10 Questions with Mike Winger SKEPTICS EDITION (Episode 21)

Skeptics and doubters you are so very welcome here you'll be treated with respect and dignity and your questions will be taken seriously and starting off we're digging in as you guys are loading your questions in the live chat and and this just might be by the way this might be kind of a mega Edition maybe we'll see how it goes if I have the stamina to keep going and if we get enough questions um of the Q&A because I really Want to answer a lot of skeptic questions it's just on my heart to do that

today hopefully that's the Lord leading me in that and I I really um wanted to kick off with something I thought would be very interesting and helpful educational for people which is the topic of Bible contradictions so on Facebook someone had sent me this um this thing by the American atheists group this is a website that um has been around for a very long time and let me Let me show you guys what I'm talking about here is the American atheist list of Bible contradictions this is uh the website and the organization started by meline

Murray O'Hare right remember like getting the Bible out of schools and prayer out of schools kind of stuff that was her and the article that we're about to read was written by a well-known atheist guy Frank zindler who's written books about like how Jesus didn't exist he's debated William Lan Craig this Isn't just a hack website although I I'm saying that for a reason not because atheists Skeptics are all hacks or something but because we're going to cover things that are supposedly Bible contradictions they give a list of 15 Bible cont contradictions I'm going to

go through the first seven of them today just I took them right in order just the first seven because 15 was too much for a Q&A even seven is too much probably but we're going to do like kind of a Mega Edition today so here's question number one does the Bible have contradictions more specifically do does this atheist website by well-known uh mateline Murray O'Hare as her organization as well as Frank zindler who wrote the article and it was a was a well-known and respected at least in some circles atheist edited a book on how

Jesus never existed um that that's a whole another topic but does it give you real Bible contradictions so here's the First supposed contradiction it's about the Sabbath day and it's got an Old Testament verse and a new testament verse the Old Testament verse says um Exodus 28 20:8 remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy okay we know that the they were taught to obey observe the sabbath no working on that day um then it would be like a religious day a religious Festival almost a religious observation every single day every single week on Saturday

yet Romans 14:5 They'll say the contradiction is that Romans says one man and it's in King James here esteemeth one day above another another esteemeth every day alike let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind meaning hey it's up to you if you want to observe the sabbath or not is that a Bible contradiction my answer to this is going to be um a story from my childhood when I was a kid and and I promise you this is this is this is Intellectually sound what I'm about to say please hear me out

when I was a kid my mom would tell me be home before the street lights turn on I remember this is one of those rules that you you kind of like have as a kid okay we didn't have cell phones you didn't have I didn't have like a watch I was watching but everybody noticed when the street lights turned on so be home before the street lights come on if I got home and those lights had already turned on I was in Trouble and when I got older all of a sudden I didn't have that

rule anymore why is it now is that a contradiction when my mom's like go out have fun no time limit on when you come home I'm like 18 or something um versus when I was nine and I had to be home by by the time the street lights turn on is that a contradiction or is it merely a different circumstance in setting well clearly The Exodus passage and the Romans passage are written over a Thousand years apart there's a significant difference between the two we should at least consider the possibility but that's actually what the

Bible declares it declares that this is this is a a matter of growing up um in Galatians chapter 3:23 and I'm going to be very quick on this because I have so many things we're going to cover well this is is not ideal let me get let me get my software loaded back on the screen here I'm sure I can get it going it's just going to take a moment I I appreciate your guys patience while I figure this out because it's important to me that we actually put the text of scripture on screen um

it's probably this one this is just going to take a second um oh there we go did I do it all right okay text of scripture on screen that's more like it so here it says um speaking of like the difference between the law When We Were Young or before Christ shows up before we have that maturity that we have in Jesus Christ versus after what Jesus shows up so before Faith came we were held captive under the law imprisoned until the coming Faith would be revealed meaning it was for a time and a season

so then the law was our guardian or some translations I like put this tutor t t o r as an a training a training person a teacher someone who educates you and teaches you About important truths but you you eventually take the training wheels off so the the law the Sabbath these things are like the training wheels they're educating teaching us about God you come to Christ and these things are not necessary although they are optional for Christians if they want to if they want to follow them in order that we might be justified by

faith so it says now that faith has come we're no longer under a guardian or a tutor because in Christ We're all like sons and and there's a whole bunch of theology here in Galatians I won't get into let me just say this Christians have known this forever since the very beginning of Christianity it's the foundation of the statement in Romans about like hey one can observe the sabbath or not that idea that concept is based on the idea that Jesus fulfills the law so that we now say hey it's its goal has been accomplished

the command to observe the Sabbath is fulfilled in Christ some Christians say hey Christ is my Sabbath he is he is my rest and he is the promise of my future rest in God um so yeah this is not not really a contradiction this is just a a flattening out of the Bible so that we're not acknowledging different times or different covenants and that's not a convenient apologist thing for those who might be thinking it is this is actually a core Christian doctrine thing it's Like the foundation kind of of Christianity is this whole idea

