacts that we dig out of the ground. But ultimately we’re going to have an insufficient answer that we can have confidence levels and gradients of confidence to say this most likely happened. But other things saying we’re not sure about this. And timelines are one of those things that are a little bit fuzzy. Some areas are a little bit clearer than others, but ultimately when we’re dealing with when certain things happened, especially the further back we go, we we have to be a little bit cautious and communicate some humility in our communicating of what actually happened. A key example of this is Egyptologists for a long time assumed that they had a good picture of who the pharaohs were at approximate times and locations and who really wasn’t important. And for a long time there was this particular pharaoh that they were like ah we’re not sure about him. He’s probably not important. We see very little of him in terms of our actual explanations of the king list within ancient Egypt. His name was Tutankhamun. But there was a particular individual, Howard Carter, who just could not get out of his mind that we have so little about this individual. He’s a footnote in these lists. And so he goes trying to find this tomb and eventually does.

And not only does he find it, but he realizes this individual is not a footnote in the understanding of ancient Egyptology. Tutankhamun was a very important, very well-known pharaoh for his time. And so we have to deal with the evidence as it comes. And sometimes things are completely rewritten. And so saying that in context to something like the timeline of the Bible, we have incredible ability to look at the time frames of the histories that were projected for us in the Old Testament and grant that for a long time, a very long time, our first evidence for ancient Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite individuals was the Bible.

If you were to go into the middle ages and ask a monk, who is Sennacherib? He would open to the book of Kings and he would see that Sennacherib was the king of Assyria who put siege on Jerusalem and destroyed the next important city, a city called Lakish in Jerusalem in Israel in Judea. Now, it wasn’t until the 1840s that we dug up the throne room of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, and found out that actually the annals that were recorded there correspond directly with what we see written in first and 2 Kings. But it is the fact that time and time again the timelines of the Bible even if we can we’re not sure archaeologically that we have firm evidence we actually I think can give the benefit of the doubt a lot of the times to the text of the Bible despite what we see elsewhere. And I wouldn’t actually say that there are there’s anything overtly that contradicts what we see in the timeline of the Bible. And let me just just finish on this. I’m not an archaeologist but I do have friends who are archaeologists. And one of the things that they continually tell me is, Wes, when we’re going into the Middle East, when we’re going to places like Israel and Iraq and Syria, we take a few key documents that give us a picture of what’s going on geographically and historically. One is the writings of this Romano Jewish writer named Josephus from the latter half of the first century. The other is the Bible. Why? Because continually we find that the people and the places and the times give an accurate account or even if they’re not a believer, if they’re skeptical, an approximate account as to where they should be looking and what they should be looking for.

DAN (Moderator): So good. Thank you.

ASHER (Audience): Hey, Wes. My question is that if all of creation has been corrupted, wouldn’t that include language as well? I like to frame this in how it relates to my degree, which is in psychology. It’s called signal detection theory that anything we try and measure, there’s going to be a little bit of noise sensitive the instruments. And I can see that with the disciples and Jesus that he says stuff so plainly and they don’t get it. But how would an atheist then have any hope of interpreting this text given if you were to say that we can trust the Holy Spirit for them to then be able to interpret this. In addition I would say that also the Christian is also finding it difficult in some areas for instance like the word Elohim and how sometimes it’s plural sometimes it’s singular, the word daily in give us today our daily bread has been lost in a little bit so there’s more noise to that Greek word now. And I find it frustrating that we often like the the book of the Bible is all about grace. And yet there is no grace given to this interpretation. It seems always like has to be inherent or infallible.

