AFRAID to Speak Up! J Warner Wallace (Person Of Interest) and Dr Tour on Christianity/The Evidence (2023)

Introduction

Does Jesus Still Matter?
@ColdCaseChristianity
Detective J. Warner Wallace listened to a pastor talk about Jesus and wondered why anyone would think Jesus was a person of interest.
Wallace was skeptical of the Bible, but he’d investigated several “no-body, missing person” cases in which there was no crime scene, no physical evidence, and no victim’s body. He successfully identified and convicted the killers in these cases, even without evidence from the scene.
Could the historical life and actions of Jesus be investigated in the same way? Could the truth about Jesus be uncovered even without a body or a crime scene? In Person of Interest, Wallace describes his own personal investigative journey from atheism to Christianity, as he employs a unique investigative strategy to confirm the historicity and deity of Jesus—without relying on the New Testament manuscripts.

If you would like to support us in creating more content across our different media platforms, we would greatly appreciate any support you can give. Visit jesusandscience.org/ to learn more.

God bless.

~
jesusandscience.org
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Content

There are plenty of academics that have the intellectual chops of c.s lewis and dietrich bonhoeffer, but they have not the impact because they're cowards, it's because what we see in the academy is that the the you see that we're utter cowards.

They will not speak up about the lord.

They will not take a defensive position to defend the faith and you see they did this in nazi germany.

They did this with the soviets.

They went right along with the government because they wanted to hunker down thinking it wasn't going to affect them.

They wanted to get their accolades.

They wanted to get their awards because what happens is in the sciences and- and I know this firsthand- they exclude you from the academies they exclude you from awards, and so people don't want to speak up.

I have people coming to me saying they watch the videos on origin of life.

They say, jim, you have everything everything right.

We agree with you, but don't tell them.

Don't use my name.

Welcome to the science and faith podcast with dr james tour, I'm dr james tour and I'll be your host and you can see my professional credentials at jmtour.com or you can see my social media site at drjamestour.org and this podcast is being being aided with my producer, eric herron of philosopherfilms.com and I'm a practicing scientist.

I love science, but I love jesus more than anything else and uh if you do not believe in the physical resurrection of jesus christ, this is only for people that do not believe this, and you want to hear why I believe in the physical resurrection of jesus christ, you can send me an email to tour at drjamestore.org and I'll be glad to set up a session with you by zoom and and I'll.

Tell you why I believe in the physical resurrection of jesus christ, and with that backdrop, let me introduce to you our our uh guest for today.

It's jay warner, wallace uh, welcome jim thanks.

So much for having me, I gotta tell you something dr tour um.

It's so important, I think, for people to realize that it is reasonable to believe in the physical resurrection of jesus of nazareth, yet still uh be able to explore science.

As a scientist, I think a lot of young people think these are two mutually exclusive notions.

You can do one or the other, but you can't do both.

Can you and that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited to talk to you today? Well, thank you.

Thank you.

I'm glad to have you here.

Let me tell some of our.

Let me tell our guests something about you.

So jay warner wallace who goes by jim, is a nbc dateline featured cold case, homicide, detector, detective and he's a popular speaker, and he travels all over and speaking he's uh he's part of uh talbot school of theolo theology, which is a part of biola university, southern evangelical seminary, and he serves as a senior fellow at the coulson center for uh the christian worldview uh.

He he's done a lot of writing.

He has several several popular books.

Cold case.

Christianity is probably the one he's best known for, but he's also done a lot of tv work and solved a lot of crimes, cold cases that things where there's there's no body there there's nobody left, there's no no witnesses and he's able to to find the killers and and get them prosecuted.

So uh just really good to have you here today, jim well glad to be with you.

It's been a fun watching your career as well.

We got a chance to meet.

If you remember at a conference I did in texas and I thought at the time I knew about you and somebody mentioned.

Oh did you know there's a guy named dr james torch and I'm in the audience I'm like.

Are you kidding me? I know who that is, and so they brought you back backstage.

So I could just because I wanted to meet you yeah.

As a matter of fact, you know you're in my book you're in the chapter on science um, so there's there's a drawing in which you're part of the collection of scientists in the current generation that are christ, followers who are making a huge impact on science, the kind of the all-star hall of fame of scientists.

So I'm just glad to get a chance to do this with you today.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate it and I just want you to know.

I got a copy of your book and uh um and I've.

I've read this twice now I read it, and, and so I'll tell you on the first sitting, I read this book in 24 hours in under 24 hours, and that was still going about my normal day.

It wasn't like I had a a full day off, I mean so it is a real page turner once you get started, you're like wow.

I didn't know this, so I learned a ton from your book and I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about sure.

I'm so glad all right, all right so so tell us when, when you say that uh uh you can, you can uh, prove the existence of jesus and his life and his teachings.

Even if you didn't have the new testament, what on earth do you mean well, okay, so I imagine this thought experiment where some evil future regime has destroyed every new testament and been successful.

So now there is no new testament, manuscript anywhere there's no printed new testament.

All of these things have been utterly destroyed and removed from from the face of the planet.

Well, what could you would that be enough in and of itself to eradicate jesus from human history? Is it possible that this guy jesus of nazareth had the kind of impact that was so deeply entrenched that his fingerprints remain to this day and the story of jesus could be completely reconstructed from the most unlikely corners and nooks and crannies of human culture? Well, it turns out that that's the kind of impact that jesus had so when we're looking at that we're trying to say well look is: why would this guy have that kind of impact and what's the level of his impact and to what degree can the story of jesus be reconstructed from that impact? That's what we're trying to do in this book.

So I think one of the questions that I used to get from a lot of college students in college campuses.

When we do talks, there was okay look.

So if jesus is god, wouldn't you expect there to be more than just these four obscure little gospels in the first set? Well, it turns out yeah.

I would expect more I'd expect.

There would be a huge ripple effect on history if jesus was in fact who he said he was, but did you realize that there is that huge impact and I think for a lot of our young people um we're just not being taught anymore about the impact of jesus.

As a matter of fact, you know, aside from a few of you who are doing science publicly, a lot of historic scientists.

If you look at their biographies, their religious identity has been completely scrubbed, so you would not not know if they were believers in anything based on the historical record anymore, when in fact these were not just believers, they were christian believers, christ, followers who wrote deeply about jesus in their personal diet in their personal journals and their letters to each other in books.

They even wrote about jesus, yet you wouldn't know it from the public history we have.

So that's what this book tries to do is to kind of restore some of that right and, and so in this book person of interest um.

You start with this, and and again I didn't know any of this, so you think I'd know this.

I didn't know any of it.

You start with with what you call uh the cultural fuse jesus, the average ancient, and you talk about writing the alphabet, greek transportation, roads, uh, toleration of religion.

Why was to tell me how this was the perfect time for jesus to have come based on these cultural features? Yeah, when we investigate nobody murders, we don't have any evidence from the crime scene.

This guy kills his wife.