of a New Covenant in Jesus and how that does change things for people um so the law was good but it was a school Master it was like training wheels to teach you lessons you don't need the wheels anymore you could leave them on won't you know it's not going to hurt you exactly but but if you pretend you need them then you're actually you're actually saying something negative about Ultimately about Christ Christ's ability to accomplish what he did so that's the first the first thing let's get into the second supposed contradiction and this is

next one on the list from Frank zindler here the permanence of Earth the permanence of Earth is this a Bible contradiction that the The Book of Ecclesiastes says the Earth abideth forever and I can add several other verses in other parts of the Bible that that say the same kind of thing the the Earth abides for forever it sticks around forever but 2 Peter 3:10 it says the elements shall melt with fervent heat the Earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up and you could keep reading in second Peter seems to

indicate a destruction of the earth and everything around us up in the skies and all that um and then they're sort of recreated there there's like a this destruction Recreation moment and there's a new Heaven and and a new Earth Where in righteousness dwells so yeah that's a that's a big deal is that a Bible contradiction um the word that's used for forever which I have an image of I thought I put this image boy I'm I'm really behind the ball I appreciate you guys kindness to me I should have had this together no excuse

but let me let me get it going I want to put it on your screen the the image that I'm going to show you right now this is um Basically it's it's a Hebrew resource okay the word for forever here in Ecclesiastes it it doesn't mean um for time unending okay that's not the singular definition of the word the word itself can mean a long duration it could mean Antiquity like distant time it can also mean Futurity or going far far into the future now it can mean eternality like this thing never ever changes but

it's also used of just something that happens for a long time just for for for Generations that go by and that of course is actually the context of Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes compares the existence of the Earth to the lifespans of human beings and so there's a there's a context that's there um let me put it on screen for you a generation it says goes and a generation comes that's generations of humans one goes another comes but the Earth remains forever meaning the Earth is many generations Long that's an easy simple understanding of Ecclesiastes it doesn't Bend

Hebrew over backwards it doesn't do anything like that um so there's one example there of explaining it but there's also this right when Ecclesiastes was written there's also around the same time period Psalm 102 being written and it says they will perish speaking of the of of the creation the created world and everything they will perish but you will remain they will all wear out like a Garment you will change them like a robe and they will pass away but you are the same and your years have no end God is eternal Eternal he's like

big s Eternal and then the Earth has it it's it's long lasting by comparison to humans but of course it has an eschatological future of being destroyed and remade that's actually an Old Testament teaching that's not just a new testament one you can look at Isaiah 34:4 if you want more on that or Isaiah 51 verse 6 two other passages you can look at so Psalm 102 um also gives us kind of a a a second possible reconciliation of the idea that the Earth is forever yet it's going to be destroyed and that is um

that they will be changed the Earth this the the sky the Earth all of this stuff will be changed transformed so there's a sense in which the earth the earth lasts eternally if you include its so like okay let me give You an example I'm I'm going to die but I'm also I can't die while I say this I mean it in different senses I mean I my myself my personhood and my being will live forever this body will be destroyed and on Christian theology Christ will raise it back up but he not only will

raise it up he'll change it it'll be a new body so in a sense I can't really die I'm going to continue existing forever but this body will go through a change a new life so I will have an Eternal body but this'll be different slightly than the one I'm in currently now that's Christian theology if you don't believe it that's up to you but you can understand the concept at least that the Earth will be changed in a sense it remains forever in a sense it is destroyed because there is both destruction and remaking

there is a temporal end of this stage of the Earth's being and then there is a future unending experience and that that if Nothing else is internally consistent and I think it answers that question you guys are loading your questions in the live chat right now I'm going to take as many as I can today I'm not going to limit it to 10 I will hopefully go longer if if if if I feel like my mental focus and stamina is there I don't want to I don't want to do Joe Biden on you I shouldn't

have said that um at any rate the next the next supposed uh I'm not sure guys don't Don't read more into that than I said but any right here is uh the next one seeing God now this one I'm going to move pretty quick on okay um this one says in Genesis 3230 I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved yet in John 1118 we have a statement that nobody has ever seen God no man hath seen God at any time I actually answered this very recently and I answered it in

detail like where I spent more than three minutes on it like I Really went into some detail so I'm going to link below that video cuz I don't want to repeat the same content over and over again but it happens to be in this contradiction supposed contradiction so down below there's a link to a video on on 10 questions episode 6 where I answer this in detail first question click the link it'll pop right up I'm going to move on then to number four supposed contradiction and uh today we're taking questions from uh Atheist Skeptics

just non-christians in general all those questions are welcome if you're a Christian but you have a skeptical question you have a challenge to the Christian faith this is also the right place to put it here and I ask that everybody be very respectful to those even if they're rude to you be respectful to people in the comments please as a representative of Christ okay Human Sacrifice uh this is a big one and which is why I'm so little on Your screen now Leviticus 18:21 suggests that human sacrifice is wrong it says Thou shalt not let