WES: Yeah. Let me say, and thank you very much for that question, that when we’re dealing with something like linguistics, it’s always important to keep in mind that the way that we derive that we render the text is based on our understanding of the language, but the language within its context and understanding how that language operates both inside the document that we’re written. that’s it’s written in and outside. Greek is not a magical Christian language. It’s a language that we have a lot a ton of examples of writings outside of it. And so we can use reference points to look at something like classical Greek and coin a Greek which is the Greek that the New Testament is written in common Greek to give us a framework of how certain words operate within their sentences. But it is within the particular place that those words are found that gives us the meaning. So like you said Elohim in Hebrew means God or God’s. It operates in both a singular and a plural depending on the context. But when God says in somewhere like Isaiah chapter 40 that I am God there is no other and articulating absolute monotheism we cannot read that I am God’s there are no other gods it doesn’t make sense and so it is the context that merits that based on what’s referred to as ex Jesus which is looking at the language and pulling out its meaning ex Jesus means literally to bring out the opposite is of Jesus to read in. And so we look at an exegetical reading. How do we bring out the intention of what is being communicated by the author? What is the author meaning to communicate to us? And if we’re coming to either a rendering or a conclusion based on interpretation that is foreign to what we see the author communicating, then we have a problem. We also use interpretation. This is often referred to in theological circles as hermeneutics, which you all say, who’s Herman and why do we care? But what hermeneutics means is it’s the art of interpretation. And sometimes, as I think the question was kind of alluding to, there is room for different interpretations of a particular text based on potential ambiguity. That does exist within the Bible. I would say that the Bible is inherent in so far as I believe that God cannot heir and the Bible is written as its primary author being the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t negate that there are human authors that Moses, David, Peter, Paul, James, Jude are the authors. But undergirding that you know there are some Bibles that have Jesus’s words in red. But you may not know this, but all Bibles have the Holy Spirit’s words in black. It’s one of my favorite features about just everybody agrees. And so I think there is an aspect of saying if God cannot heir, then that which he gives to us in what it intends to say does not heir. And that doesn’t mean that the interpretation that we derive from that isn’t fallible. When Moses is hearing God’s commands on Mount Si, Moses’s ability to hear God is fallible. And that doesn’t change that when he eventually communicates the law to the Israelites, to God’s chosen people, that that law is infallible. Right? We are fallible human beings. And yet, we can still communicate things that are inherent in that they do not heir. I can have a phone book. I don’t think those exist anymore. But a phone book could technically be inherent. All the phone numbers could correspond with the people that are actually listed as that being their phone number. That doesn’t mean that it’s inspired, but it means that fallibility doesn’t always negate the ability for it to be correct. And we trust fallible resources and and materials and individuals all the time. And yet there’s a theological component to this being inherent, infallible, because of inspiration, but also because of the language understandings that people have committed their lives to over the last 2,000 years of interpreting the Bible and then the Jews before that in terms of looking at the Hebrew Bible who likewise provide us with commentaries in the ancient world that we can have confidence on a great deal and also grant that there’s ambiguity, but the ambiguity doesn’t negate the central message of what’s being communicated within this book.

DAN: If you want to pick up more on that, we’ve got a great video called Why Isn’t the Bible more clear? Which looks at maybe some of the reasons that God actually gives us a book where some things are clear, but maybe some are more ambiguous and maybe his goals in allowing us to wrestle with this spiritual curriculum to form us to become more like Jesus. So, check that out.

LACHLAN (Audience): Yeah. Thank you. Good night guys. My name is Lachlan. Hey Lachlan. I’ve built quite a relationship with God over the course of my life. But I have a lot of questions about the Trinity. Sorry it’s not about the veracity of the Bible. I know that’s your whole talk tonight. But basically I don’t understand the distinction between God the Father and God the Son. I pray to God the Father. Mhm. And I don’t know why, like a lot of the people I know in my life, they pray to Jesus. And I’ve built quite the relationship praying to God and trying to get to know him. And I don’t really know why I need Jesus.

WES: Yeah. Well, thank you first and foremost for your transparency to ask that question. I think there’s an a level that we can all relate to what you just said in the sense that there are aspects of who God is that we will never truly grasp. And thank goodness that our salvation salvation is not based on a theological exam because I think I myself would personally fail. I’m not going to speak for everybody in the room.