He says that she ran away.

He just he successfully destroys her body and then we're like okay, I don't have a crime scene.

I don't have a body 30 years later, there's not a single piece of property booked into evidence.

I got nothing.

How do I make a case like that? Well, we tell the jury that, on the day that that this this person vanished.

If this is a murder that was a bomb that was detonated, but that bomb had a fuse that burns slowly to the detonation and after it explodes there's shrapnel and debris everywhere.

So we're going to make the case to the jury from basically just the fuse and the fallout of the timeline.

Well, the same thing can be done for jesus, even if there was no evidence from the new testament, diffuse and fallout would be enough, and one aspect of that fuse is just the culture of empires, the history and the rise and fall of empires and governments that lead up to what we now call the first century.

It wasn't always called the first century as a matter of fact, it wasn't the first century.

Why are we calling it that? Well because something something a bomb went off in that period of history that initiated the common era? And so the question is: what is the fuse that's burning up to this? Well, one of those fuses is cultural.

Is the fact that the roman empire sets into place and leverages a series of events that occur before the roman empire that then make for the appearance of jesus to have an explosive reaction? Culturally? In other words uh, you know the roman empire leveraged the etruscan alphabet made it common to the empire, which was the largest governed body of on the entire planet of of lands of nations of people groups that were all part of the roman empire.

Now they were sharing the etruscan alphabet, they were speaking uh coined a greek, a a a spoken greek language.

They were using technology by this time on papyrus.

You know, if you were writing with pictographs on clay thousand years earlier, you're going to have a hard time.

Communicating, for example, the sermon of the mount with just pictographs, and it won't travel well if it's on fragile clay or carved in stone.

So it turns out having an alphabet that can be written on.

A papyrus is a huge advantage, but the romans even had a period of time in which they controlled so much that they were quelling all of the wars that had been very, very much a part of human history prior to the roman empire.

This is called the pax romana, a 200 year period of peace and in that period of peace, the money that you would typically spend for wars.

You are now building infrastructure with it, so more roads, tunnels, bridges were built during this period, the same roads and tunnels and bridges that paul walked to spread the gospel in the first century.

Those roads weren't even available many of them to paul until the romans put those roads in place.

So it turns out the timing of that fuse that opens up a window of peace in which the infrastructure is now in place, even a postal service.

These are the kinds of things that were then used by people within the empire to communicate the truth of what jesus did and said, but that wasn't available even 500 years earlier.

That's a window of opportunity that comes really during the pax romana, and so that's what we're trying to do in the book is to show how, when paul says in galatians that jesus that god sent his son in the fullness of time.

What does that mean? Well, this is part of what it means, and- and this is great I was just visiting a bible, museum and- and the curator of that museum was my host and she was showing me through this and I said to her: did you know that that this had to be the perfect time? Because now they had paper, they could begin to write on these parchments.

They could begin to to write on these and transfer this and it wasn't brittle, and it was the perfect time- and I learned all this from your book and she thought I I knew so much, but I just read one book about about the the the toleration of of religion.

How did that play into this cultural yeah? If you? Actually, if you just did a search all the wars between people groups prior to the roman empire you'll be amazed at how often humans were in the business of killing other humans and when they would do that, they often had little or no tolerance for their culture for their religious system.

So, like a group would come in if they'd, if they conquered you, they would basically annihilate all of the people who believe certain things and all those myths would then be vanished.

Vanquished from the kingdom and off you go to the next set of history.

Well, the romans were wise enough to know that, as they conquered these different people groups, it would be wise, at least initially to allow these people groups to retain some of their culture, including the gods they worshipped.

As a matter of fact, the romans were pretty pluralistic about this.

They had no problem even embracing some of the gods of other people groups.

They would just change the names this.

This would happen within the roman empire at least initially.

Now, the only of course the only uh rub was that they expected these people groups then to bend their knee to the roman pantheon of gods, and it wasn't really until they were.

It was clear to them that the christians wouldn't do that that christianity faced the kind of persecution it ultimately did, but that initial kind of that view of religious tolerance that would allow each conquered group to retain their gods did work in our favor in the earliest days of the christian movement.

So again, it's just because you happen to be in this kind of setting with this kind of empire that has this kind of technology and this kind of an approach toward conquered people groups that really set the stage for the blossoming of christianity yeah.

That's that that that was all new to me and it.

It just really struck me that this and we're going to see a thread, as I just run down through your book, the the perfect timing of god.

The perfect timing of for jesus is coming, and so you say it's also the the it's the right time.

Spiritually.

The expectations are right.

You have this, this chapter jesus, the copycat savior.

Why was this the right time spiritually and this whole idea of expectations- and you actually gave an example in your book of when you were you were you were you were not in uniform? You were dressed like I don't know you had long, hair or something and and the expectations were wrong, and so you couldn't even get information from from the person reporting the crime yeah.

It turns out that when the expector meets the ex, when the expected rather meets the expectations of the expectors, you get a better result.

This is also true for pretty much anything if you expect a restaurant to be really good and you get there, it's okay, but it's not really good.

Well, then, your expectations have now caused you to have a you know, less satisfaction than you would have if you had very low expectations to begin with.

Well, it turns out that if you look at all of the myths of ancient people groups when they think about the nature of god, they create gods with certain sets of common expectations.

You, for example, if you think that god is super powerful, you expect him to have superpowers and ancient myths.

Gods of ancient myths do have miraculous ability to perform miracles, which why would you be surprised, that's the expectation of the ancients.

You also will find that many of them share another commonality.

They come into the world in an unexpected supernatural way.

Of course it's different depending on myth, but they all come in in unexpected supernatural ways.

Many of them, for example, can defeat death.

Well, you kind of expect that if there's a god as well, here's my point.

A lot of these ancient mythologies resemble one another, because the people groups have common expectations as humans, designed in the image of god, even those who don't accept god, the god of yahweh of the of the jews.

Well, you still are created in the image of god and you have certain common expectations as a result.

Now, when you get to the time of jesus, imagine if you were the god of the universe who wanted to leverage the common expectations of ancient people groups when they're thinking about god.

This is what paul is talking about on mars hill in acts.

Chapter 17., you people are pretty religious, but I'm here to tell you who the real god is because you've imagined certain things.

He even quotes one of their poets, but these things are not actually true of god.

It turns out that the ancient myths have about 15 commonalities that I've identified in the book.

No one's got more than ten.

No one.

Myth has got more than ten of these.

No one myth I could find has less than six, but between six and ten of these attributes, depending on the myth and they're all different versions of those attributes.

Until you get to jesus and then with jesus of nazareth, only jesus has all 15 expectations of the ancients embodied in one person.

Why would god do it that way? Well, the story I use in the book is that yeah I was working undercover and I was simply trying to get a report from some victim of a burglary and I drove over my undercover car jumped out because he had called the for the police, but when I got there, I didn't look like the police and he would not pay attention to me until a patrol officer got there he's wearing a uniform he's in a patrol car.