DAN: I can vouch for that.

WES: Okay. Thank you. It’s an IPS switch thing. I don’t want to But I think you know what we see within scripture and we have to be honest with what we see within scripture is that what we see described is that God is complex within his unity. Yeah. And that continually we have statements that are repeated statements like Deuteronomy 346 which is sometimes referred to as the shema here. O Israel the Lord is God. The Lord is one God. And this is a statement that has been repeated since the time of Moses to modern Orthodox Jews today. Every morning and every evening here, O Israel, the Lord is God. The Lord is one God. And yet we have these examples of God describing himself in a complex nature that he’s ruling and reigning in heaven, but he is in a physical presence on the top of the ark of the covenant on the mercy seat. And we have stories like we see in Genesis 18 where two angels and one individual identified as Yahweh as the God of the Bible shows up to Abraham’s tent and they dialogue with Abraham about what’s going to transpire at Sodom and Gomorrah. The two angels leave to go deal with Abraham’s relatives in Sodom and Gomorrah. And then the extended conversation with between Abraham and God eventually has God leaving in some sort of physical form. And then it says it has this very interesting passage in Genesis 19 where it says, “And then Yahweh in heaven rain fire and brimstone from Yahweh on earth.”

What? There’s only one God. There isn’t two Yahwehs. So what’s going on?

I would posit that if God was fully comprehensible, if you could understand all the intricacies of who God is within both his being and his character, it’s probably a God that you made up. That as we are complex, God is even infinitely more complex. And there is an aspect that theolog the theologians talk about in what’s sometimes described as understanding and comprehending in that I can understand when the Bible talks about eternity as a long period of time in my kind of finite thinking. But what does time without end mean? I can’t comprehend that. I can’t I can’t wrap my head around that. But what do we see communicated to about who God is? is that the father is described as Yahweh God in his honors, attributes, his names, his deeds, and he’s given the seat of the almighty. Jesus is described and given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of the Almighty. And the spirit is given the honors, the attributes, the names, the deeds, and the seat of the Almighty. It spells out hands, by the way. It’s an acronym. I did that so you could remember it. I didn’t come up with that. Two brilliant scholars named Rob Bowman and Ed Kamachowski came up with that in a book that you’re all going to read after this called the incarnate Christ and his critics. But what we get from that is that we see this happening. The father, the son, and the spirit all being described with those qualities of Yahweh. And so we say, okay, there’s one being of God. Being describes what you are, but there are three persons. Person describes who you are.

This chair has being, right? It exists. I didn’t walk over and say, “Excuse me, Mr. chair. Can I sit on you? Do you mind that?” Right?

Because it doesn’t have personhood. But it has being. Don’t believe me. I’ll throw it at you and you can find out.

And preacher. Yeah. Right. And yet Dan is a being. He’s a human being, but he is also a person. He’s Dan Patterson. Right.

He is one in being and one in person. And as the creator of us as human beings who inhabit a personhood, I would I would posit that even in our finite understanding that we cannot truly comprehend that the God of creation, I think it would merit that he is more complex than that. And even in all the things that we cannot and do not understand about the God of the Bible, we still can come to this text and say what I see here is describing something that maybe I don’t fully understand, but that I can submit to my submit myself to humbly in saying I don’t understand all the details, but what I do see is something that is wonderful and that is beautiful and that the father sends the son and the son goes willingly of his own accord and he dies in our place through the power of the spirit in order to give us life. That the message of the gospel and salvation is inherently trinitarian. It is the three operating co-equally and co-eternally in a set of living loving relationships. And even if I don’t understand how that parses out in every way, I can submit my to it myself to it because I believe that this is true.