He met the expectations of the expector and, of course, once he saw that he just told that officer everything that officer wanted to know.

He wouldn't help me.

I actually had a seniority on that officer.

I was I'd been in the department longer didn't matter.

I did not meet his expectations.

Jesus meets the expectations of the ancients, but you'd have to come in a certain window of time, because all of those ancient myths are not worshipped that long into the common period.

The common era a.d so you'd have to come within it like, for example, osiris has got there's a limit when the egyptian empire falls or is completely obliterated.

Then the gods of ancient egypt are no longer being worshipped, so you have to come in the overlap when most of the ancient myths are being worshiped simultaneously.

That means there's another window of opportunity which centers right in this first century that if you come and meet the expectations of the ancients, you'll have an explosive connection and explosive reaction.

This is exactly what jesus does so when anyone says well, jesus is he's just a copy of ancient myths.

Well, they are seeing what I'm saying he definitely embodies several common characteristics, but this is not to be leveraged against the reality of jesus.

This is what god leveraged for the reality of jesus.

So this is why I think it's actually not evidence against jesus historicity.

It's actually evidence for yeah, but you know you did so much research for this book.

I mean there's a ton of information.

If people if people are are wondering is, is all of this real, I mean you just read that book and you're like you're overwhelmed and it's it's sort of like you're saying enough already.

You convinced me and a lot does what we're doing.

Honestly.

Dr torres and we're in front of um juries is: we are trying to help them see the cumulative nature, the overwhelming cumulative nature of the case in a way that maybe they hadn't thought of before so we're going to be looking at all kinds of evidence.

Not just you know, I wrote a book on the evidence.

That's in the new testament, that's cold case christianity, so we definitely have good evidence in the new testament.

But in this book I'm trying to offer this thought experiment to get people to look at the evidence.

That's outside the new testament when you put the whole thing together, the case for jesus is overwhelming.

Yeah yeah you talk about in in in you teach us about about how to solve crimes.

You talk about the prophetic views and you talk about evidence.

That's clear versus evidence.

That's cloaked clear versus cloaked evidence tell us what you mean.

Well, so you know I.

I was never impressed with the prophecies that people would say.

Oh there's, over 300 prophecies of the messiah that jesus happens to me.

What are the odds that any one man in ancient history would ever match the 300 or so plus prop? I was never impressed with that approach as a detective, especially as a guy.

I was not a believer if I was 35 so when I first heard these kinds of claims.

I was not a believer, so I would hear them and I would say well show me the verses, show me these these ancient prophecies and, as I read through the ancient prophecies in the old testament, a lot of them just seemed like now.

You're mistaking a couple.

Different forms of these are not clear.

It's not like.

If you read this prophecy in real time, you know five centuries before jesus.

Would you even think this has got this? This prophet, isn't even talking about the messiah? Sometimes it seems like david's just talking about david, like.

Why would you think he's talking about the messiah? Well, it's because people have misunderstood the difference at crime scenes between clear and cloaked evidence.

So if you have well we're getting better and better at this, especially with ancestry dna, if you find dna at a crime scene, you might even be able to identify the suspect before you ever meet that suspect, because that suspect will be identified through his dna if there's a sufficient dna database and that database is growing nationally and internationally.

So that's clear, it'll point we used to do this from the old days with fingerprints.

We've got a pretty decent fingerprint database here in california.

We often could identify somebody in advance of meeting them.

Just from the the dna I mean, I'm sorry the fingerprint evidence at a crime scene.

So what we try to do is um.

That's clear that points to the uh suspect from the onset before you ever knock on his door, but there's other evidence at the crime scene like, for example, a torn piece of a shirt or a button.

That's on the crime scene floor we're not even sure this belongs to the suspect or the victim.

We don't know who, before all we know it could have been lying there before the crime ever even occurred.

It could just be an artifact of the scene and not even part of the crime, but it turns out if I knock on this guy's door- and I see he's, got a torn shirt or he's got a button missing and it matches the one at the crime scene.

Well now that piece of evidence which at the time was cloaked now, it is something we're going to use to identify and make the suspect.

So we have two kinds of evidence that crime scene, one that identifies you from the onset clear and one that identifies you in hindsight cloaks well.

The same thing is true of prophecies.

Many of these prophecies are clearly predicting a messiah that who is to come, and even the jews of today would say: oh yeah, that that verse is messianic.

That's referring to the messiah to come, but there's a lot of verses that the new testament authors use that are kind of like the button they're saying hey.

This may not have been clear from the onset, but it's clearly like a button now that matches the shirt of jesus and it identifies him after the fact.

We would never say well, you know buttons at crime.

Scenes are not legitimate evidence now we would say they're legitimate evidence, but you got to use them.

A certain way same thing is true with these these verses, so I'm now much more receptive to how we could use verses, because I think about them the way we think about evidence at a crime scene, okay, good and then then, how about this? This perfect timing on on prophecy that that there was you talk about this actually quite a lot.

You talk about, there's these prophecies and then there's a there's a window of time where these prophecies converge upon, and jesus came right in in that narrow window of time yeah.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the prophecy, so so one of the prophecies from daniel, I think, is in chapter nine sets the appearance of the messiah between an edict to restore jerusalem and uh the destruction of the temple.

Whenever that's going to happen well, we know when the edict occurred pretty much.

We got a couple of options here and we know when the destruction of the temple occurred.

In 70 a.d, so there's a window there again another window of opportunity.

Well, this is hard to describe.

This is why I have over 400 illustrations in the book.

The book, I hope, reads more, like a graphic novel in the sense that I want people to go illustration to illustration, and when you see it, when you see the overlap, so a lot of what I'm describing is harder to visualize, but if you see the overlap of the cultural fuse, where that pax romana is in place, the overlap of the spiritual fuse where all of those ancient myths are being worshipped simultaneously, the overlap of the prophecy fuse in which daniel says he's going to come in that range of years.

Well, when you put them all together, you only have a smaller window in which all three of the fuses are now lined up, so I could exist in the perfect fuse for the culture, the perfect fuse spiritually and the perfect fuse opening for prophecy.

That period of time is only about a hundred years.

It's from about 29 bc to about 70 a.d, there's the window in which the fullness of time could be realized.

If jesus shows up in that window, then the story of jesus is going to have feet on the roads that the romans have provided.

All the people groups will be worshipping gods that they expect and sound similar to the real god who appears in history and finally, the messiah would come in the predicted time from daniel and sure enough.

That's when jesus arrives right in the middle third of that hundred year period.

So I think, in the end, when I saw that I was like wow, I mean if you didn't know anything about jesus of nazareth.

Personally, no data from the new testament.

You could certainly understand from just the fuse that something big is about to happen, and that's one of the things we're looking at at the fuse and fallout of history.

You know what you did in your book and I really like this.

Is you took a story which is an actual story about how you had solved a cold case crime where there was no body? Nobody witnessed this and it had happened a decade earlier and how you you ended up.

Solving this and spoiler alert.

The guy ends up going to jail, and so you you talk about this fuse, and you said here is the window where the guy had to have killed his wife, because you know she was pregnant.

She was about to do this and because of this, and you you talk about this fuse and yes, your book is just full of of pictures.

I mean it's if you like pictures.

This is an organic chemist.

I love pictures because it tells me things uh much faster than words and and and I've seen your presentation.

So I know that's true.

So that's that's very true.

Go ahead! So yeah, it's just full of all this.

This artwork did.

Did you draw those by the way yeah? So I I was before I was a detective.

You know I didn't know I was going to be.

I didn't really think I was going to be an arc uh and as a detective worker.

As a detective, I was working as an architect in santa monica.

I had a bachelor's degree in design a master's degree in architecture, but my dad was a detective and then a sergeant at our agency, and I just when I was working as a as an architect.

If I'm honest with you, I I felt like my wife and I were together already about eight or nine years, and I felt like it wasn't going to be the kind of job I could do a good job, raising a family with and be a good husband, because it's so obsessive the kind of person I am I'm pretty obsessive, and I knew that the creative side of that job I would probably never come home.

I would probably want, because if you can do 10 more hours and and it's going to reflect your design, it's your baby.

If 10 more hours, it'll be a better design, are you going to give it the 10 more hours? Of course you are.

Are you going to get paid for those 10 hours? No you're? Not so I just knew it was time to make a shift, and so I went into the work of my father, but I yeah I started off as a designer as an artist, so I get to now.

This is about the only way I get to exercise those skills that explains it.

It's it's it's it's filled with this and I I don't know if you know I'll mention this, that I was.

I wanted to be a new york state trooper, but I I'm color blind, so I couldn't get into the academy at the time, and so I was going to go into forensic science and then I took chemistry and then I fell in love with organic chemistry.

Yeah awesome.

Whenever I hear you say that because because I always think that you know my son's a was a biochemist and then he became an anesthesiologist and my second son and when he was in ocam, like everyone knows in med school, like oh kim, is like, like nobody wants to take that class like who in the world, takes an old, chem class and says: oh, I love that was my favorite class.

I think you're, the only person talk about it.

I'll tell you it's digital: either you love it or you hate it.

It's it's it's it's sort of like jesus, I mean, but you talked about also this.

This um dissemination fallout the unfounded fiction that there's just so much written about jesus versus other people.

I mean this, is god come on the scene yeah? And it's so obvious when you look at the overwhelming amount of of information- and you relate this to, for example, elvis presley and uh tell us about this.

Well, I picked elvis because elvis back when I was younger in high school, he passed away when I was in high school and um, I remember uh.

I think I might just graduated high school uh anyway, but I remember at the time it was a big deal and people like my mom were just devastated and yeah this guy had the king is dead.

That's what he's dead and we used to call him the king, uh and and for a lot of people.

Maybe now they don't.

I mean a book has been written about elvis at least one book every year, since he died and sometimes like as many as eight books have been written in a calendar year about elvis presley and they fall into different groups.

People who loved him, people who didn't love him, people who know him, people who didn't know and if elvis, can have this kind of impact based on all the records he said.

Wouldn't you expect something similar at least for jesus of nazareth.

Well, it turns out that's exactly what we see in all the same kinds of categories that you see, people who knew them, people who didn't know people who loved them, people who didn't love them, and you see these different categories as a matter of fact, you're right, no one has been written about.

No historical figure has been written about more than jesus of nazareth.

That's true! Even today you can search the library of congress.

You can even search google books, there's no other historical figure who has been written about more.

As a matter of fact, it's not just in terms of the non-fiction books that have been written.

It's in terms of fiction, it's in terms of even characters like neo on matrix or you could name any number.

I've got a list of them in the book.

It's in the appendix of people who were designed after the broad story of jesus.

His story is so compelling that there's an entire genre of fictional characters in the history of literature, known as christ, figures no screenplays have been written more than jesus and from all of this written data.

If you didn't have a new testament, you have to destroy literally millions and millions of not just now the titles, but remember every time I stood.

This is why jesus comes when he comes.

What want you to think about this? For a second? Could you imagine it's been said to me? Well, no, it would have been smarter for god to send jesus in this generation.

Because look we have this video.

We have all this stuff we're doing on youtube.

We can communicate really really do you actually think that anyone trust what they watch on video anymore, I mean I mean people are gonna, listen to what we're saying and they're gonna.

I mean trust is a hard thing to come by on a social media age, not only that whoever watches this video is not likely to download it into their home they're gonna watch it from the server now what's interesting about books.

Is that every time you sell a book or a book is copied there's a physical geographic location that where that book is occupying so so now it's much harder.

So a hundred thousand views of a of a of a video do not have the historic impact of a hundred thousand printed copies of a book that exists all over the globe.

That's much harder to destroy, and that's why now there are literally millions and millions and millions of volumes of books in which the data about jesus exists and they're, not new testaments they're, the things that people have written about jesus and because they are so he's been written about more than anyone else.

In the history of historical figures, there is more data that can be recollected reconstructed about the jesus story than there is for any other historical care.

As a matter of fact, think about it.

We have a record, let's say you had a record of um, um, tiberius, caesar or or nero you have there's another guy lived in the first century, ruled a nation so nero well just take every piece of data you have about nero.

You will not be able to reconstruct it from history if the foundational documents were removed, but you can remove the foundational gospels and guess what there are movies created in the last decade in which every word of the gospels was part of this was the screenplay.

The gospels were the screenplay who, out what other historical figure can have.

Every known word ever uttered uttered by this person is now a part of a screenplay or a book, or this is the crazy thing about jesus's story.

Is that so much of it has been reiterated by others yeah.

This was all new to me, but you think about it.

This is, god, come in the flesh and he left a witness just printed all over and it's just there and then you talk about the imagination fallout the art, music architecture, film, screenplay he's just everywhere everywhere and- and he even said you can just look at stained glass in churches all over the world, and you see the story of the birth and life of jesus, and this is what you're talking about get rid of the new testament and you still have the story of jesus.

It's all there yeah, I know, we're short of a time is impossible to cover the depth.

I mean frank turk, a friend of ours uh his apologist.

He said to me: why don't you write 10 books because there's 10 chapters here there's no way you're going to be able to deep dive all these chapters.

I said well you're right, but I just I just think that I'm lucky I get a chance to write one book: okay with zondervan, now let alone 10.

So let me just write one book but you're right.

The history of literature, art, music, education, uh, science and world religions.

Uh have been so deeply impacted by the person of jesus that, yes, all of these, in most unexpected ways on education, for example, if you just looked at the top 15 universities in the world today, they were all founded by christ.

Followers, that's not a list of christian universe, that's just the list of anyone's list of top 10 universities in the world.

Well, I've looked at all of them.