ELIJAH (Audience): Hi guys, my name’s Elijah. Thanks for being here tonight. Reading the Bible for the first time, it’s natural to assume that Paul’s epistles were written after the Gospels and the eyewitness accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, most scholars now agree that the Gospels were all written—sorry, that the Gospels were written many years after Paul’s letters. Given this, how can we be sure that Paul’s theology and interpretation of Jesus did not influence the stories of Jesus that were passed down orally over many decades?

WES: Yeah, great question. So I think we can unanimously say that that is a reality. Paul is our earliest source material for who Jesus is in terms of descriptions of this character, this itinerate rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth. And it’s then after that that we see the oral tradition, what’s sometimes referred to as the charurrima. And that’s just a word that means the oral tradition that’s floating around within the early Jesus community that is eventually written down by these four individuals Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I what I think we can say is that, you know, Paul’s letters range in their dates. And what we see within those is testified to in both the angles of what Paul is doing and how he’s communicating to these early Christian communities that then mirror the person and identity of who Jesus is. I don’t think they’re in competition with one another. I think they fill in the beauty of the complex picture of what we see within who Jesus is. Now, some people argue that, you know, why did it take them so long to write these things down? And we ask that today because we live in a hyperiterate culture, but the ancient world was not as literate as we are today. And in fact, memorization and rearticulation of stories and facts was the norm back then. Writing was incredibly expensive and incredibly arduous and took a lot of time and very few people could do it really well. When Luke says that he’s undertaking to write an orderly account, I think what he’s saying there is that some people have attempted and they’ve written a not very orderly account in the past. And interestingly enough, if we assume that something like the Gospel of Mark comes before Luke, if you learn Greek and you start with something that’s very simple like the Gospel of Mark, you find that it is not very orderly in the way that it’s written. Lots of “and then,” lots of “and then”—it’s like my son who tells me stories: daddy and then I went to the park and then I came home and then I ate a pizza and then I—you know—“and then, and then, and then.” This is called parataxis. And so we see that and I think Luke, who is a doctor, who is educated, who has a literacy level within the language of Greek, looks at Mark and he says okay that’s great that story is true it’s not written as well as I think I could do and that’s not to say that he’s trying to improve upon the message—he’s writing down for this individual Theophilus an orderly account so that he can communicate from the eyewitness testimony maybe things that are not included in some of these previous gospels. So I don’t think although none of these documents are given dates internally that that is a problem with their ability to communicate early eyewitness testimony and we can source that from things like we talked about tonight from the location information that’s located within the actual documents from unnecessary details from undesigned coincidences—all of these scream early eyewitness testimony—and then Paul, although he’s writing before the gospels in some instances, is likewise giving the level of credibility to what we see within the time frame and descriptions of the biographical accounts of Jesus.

MODERATOR: That’s great.

OHN (Audience): There you go. My name is John. Thank you for what you’ve shared here tonight. I do feel though like as though you have glossed over a little bit over some of the words and terminologies. For example, you brought up John 1 vers1 talking about how God was the word in the Greek. And I do find that the definition of a logos which was used as word is a bit more layered than what seems to be put across within the goss like like in that like from like how we like translate it to say it means a word. Like it has like a lot like it’s used even in like a lot of academia language today. For example, using terms like numerology meaning like the study of or understanding of neurology with ology meaning logos which is the word part of it and also used in business. So, for example, logos meaning like the exact same thing, but it’s just like something you look at and it’s to do with like an understanding and full perspective of what you’re looking at and how you’re interacting, but hopefully I’m making sense, not jumbling up my words too much. But yeah, I wanted to get into the like as is as has been discussed a few times already tonight about how the gospels were written like in the second century BC. Sorry. Sorry. So AD. Anyway, so I just wanted to bring up like you know like Jesus spoke a lot about taking up your cross and following him and at least in I don’t know if it’s Aramaic but at least in Hebrew cross is like me I know that it wasn’t translated in Hebrew though it was translated in Greek but I do find that the Um, yeah, I’m just getting to it. Like, sorry. Sorry, just I lost my track there. So I think I actually understand what you’re saying in terms of the complexity of how do we authentically render a text that has complexness to its language. I was just like like I was saying like I think it’s likely like even with it being Britain after the second century CE, people usually point to the put by the evidence of Jesus dying on the cross as what’s his I forgot the name of the elite fellow who was speaking to or giving reason for Nero killing off Christians and talking about the reising of the Christians under well speaking about the reason of it being was that Christ died under Pontius Pilot. But I was like more so wondering like isn’t it like also very likely as someone who has experienced a lot of rumors going around about myself and just seeing how quickly word spread like even schools and my jobs and everything people just like spread rumors like extremely quickly. Like what’s the likelihood that well Jesus were saying that you know take up your cross and follow him that just somehow just became a thing which everyone was like saying and then through Chinese whispers of sorts it just becomes like well oh yeah well he died on the cross and then like yeah but yeah I appreciate that question would go along with it just like Paul so is it is it just this rumor that developed. Jesus said one thing but over time it develops and maybe the crucifixion is a later invention. What do you think?