It ends up with about 15 and overlap, so 15 they're, all founded by christ, followers and if you went and visited those campuses, guess what you would learn about because they keep their old buildings.

They like their old buildings and those old buildings where they first taught classes, are replete with images, scriptures, engravings of jesus of nazareth.

The story of jesus can be reconstructed just from the campuses and the charters of the top 15 universities.

Today, as a matter of fact, 75 of the top 100 universities in the world were founded by christ's fault.

As a matter of fact, christ followers have founded more modern universities than any, and every other group combined now just think about that.

For a second, the reason why the scientific revolution is dominated by christ, followers I mean dominated in a ridiculous way is because they, for the most part, came out of the universities that christians, founded now, you could say well yeah, but look if, if it's in europe in the 16th and 17th century, come on everyone's a christian in europe in the 16th and 17th century, well, yeah.

But there were more people outside of europe who were not christians that could have initiated the sciences, but didn't there were far more people in asia.

But why is it? The sciences are born and the modern disciplines of science are founded by christ followers during this period of time, more than any other period of time.

It's in what we call christendom in a rich teaching, uh world view for this initiated by jesus, who doesn't tell his disciples, you know, go out and make converts.

No, he says, go out and make disciples teaching them.

What I have.

He inaugurated a teaching culture that ultimately blossomed into the sciences, and this is something that's very unique to the christian worldview and, while others have also participated in this, no one has dominated nobel prize laureates.

No one has dominated winners of scientific awards or founders and fathers of scientific disciplines like christians have do you think our kids know that? No they don't know that as a matter of fact, they think in order to be assigned someone to abandon my christian beliefs, abandon my view of miracles, abandon my view of the resurrection.

Well, the history of science says something different and we have to make a decision for this generation in 2021.

2022 make a decision.

Do we want our kids to pursue the sciences? I hope we raise up all of our kids to pursue the sciences.

We need to own the things that a christian worldview gave birth to, and one of those is the sciences.

It's wonderful.

This is music to my ears.

Now tell me: what is it about christianity? What is it about, god, being distinct from his material creation, which allows us to worship, god and study his creation and look at it as something that's consistent if he had been a willy-nilly god and made, for example, every biological system different? We never could come up with medicines, it's because of the consistency of god and his consistency, as he lays out in the scriptures that that we have something to put our our hook into and study.

Oh, it's absolutely true.

There's I think I find like seven, six or seven different catalysts igniters for sciences based on a christian world, and one of them is simply if you look at the pantheon of gods, that precede yahweh to precede the judeo-christian idea about god and jesus incarnate.

If you look at that pantheon of gods, they are pretty vile.

I mean they have certain common characteristics that are divine, but many most have also a set of fallen characteristics in which they are drunken debaucherous cheaters, who are stealing the wives and spouses of of humans and committing murders and all kinds of terrible acts whenever they're depicted in the pantheon of gods, they're depicted as drunken partiers at a table without any clothes on, and if this is the nature of the divine realm okay, why would we expect in a disorderly bunch of gods there to be order anywhere else? But if the world around us is the product of a single, rational, orderly god who has designed us in his image, why would we even think we have the rational ability to examine the world rationally? It's because we're created in the image of a single, orderly god who is not um? He is he's not detached, but he is.

He is distinct from his creation.

It's not like we can say well what causes this current in the ocean.

It must be, poseidon is mad today.

Well, why would there be lightning on the skies today? Well, it must be.

The zeus is angry about something look.

If, if that's the case, we can't really study what's the point in studying any phenomena, it's all just the direct interaction of gods who are not distinct from the creation.

On the other hand, if god is distinct from his creation and is rational and orderly, we would expect his fingerprints would be rational and orderly, something that we can discover with our rational, orderly minds, since we are created in his image.

This is not an ex one of the things that struck me is.

If you were to look at history- and I just said, I'm- I'm investigating timelines timelines of the fuse and the timelines of the fallout.

So in every single chapter I start off my research by asking the question: what is the timeline of biblical prophecy? What is the timeline of education? What is the timeline of science? Okay? Well, do that timeline you'll, see when the foundational philosophies of science are established in antiquity, you'll see when natural philosophers appear on the scene and see pretty static, pretty static and then suddenly you'll see this natural philosophy blossom into observable, testable science, and then you have the scientific revolution all this explosion of activity.

Well, where do you think jesus stands in that historic timeline right before the explosion? Now? Is that just a coincidence? That's what I needed to know by the way it could have been a thousand years earlier when all that nothing was happening, but no he's actually right before the explosion.

Well, it's because there's something about the christian worldview.

That is the igniter for the explosion, and this is this is just the nature.

Look for example, one simple thing: too um, you know I've all we've all had I had a a structural engineering.

When I was in architecture, we had to do three years of structural engineering.

You know two years of calculus, then you're in a structural engineering.

For three years I had a professor.

His name was bupendra singhal.

He was geeked out on structural engineering.

He loved it and there's lots of good teachers who are just geeked out on their topic, but christians took it another level higher.

They weren't just interested in the topic.

They actually saw their work in the field as an act of worship of devotion, in other words, all the intensity and passion that we would sometimes really often reserve, for god, scientists historically, as christian scientists, have historically exercised in their work as an act of devotion and worship.

This is why people with kepler says that we were just thinking god's thoughts after him.

Well, this is something very different and it raises the bar in a way that simply cannot.

I mean, there's things that you and I will do that are risky that have no monetary value, but we think they are acts of devotion that god has called us to perform.

We all do this.

This is why christians typically serve adopt more, do all the things that are that cost us something because we think hey.

This is what god wants of us.

Well, if you look at your scientific exploration in the same way, well, you are liable to do it at a whole other level that nobody else can rival and that's what you see historically with christians who are working in the sciences and- and you know, if you, if you ask people very often about science and faith and they will grab hold of the story of galileo and they'd, say: look.

The church tried to stop him, but you actually and as many people have have told the true story of what was going on galileo had done some things that really upset the pope.

Although the pope was a big supporter of his before that, and so you really, you really put that story in a correct light, and this is one incident but the incidents but incident, and then you go through and you talk about all the historic scientists that are there that are believers in jesus christ that have affected their field for good and science.

So there is not this dichotomy between science and faith.

I mean the greatest scientists have latched onto this, and this isn't even understood in the academy.

Here in the university, the vast majority of professors today don't even understand this.

They think that christian is foolishness and you were you're very candid about yourself.

You had the same view.

You thought the the christians must be dumb, they're, anti-science right and then it was these sorts of investigations that changed your view.

Yeah there's no doubt about it.

I think that's and I do worry about that, going forward for our own kids.

I think sometimes have we just gotten to the point where we everything is politics, and then politics is like.

I don't want my faith, my religious faith, my theistic beliefs to be entirely politicized, and I also don't want science to become politicized, and I don't want politics to become theism where people treat politics as though it's their their god.