WES: Yeah. So this is what we sometimes refer to as mythological drift within historiography that as time goes on and you get these apocryphal and haggio which the stories that start to pop up.

I think what some of the things that we see within the gospels in particular is that we often look at them and we think that there’s a embellished nature because they talk about things like miracles. All you have to do though is read some of these other gospels that I referenced in terms of the Gnostic gospels and actually you find what true embellishment is. There’s one of my favorite stories is a story about Paul where he is walking down the road and he finds a lion who has his head his mane caught in a thicket and the lion is clearly uncomfortable. And so he releases the lion from the thicket and the lion is very appreciative of this fact. And so they’re walking down the road and Paul is preaching the gospel to this lion. And so this lion is just so moved by the message that he’s heard that he receives the gospel and comes to faith and is baptized and they part ways and then later on you know Paul finds himself in the coliseum and in the coliseum who happens to walk out the good old Christian lion. Now this is embellishment. this is what we see and can say, okay, like there’s something going on here. And in fact, compared to a lot of these stories that we find in the later centuries, the gospels are actually very matter of fact. And this comes across in the way that they’re communicated. Why do I not think that mythological drift is taking place? I do not think that it’s taking place because we see so many instances where say for example Jesus is crucified in Jerusalem and then his immediate disciples go out and come back to Jerusalem to preach that message on Pentecost. This is ground zero. There are people who would have seen Jesus’s crucifixion and they’re going around to the scene of the crime saying, “He’s resurrected.” There could have been people who would have said, okay, let’s go check the tomb. We saw him die. We know he was buried. We can fact check these things. And yet, that’s continually what they’re doing. They’re going back to places where if you wanted to make things up, you wouldn’t go there. And it’s in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. Now Luke does this and John does this very well where they will name people in a way that they don’t necessarily have to. I believe it’s Luke who says that you know Simon ofSirene has two sons and one of them is named this and he does that because what he’s doing is that is an ancient form of citation. It’s most likely that some of these characters that are kind of background reference are individuals who are well known within the early Christian community and the authors are saying don’t believe me go ask them and so there are two layers of mythological drift in there’s one is embellishment and the other is you know what’s that sorry invention invention yeah do does this communicate that the author is actually trying to do their due diligence in the first audience being able to actually verify what is going on. And I think within kind of the narrative story arc of something like where the the disciples are preaching and communicating this message in terms of people being able to actually have understood and fact check those things and the names and places and people that they’re describing that could have kind of tipped off someone in a very tangible way to say, you know, I don’t know about that, but let’s go talk to so and so because they may very well have more details on this within a time frame that amounts to the memory, the early eyewitness memory still living within the lifetime of people who knew Jesus and people who knew people who knew Jesus.

DAN (Moderator): And I think maybe there was just a couple of factual statements in the question that was asked as well that might be worth clarifying just on the dating of the gospels. It was the second century AD was this is the thought where they come from. But the gospels that we have in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are all first century gospels, which no critical scholar is going to contest. And you would certainly say the arguments for at least Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels, being pre70 AD, I think, are far stronger than the arguments they come after 70 AD. And so, you’re talking within living memory when these things are actually being penned. And there is a statement in 1 Corinthians 15 that Paul makes, this creed that he quotes there in verses 3 and four and five. And scholars will point critical scholars even from the Jesus seminar back in the 80s and 90s and they’ll say look these date to within 3 months to 5 years after the resurrection of Jesus. The early Christians claim that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared. And so that’s a very early reference to the crucifixion of Jesus rather than just some later development which is not something we have for the vast majority of any other ancient individuals within history. So, I mentioned like we do have good information, source information for individuals like Tiberius. But if we’re talking about someone like Alexander the Great, our earliest comprehensive biographies of Alexander the Great come about 750 years after Alexander the Great. And that doesn’t mean that they don’t contain source material about what Alexander the Great was actually like. But this is the norm. This is the norm for ancient characters. The fact that we have some biographies, never mind four biographies, all corresponding and giving things like undesigned coincidences is actually unheard of in ancient source historioggraphical information. Yeah, we’ve got a video that might be helpful on did the resurrection stories develop like legends. I recommend go check that out on the QC channel. Great. What’s your question, sir?

JUSTIN (Audience): How’s it going, guys? Hey, mate. Name is Justin. Awesome to have you here, man. It’s great to have a mind like yours in the room and your mate and hey, I’ll take it. Sorry. He’s been giving you stuff all night, so I thought I’d throw something back. It’s in his biography. Wes is mean. I have a pretty hard question. It’s to do with the passing of Charlie. When Jesus says, revenge is mine, it’s hard to something happened to my partner, you know, or even me and my kids were left, it’d be hard not to want revenge. How did how does man deal with that? You know, how do you find answers in the Bible and even just in comfort of Jesus’s words? Revenge is mine when it’s something so hard like that.

WES: Yeah. Well, first and foremost, let me just communicate my condolences and say I’m so sorry for what happened to your partner, whatever that is.

JUSTIN: No, no, no.

DAN: He’s saying if something happened, he would

JUSTIN: if something happened to your partner.

WES: Yeah. like Charlie. So Charlie’s horrible passing and like

DAN: Thanks for clarifying that. I see what you mean now. I’m getting it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m glad that’s not the case. To be fair, he’s unbelievably jet-lagged.

JUSTIN: Yeah. No, I get that. I get that. Yeah.

WES: It’s a good question. I mean, when we

DAN: Just before you get into it, I don’t want to see that coin on eBay, by the way.

WES: When we look at things that communicate genuine heartache that communicate injustice, I think what’s unique about the God of this book is that the God of the Bible is not the elusive God of dismissant God of theism. that the God of the Bible can actually relate to feeling injustice personally because the God of the Bible sent his one and only son, the only innocent person that has ever walked this planet who was murdered. And I think to a certain degree when we look to heaven and we say, “God, I am frustrated. I’m angry. I am just completely disgusted with injustice in the world. I think God can look down at us and say, “Me, too. It killed my son.” And there’s an aspect of this was part of God’s plan that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. And I think we see that even in the instance of Charlie in the amount of people communicating on social media on something like X and saying, “I never really thought about the Bible, but I’m seeing these clips of this individual talking about his own faith and that’s moving me.” God is using this. There is no purposeless evil in this world that is outside of God’s control. And so the God of the Bible is unique in that he doesn’t just sympathize with our hurt and our pain and our suffering, but he empathizes with it. Because the God of the Bible sent his son, the second person of the Trinity, and then that son, that God stepped into humanity and personally experienced heartache and loss and betrayal and murder because the expectation in the first century was that the Messiah was going to save God’s people from the Romans, not be murdered by the Romans. And so the upside down nature of what took place within the life of the Messiah is something that allows God to say, “You’re hurting me, too.” And relate to that and also say that Jesus didn’t stay in the grave, that he rose from the dead and he conquered sin and death. You know, I heard this story of this famous pastor from the United States whose wife died, passed away, and as he was driving with his kids from the funeral and trying to help them understand what just took place, looked over at a lane at the next lane where a big transport truck was driving down the road and turned to his son and said, “Would you rather be hit by the rock or the shadow? And his son said, “The shadow.” And he said, “Son, Jesus was hit by the truck so your mother could be hit by the shadow.” And that that allows us to experience not the true penalty of death because Christ took that true penalty. And so we when we see injusted the injustice that genuinely moves us, God speaks into that and says,”I get that and I am making all things new. So just wait.