In the end, I think that's part of what's dividing us and what maybe the wedge right, the the age of vaccinations and divergent views on whether we should be that all that stuff I get that it almost feels like well, if you are trying to use you're trying to weaponize science against our view, then- and I see some christians doing this- like they see that that the wedge issue has now become science.

So therefore we're not going to christians can't embrace that's that's the tool of the enemy, no, no, no! No! No! No! No! No! No! That's! That is this.

This is simply the fingerprints of god in his creation, who better to be looking for the fingerprints of god in his creation than people who actually believe, there's a god.

I mean this is what gets me.

We cannot listen.

What I discovered in all that research about um, natural philosophers and scientists over the ages is that another huge contributor to the sciences for a window, a period of time which they call the golden age of islam, was islam.

They contributed greatly from about the 7th century to about the 13th century.

Maybe that's the golden age of islam, but then their in the interaction in the sciences drops off and why well for largely theological reasons, look folks.

We can make the same mistake.

We ought not make that mistake.

We ought to remember that we have had look in the end.

Our culture is shaped, it's not by politics.

It's never been shaped by politics.

That's way too far down field.

Let me tell you how culture is shaped: literature, art, music, education and science, the five things I talk about in this book that christians have owned.

Historically, if you surrender those five things, then you're just following everyone else's version of culture, because it turns out that what we talk about in the arts in literature and music and education- that's the stuff that the next generation assumes that becomes their baseline.

So we have to innovate in the arts, in literature, in music, in education and in science, because that's how the future culture is going to be shaped.

So I just I hate to see us surrender.

That's why I think jesus does still matter.

That's why I wanted I got about halfway through this book and you know typically, publishers see who you are as a detective and they want the subtitle to be something like you know a cold case detective.

Does this blah blah blah? I said: no.

This subtitle needs to be very, very specific.

This is why jesus still matters in a world that rejects the bible, because you may not think christianity is true, but the stuff that you think is true, the stuff that you think is important.

If you're like me as an atheist, it was those things it was.

You know: science, education, art, literature or music.

It turns out those are standing on the shoulders of jesus and his followers.

We cannot surrender those those things matter.

Tell me about health care, hospitals, yeah- and I I put this in the science chapter and, to be honest, better tour- I I could have done a whole chapter just on on on health care, but here's why I didn't separate it out: um, no one's done more in terms of health care and and serving the poor.

We have a master who set as his example when he was with us, the the the care for those who were deaf and blind and lepers, and people who were sick and raising the dead.

I mean no one is the great physician more than jesus of nazareth and that example has been followed by his disciples every every generation after jesus now, I could easily have shown the huge, unparalleled impact that jesus and his followers have had on medical care.

It would have been absolutely overwhelming, but I wanted to do two things with each one of these chapters.

Number one show his impact number two be able to reconstruct the story of jesus from the impact.

Now here's what's interesting, there are some of the oldest hospitals in the history of hospitals were founded by christians, but because medical technology changes those buildings get torn down, rebuilt torn down rebuilt because they're constantly changing and shifting now they've got surgical rooms.

Now they've got surgical.

Centers now we're doing chemotherapy of a certain nature.

Now we've changed this to radiation so that the facilities are always changing, so you might have a site in europe.

In which the oldest hospital that ever has been built formed by christians is still at that location, but it's now in its 20th building and it's unlike universities that love their old buildings because they show the prestige of the university.

They keep their old buildings with all of those images of jesus.

This isn't always true for hospitals.

So what I did was took the physicians who wrote about jesus and who are the fathers and mothers of these scientific disciplines like radiology, the inventor of the mri, the inventor of the x-ray.

These are all christians and I simply put those folks in the science chapter, because those those writings now still tell us, but unlike the universities, the hospital buildings go away, and so it's hard to reconstruct the story of jesus from the hospital.

Even with that, though, you talk about how how christians have started more hospitals by far than any other non-governmental organizations combined.

Well, I want you to look at it.

This way.

Look at this education for a second buddhism has got a pretty big head start on christianity, hinduism huge head start on christianity.

Look at the number of facilities, educational facilities, even modern universities, founded by those two groups, put them all together: they're 10 times smaller than the number of universities founded by christians, there's just a it's a world view that is grounded in a teaching principle.

If you want to raise up disciples and teach them about jesus, that means you're going to be using the book.

We are people of the book we're going to be teaching people the book- oh, but they don't read.

Well, okay, we're going to teach you how to read! Oh, but we don't have an alphabet, well we're going to create an alphabet and then teach you how to read, and it turns out that process of teaching we're also going to teach you how to care for yourself we're going to teach you vocations, we're going to do so.

We end up with this huge multi-generational teaching culture that starts very early as a matter of fact of the oldest books in christendom.

You have the four gospels one of the next oldest books you have in all of christian christendom is a book called the dedicate or the teaching of the twelve disciples to the nations, and this is a book that was used simply to catechize new christians.

One of the very first books in christendom is a book.

That's used to teach young christians.

This is the kind of culture that jesus established.

So why would you be surprised, then, that monasteries, then cathedral schools, then uh? Universities are reflecting this world view, yeah and and- and what you had also mentioned, is how how um jesus is affected across faiths he's mentioned in different faiths he's and he didn't take on the image of other faiths.

He was who he was.

He didn't say he he he.

He spoke from himself.

He said this, but now everyone following him has tried to incorporate him into the into what was going on yeah if you're, a religious yeah, if you're a religion that began after jesus like islam, or ahmadiyya madaya, uh islam, ahmadiyya muslims, for example, or baha'I, or even like new age believers that are more harder to kind of nail down the set of beliefs or hare krishna whatever it may be.

If you come after jesus, you are going to probably incorporate jesus he's on your holy pages of your scripture, as he is in the quran as he is in the writing of baha'u'llah.

The master of behind the baha'I faith, but what's interesting, is even in those worldviews that preceded jesus, hinduism, buddhism, the worship of addis and mithras and heracles these religions modified or mentioned jesus in some way, their their leaders will venerate jesus and and say that hey under buddhism there's a place for jesus as a as a wise, enlightened teacher on his way to buddhahood.

There are, in other words, each system says you know what jesus is it's okay over here we we like jesus over here.

We see the value in jesus over here.

Meanwhile, jesus never returned the favor, he comes after indra and hinduism and buddhism and addison heracles and mithras.

Yet he never says he says.

Instead, I am the only way.

I am the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except through me.

He doesn't return the favor to anyone else.

Yet everyone else, if you're in those of those I actually show in the book a map maps of the places in the world where hindus know something about jesus from their leaders.

Buddhists know something about jesus from their leaders.

Muslims know something about jesus from their scripture.

Baha'is knows something about jesus from their scripture.

Ahmadi muslims know something about jesus from their scripture.

Here's my point is you can reconstruct the outline of the jesus story from non-christian religions.

You can't ex reconstruct the story of buddha in the new testament.

No, as a matter of fact, jesus is very exclusive in what he says, which makes sense right.