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RYAN (Audience): Hey Wes, it’s good to have you here. My question is this. The Catholic and Orthodox churches teach a gospel of faith and works. Would they have a false gospel? And if someone is trusting in two things, Jesus plus say like baptism or obeying God’s commandments or saying sorry for your sins, if they’re trusting in Jesus plus, would they be saved?

WES: Yes. Good question. Here’s what I would say. I genuinely think that there are bornagain believers within the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. But it is not because of but in spite of what those churches are often teaching. And as a convictional Protestant, not a convenient Protestant, I am not attending a Baptist church out of convenience because it happens to be the closest to my house. I convictionally believe that the process of the Protestant Reformation was a God- orained thing that operated to retrieve the true gospel and that the testimony of scripture is that you are saved not on the basis of anything you have done but by what Jesus did. And by trusting in what you have done, what you’re saying is really, I can do better. I can accomplish something. And Jesus didn’t really have to die. If Jesus is merely a moral example for you to follow and do things, then you don’t need a savior because you can save yourself. You can do good things. And we need to be really careful of that message. The gospel is not earned, it’s received. And so because it is not earned, I do not think that there will be anyone in heaven who believes that they merited what they’re getting in terms of entering into the presence of God in eternity. And there’s a danger there. But I think there can be genuine believers in those communities because they’re still reading this. But they will most likely have to come to terms with at a certain point they will have to leave those institutions. I truly believe that because if you’re trusting in your works, you’re not submitting fully to what the gospel is. It’s received. it’s not achieved. And that’s important. It’s important for what grace truly means. That you are saved by faith through grace and not of works so that no one can boast. It’s all Jesus all the time. And so I am not saved by my works, but I am saved for my works. And so those works are not negated. They’re not not important. They are that thing which testifies to the salvation, the free gift that is given me. And it’s very very important. And so I pray and long for my brothers and sisters within the Roman Catholic, the Greek Orthod or the the the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox communities because I think that a lot of them have a genuine longing for that which is true and for the gospel. But if they’re trying to earn that, they’re whether they know it or not, negating what the true message of the gospel is.

MODERATOR: I’m very sorry to say this is going to have to be our last question, everyone. So to be the bad guy, we’re going to have to close things off after this one. But there are hundreds of answers to many of the questions that you will have on the YouTube channels at Apologetics Canada and Wesley Huff and many other able defenders of the gospel. We’re going to hear the last question.

RYAN (Audience): Yeah, great answer. Thank you for that. My name is Ryan. People might know me from needgod.net. But my question for you was I appreciate the talk on the reliability of the Bible. It’s amazing what you said. How does the reliability of the Bible compare with the reliability of the Quran? Many Muslims say it’s been perfectly preserved. Do they have these unnecessary details and the other things you’re mentioning in your talk? If you can speak on that.

WES: Yeah, great question. For the sake of time, no. That’s the short answer, right? I think what we see with I mean the Quran is very different in that like I said, the Bible is 66 books written over a period of 1600 years on three different continents by close to 40 different authors. The Quran is one book written in one time, 7th century, in one place, Arabia, in one language, Hajescript Arabic.