Um there might be two people named jay warner wallace in my town, but if you want this one, the directions to the other guy's house are: I'm not gonna get you here.

It's only one set of directions.

Now you might come out from a number of different ways, but this is the house where you have to land ultimately good and then, if you said well yeah, but will any jay warren or wallace do well if the other guy is different age and different profession and a different background than I am but you're looking for the cold case, detective jay warren wallace.

Well then, this one is going to have to be the one.

That's your target, and so why would you be surprised that if there is a god, a singular god that there be a certain way to get to his house and only, although even somebody else might even bear the same name, but it may not be the one you're looking for, and so that's why? I think, in the end, the fact that jesus is very particular and exclusive shows his high regard for the truth, because that is the nature of objective truth.

Okay, let me ask you one one final question before I begin to wrap this up.

So in your book person of interest, you have a little section on this and I want you to help us out here as a jew.

I found this fascinating.

Why is it that jews don't accept this? If it's so obvious, why is it the jews? Don't accept jesus as the messiah? Well, I'll just tell you that think about it.

Um every world view well, because, first of all, there's three reasons why anyone accepts or denies a truth claim I mean.

Sometimes it is rational.

Sometimes you just say: there's not enough evidence for this, and for people like that, we want to spend some time providing the evidence for why.

We think this is true because they just think there's not enough evidence, but that's a very small percentage.

If you ask me of deniers of any any claim, the other sets of deniers are people who are emotional deniers.

Are not rational, it's emotional they've had a bad experience with christians.

They do not want to bend their knee.

I know my dad was a pastor and he was a jerk.

I've heard this kind of story.

So therefore I want nothing to do with this.

Well, that's not about the evidence for or against something.

That's just about your response to an experience.

You have that's more emotional, but then there's the third group, which I actually think is the largest group of anybody who denies a truth claim and that are not rational, not emotional.

They are volitional deniers.

They don't want it to be true, because I want you to think about before I was a christian.

I had a god in my life, his name was jim wallace.

I got to choose everything I wanted to do.

I never had to bet you asked me.

How am I doing I'm doing great? How do I know ask me, I'm the only judge of what's great in my life, I, in other words it's really easy to throw the the dart against the wall and then just go.

Go draw the bullseye wherever the dart lands.

That's what I was doing for 35 years.

I got to set my own bull's-eye.

I always hit it, but now there's a bull's-eye before I start and I didn't draw it and I could never get close to it, because the bull's-eye is the perfection of jesus.

So there's a lot of denial that I think is more about.

Do.

Am I willing to bend my knee now when it comes to jewish believers? Looking for number one, I think that there's two things there I see number one.

They typically will interpret those verses to mean something about the nation of israel rather than a single person, or their expectation is for a messiah that is really going to restore the power of the nation of israel and the saving that they're thinking about is a military saving.

It's a governmental saving, it's a power saving, it's not a spiritual saving that jesus provides.

So I think that's part of it, but I want you to also consider the idea that I know this because I got mormons in my family any view that says if I simply do these things, whether they be the ten commandments, whether they be the principles of mormonism wherever they may be, then I can save myself with my own good works.

That's a very powerful drive on the part of humans that allow them to separate from other people who aren't doing that and I think a lot of us um.

If you're telling me that anyone has access to this salvation uh, even though I've lived a certain way.

My whole life you're telling me that I'll be no more saved than the person who's lived like a bum and now today truly repents and gives his life to jesus.

There's a lot of folks who just can't stomach that opportunity.

Grace is difficult to swallow like simon, when jesus goes to simon's house and the woman is now bathing jesus's feet in her in, and he says, and simon says, if he knew who that was.

He wouldn't let her touch him and he knows simon's thoughts.

He says simon.

She knows how much she needs to be forgiven, for you didn't even wash my feet when I came in.

He who does not think he has to anything for which to be forgiven is the least forgiving and that's the problem with workspace faiths is that we often think we've earned it and we're not gracious to those who we don't think have earned.

It was not great yeah yeah that that's interesting, it's a and and uh.

What I've seen as a jew is one is exactly as you've said and paul talks about this in romans, chapter 9, 10 and 11 that they tried to pursue it by works and not by faith.

They thought they could get this.

The other thing is that jews are taught against jesus from a very young age.

The rabbis teach them against jesus, so it is much easier to share with somebody from communist china about jesus than it is with a jew because they they've been taught against jesus.

I want to.

I want to close out by reading some excerpts from your book.

Okay, so people can get an idea here of of of the power of this thing, and so you you say you say uh.

Why then did jesus have more impact than anyone else? Jesus was born in a tiny, irrelevant town in a roman in the roman empire and raised in another small village.

He had to walk from place from one place to the next as an adult he never traveled more than 200 miles from the town where he was born.

He had none of the resources people used today to make an impact, no social media platform, no podcast audience, no clever videos, no website.

He didn't even have the resources used in the first century to make an impact.

He never held a political office.

He never ruled a nation.

He never led an army, he never authored a book.

His family was insignificant.

The locals suspected he was an illegitimate son.

His mother was a poor peasant woman.

His father couldn't afford much.

Jesus didn't receive any expensive education.

Never married, never had children never owned a home of his own and he didn't possess much more than the clothes on his back.

As an adult, his own brother was suspicious of his ministry, a work that ended after just three short years.

Public opinion turned against him.

Most of his followers abandoned him.

One disciple betrayed him.

Another denied him.

He was rejected by the religious hunted by the powerful mocked and unjustly persecuted by his enemies.

He suffered an unfair trial, was publicly humiliated, brutally beaten and unduly executed in the most horrific way.

Even then, the few followers who remained had to borrow a grave to bury him.

Yet this is the man who changed history, inaugurated the common era and forever transformed the most important and revered aspects of human culture.

How is it possible that a single man, a man like jesus, could have this impact? I mean, if that doesn't just underscore that this is god, come in the flesh, you've gone to, say he matters, because he inspired more literature than any other person in history, more books, more screen, scripts, more screenplays.

He matters because he was the catalyst for visual arts, inspiring painters, sculptors in every generation, genre style and nation.

He matters because he's been the topic of more songs, hymns symphonies than any other figure in history.

He matters because his teaching set a standard for moral reform and initiated world view that led to the flourishing of education.

He matters because he established a worldview that encouraged exploration and motivated motivated his followers to investigate the natural revelation of god, resulting in an explosion of scientific discovery.

He matters because his influence on spiritual seekers and religious thinkers is so overwhelming that every major world religion either mentions or merges him into their theology.

Jesus had that kind of impact, the impact we would expect from god, the fuse and the fallout of the common era simply confirmed the existence and deity of jesus, as described in the new testament.

That is a summation jim of of of of this book by a person of interest by jay warner wallace.

I would.

I would uh, really encourage you to take a look at this.

If you have, if you have uh students, if you have young people going to college, show them this book to give them ammunition, because there's so much documented in here so many pieces, he doesn't just say a lot of scientists believe he just gives gives lists of them.

He gives list after list and some people may say wow.

It was just just overwhelming yes and it's what you need it's what we need to equip our young people, it's what we need to people need for people to see that god has come to this earth and he has affected human history.

This is a tremendous book.

Thank you for joining us thanks.

So much for having me, dr tour, I can't tell you how much respect I have for you you're one of the only couple people I reached out to or scientists who I wanted to endorse the book.

So I really appreciate your work as you know, and your endorsement of this book.

Oh thank you and god bless you, my friend now you too brother.

Thank you.

Okay, eric, I think that's a tank huh I mean this is powerful.

I mean the way you ended.

That book I mean I just read that over and over again I mean it's, it's just exciting.

It's just exciting.

I appreciate you saying it.

I feel like um, it's one of those things too, is, if you there's not a single example anywhere in history of a fictional character, who's done this! That's why I think this is a good good way to look at and say.

Well then, this reasonable to infer he's, not a fictional character, because what's the example of anybody else, who's done that.

But it's also true that there's not a single mortal who's done that had that kind of impact on history.

So that's a reasonable inference that he's not a mortal there's something about jesus that I think you can make a case for the historicity indeed jesus from, but but I'll.

I just don't like there's several books back here that I have used.

You know to research, this book they're just about the impact of jesus, but they don't try to make a case for his deity from that impact, and that's where I thought that I wanted to go that extra step so- and I appreciate you, I hope a lot of you know most christian books to me these days.

Most christian books written today seem to me, like they've, been written in two weeks because they have yeah but yours.

Obviously this is years of of gathering.

It was two years yeah.

It was two years from nineteen from it was two years and they gave me two years to build it, and I had two research assistants and I just gave them strict instructions.

You know like one guy.

His only job was to go through about 950 scientists.

I sent him and tell me because I knew they were fathers of the disciplines.

What are they the father of what's their denomination? Where did they live? What was their discipline and get them in the actual correct order, with the dates of birth and death that that project took that poor guy about two months? Just to get those because it's so hard to find data- and I know we didn't get all the church with all the science fathers, because a lot of these biographies that you find online or in books, they don't talk about their religious beliefs.

So then you're like going okay, so isn't it joe smith? Okay, he was a biochemist okay, great! So now I'm looking up joe smith, biochemist christian, jose, I'm looking doing.

Google searches jewish like trying to figure out you know where, so the groups that are the most impactful are not just christians yeah a lot of christians, but there's a lot of christians historically, but jews actually way outnumber per capita.

The nobel prize in sciences about 30 are jewish, that's not 30 percent of the population.

It's not jewish yeah! It's something like 25 of nobel prize winners, yet the jewish population in the world is, is uh uh about one percent yeah, not even one percent yeah.

That's why? I think that's the more remarkable! That's the more remarkable achievement! But if you look at the judeo-christian worldview, it's up in the you know about 80 percent of all prizes.

Again, this is changing and my fear is that I don't.

This is why I wanted the chapter to have your your picture in it.

Uh, because I wanted.

This is not just a discussion of dead, guys, there's a sense in which oh yeah you're talking about dead guys.

No, no, actually, I'm not talking about dead guys.

We are still in the sciences, but I get it.

This does start to feel like it's we're now such a small minority yeah.

But if you include the sciences of medical sciences, I think the numbers are much higher for us, yeah and- and you know you know it- it's been said that that there are plenty of academics that have the intellectual chops of c s, lewis and dietrich bonhoeffer, but they have not the impact because they're cowards, it's because what we see in the academy is that the you see that we're utter cowards.

They will not speak up about the lord.

They will not take a defensive position to defend the faith and you see they did this in nazi germany.

They did this with the soviets.

They went right along with the government because they wanted to hunker down thinking it wasn't going to affect them.

They wanted to get their accolades.

They wanted to get their awards because what happens is in the sciences and- and I know this firsthand- they exclude you from the academies they exclude you from awards, and so people don't want to speak up.

I have people coming to me saying they watch the videos on origin of life.

They say jim.

You had everything everything right, we agree with you, but don't tell them.

Don't use my name, it's cowards, it's utter powers and because of that they don't affect their generation and the reason why c.s lewis, why why uh um, why dietrich bonhoeffer affected their generation is because they stood up to this bold yeah? Let me off here one last thing: I know your type of time, so I'm just gonna offer one last thing I was listening to a sociologist from china.

Here's what they said they said you know.

Christianity is growing in china under underground at such a pace that they thought.

They predicted that by 2030 that china would have 250 million christians, making it the largest christian nation on planet earth.

Now I want you just to think about that for a second.

What I see in china is a conservative values related to family sexual identity, gender biblical masculinity.

They don't accept, it's not biblical, but it's very much like the biblical versions of these things.

They are more and more conservative.

Their concern is that that that they don't want beta males in china.

They want alpha males in china, so they hold the contradiction.

Values now in that same country, is this movement of conservatism that no one talks about which is christianity.

At some point, it's going to bump heads with the power structure, but isn't it interesting that it turns out that the most conservative nation in the world in the next 30 years might end up being a christian nation called china? I mean that's mind-blowing, isn't it? It is amazing, and I have thought the same thing that the christian community might change that country.

You know I I I try to never go a week without leading somebody to jesus one on one yeah.

I saw you're doing that.

Do you get overwhelmed with requests? I I get a lot of requests but uh um uh.

For those I get a lot of requests from christians, and so I weed those out.

I say if you believe in the physical resurrection, jesus christ, it's not for you, but I mean there's just a woman just at noon today, she's in she's a 65 year old woman in helsinki and uh, and she came to the lord in tears just in tears and uh um this it's it's the second person and then there was there was another one uh just yesterday, just just on sunday.

So today's monday and one today but the most, the easiest people to lead to the lord are the chinese.

The chinese are the easiest they're.

So accepting of this, I see them one day after another after another.

The chinese are coming to the lord.

If, if, if I have a weapon or something it's filled up with chinese, why do you think that is uh? I don't know, but I'll give you a guess, is that the chinese tried to throw throw god out of china.

They tried to just say none of this, and god is saying: okay I'll get you and he's just reacting back, because what god does is he says you want to throw my children in into into the the nile river I'm going to drown your whole army in the red sea, I'm going to get you back in spades, and this is what god seems to do.

He says you didn't give the rest to the land, I'm going to put you in in babylon for 70 years and give that land 70 years of rest.

You didn't take care of the poor, I'm going to put you in babylon, where you are a a refugee and you're going to be poor.

You you wanted, I you wanted to worship idols, I'm going to put you in babylon, where there's more idols than any other place in the world, and so god is just saying you want to throw me out.

I'm just going to give you christians till it's coming out of your teeth: yeah yeah! That's so interesting, my gosh, if you like the content, that's coming out on this channel, I've not monetized it in the sense of advertising, but if you want to give- and you want to help support it, you can give to a 501c3.

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You.