And so in one sense, it’s not really fair to compare the Quran and the Bible because we’re comparing apples to orchards. There’s just so much more going on with the Bible. But when we look at what the Quran, which comes 600 years after Jesus communicates, what we see is that it’s claiming to communicate facts about very similar people in situations that the Bible is and yet makes a lot of errors and mistakes that scream lack of verilitude and credibility. It mixes up people and places in a way that just should be red flags for us. And ultimately in chapter 4 verse 157 denies one of the most easily verifiable events of ancient history which is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It says that they neither, talking about the Jews, they neither crucified him nor did he die, but it was made to appear to them. And it has the Jews boasting we killed Jesus, the Messiah, the son of Mary, which is a very strange thing to say. If the Jews believed that and thought he was the Messiah, they wouldn’t have killed him. So, it starts off with an error and then it goes on to completely deny that this event ever happened. And that is a problem for the Quran and one that has many Muslims that I sympathize painted into a corner and trying to defend it because even the most skeptical of scholars, individuals who say despite all the stuff we’ve talked about, we really tonight we can’t really have much reliability in the source information about who Jesus was. But we can know that he was crucified and died under the Roman governorship of Pontius Pilate. We can know that because of both what the Bible teaches and from sources outside of the Bible. And so the Quran denies that simple fact. And in doing so denies the reality of an event that we have an incredible level of confidence to say that this event actually happened. And then on top of that, the Quran time and time again talks about the previous scriptures that the Jews had, the Torah and the Gospel. And it says that these were documents that were given in the same nature as the revelation of the Quran. They were given with guidance and light. They were the Arabic word is natsal sent down in the same way that Moses was given the Torah and it was full of guidance and light. And Jesus was given the gospel and it was full of guidance and light. And then in chapter six of the Quran, it says, “And let the people of the gospel judge by what they have therein. And if they do not judge by what Allah has revealed to them, then they are the definantly disobedient. So it prefaces it by saying God sent the Torah to Moses. He sent the gospel to Jesus. And the people of the gospel, Christians, Dan and I, need to judge by what Allah has given, what who what God has given to us as Christians, that being the gospel. And if we don’t judge by using the gospel, then we are the definantly disobedient. Here’s the problem. When I do that, when I obey that, when I judge using the gospel and I use that as the lens by which I look into the Quran, I find the Quran has no understanding of the communication of what the gospel facts are historically or theologically. It denies its central precepts. And so if the Quran is true and it tells me as a Christian to judge by the gospel, then the Quran is false. And if the Quran is false, then the Quran is false. So the Quran has a dilemma. Because this is not just in one place. This is in multiple places throughout the Quran. Because I do not think the author of the Quran had any earthly idea what the Torah or the Gospel were and assumed that he knew. And that’s where we get stories from people, individuals named in our Bible like Abraham, like Moses, and even like Mary and Jesus and John the Baptist, but are drawing on sources not historically reliable that we know go back to the source material, but are often oral stories floating around 7th century Arabia, mostly folk tales and apocryphal campfire stories. from this time period of Jews and Christians and Zoroastrians, assuming those are what the gospel and the Torah are and then making these profound mistakes and then communicates in an effort to get the Jews and the Christians on board by saying, “I know what you have. It’s a revelation and what it says is like the revelation that I’m giving to you. So judge by what you have and judge it by what I’m giving you.” And it’s not until later when this book was translated into Arabic in its entirety that Muslims started to go, “Uhoh, we have a problem.”

And that’s where arguments about corruption come into view. And so the first part of the question is the Quran perfectly preserved? The answer is no. We have textual variants all throughout the manuscript tradition of the Quran in particular manuscripts. There are far fewer manuscripts. And what that does is in testifying to what I talked about tonight, the fewer manuscripts you have, the more you have to rely that those people get it right, the more manuscripts you have, the more you have the ability to compare and contrast and trace back the original text and have confidence in that. So there are layers of the nonreliability internally and externally to the Quran that communicate that by the same standard, this is true and that’s wrong.