any of the seed of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God I'll add more verses to this to show that the Bible says Human Sacrifice is wrong but Frank inler writes in his little article here he says in judges though the tale of jeffa who led the Israelites against the ammonites it should say ammonites Not amonites just a tyo there is being told being fearful to defeat this good religious man sought to guarantee Victory by getting God firmly on his side so he prayed to God

quote and here's the prayer from from jeffa if Thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands then it shall be that who whatsoever cometh forth out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the children of Ammon shall surely be the Lords and I will offer it up for a burnt offering so he's about to go fight the enemies of Israel he's like hey God I'm I'm going to give you this deal to guarantee Victory it doesn't say that God agrees to the deal and

doesn't there's none of that commentary in there but but he definitely makes this offer then Fring zindler writes the terms were acceptable to God that's his commentary that's not in the text remember he is supposed to be omniscient and know the Future so he gave Victory to jeffa and the first whatsoever that greeted him upon his glorious return was his daughter as God surely knew would happen if God is God and notice he always puts God in lowercase this is this is like a cheap insult to um to Christians it it really is because there's

a reason why definitionally you uppercase God to just Define God as uh the monotheistic understanding of God in in in in judeo-christian views uh but Anyway they're going to change the letters of words here because the mockery is in is intentional um I guess I didn't put I didn't capture all of this on your screen but I'm reading to you what he wrote on the website and there's a link to the website down below if you want to check it out so his daughter comes out then uh zenler goes on and says true to his

vow the general made a human sacrifice of his only child to God and he quotes Judges 11: 29-34 so Jeff is like hey God give me Victory I'll kill the first thing that comes out of my house I'll give it a burnt offering for you that that burnt offering is typically fully consumed with fire destroyed um then he gets Victory comes back his daughter comes out and he's like oh you've ruined my life like I can't believe it's it's you and so he's like hey that's a contradiction um I just Want to say speaking like

realistically that this is not a contradiction this is a moral Pro a moral dilemma right you could say the Bible here is endorsing Human Sacrifice now I disagree with that but I'm I'm saying like if you wanted to bring an accusation that would fit the text it would be it at least it would it doesn't the text really but you get what I mean right if you want to bring an accusation that was more relevant to the text it would be um the Bible here Supports Human Sacrifice kill your kid to get military victory that

would be the thing I would expect someone to say instead it's called a contradiction see contradictions are two things that can't both be true at the same time um so God said don't kill your kids and then in judges jeffa does this thing and God Appears to give him the victory is not strictly a contradiction it could be that just God says hey don't do that um but hey you already did it I I guess I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll help you out but that requires an assumption that I think is wrong which is assuming

in the text that God is approving of what Jeff the did and he's responding to this offering of the daughter with military Victory none of the other judges in the Book of Judges read the whole book none of them give these offerings to God in order to gain Victory not a single time jeffa does this simply on his own it it could easily Simply Be commentary on Jeff the going against God right God not approving this is actually consistent with the Book of Judges read the whole Book of Judges like i' I haven't done it

online but I've taught verse by verse took my time going through the Book of Judges I learned a lot one of the things I learned is that the Book of Judges has a theme in it that the judges are morally compromised individuals it's very rare that one of them is not in sin right that doesn't have major major sin Issues in their lives Deborah is like one of the best ones it's very rare that that this happens Sam really great but not Gideon not jeffa not Samson you probably are familiar with Samson right how he

sleeps with a prostitute over and over again and all this stuff and he's arrogant and he's selfish that's actually meant to it's not to tell you got approves of these things it's to show you the kind of people that are there because one of the Themes in judges is every man did what was right in his own eyes and that this is an unhealthy thing they weren't following God they were following themselves that being said this this wouldn't be a contradiction it would just be a a sinful Act demonstrate the wickedness of mankind even the

people who are on the good side a good lesson for us to learn just cuz you feel like you're in the right doesn't mean you're not being Wicked now um I would then just take that as like an encouragement and a warning um God can and will use you even though you're flawed that's encouraging but also a warning you can do one good thing and be on the right side and you can still totally blow it right in the middle of all that and that's a good lesson to learn judges teaches that lesson a lot

a lot over and over again I can think of story after Story story in The Book of Judges where that same lesson is learned but there is some push back to this and um I'm on the side that that says um well before I give you the push back let me let me say I'm on the side that says the Bible rejects Human Sacrifice very clearly and that's how I interpret the judge's story that this was wrong if he if he if he did in fact kill his daughter he may not have I'll get back

to that in a second but in Deuteronomy 1231 we get the following and there you go um you shall not Worship the Lord your God in that way for every abom abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods this is actually exactly what Jeff the promised to do right burn offering and he says you will never do that for me you will never Do that for me in fact we can add to this in in in another

place in the Old Testament he says if a parent offers their kid you they get the death penalty you murder your you do religious murder like this you get the death penalty this is something that is that God absolutely refutes if you think about the story of Abraham if you're a skeptic you might be thinking wait God told Abraham to offer his son isn't that isn't that evidence Mike that God really does approve of Human sacrifice at least in some cases and um and Jesus of course is God offering himself that's a completely different category

but with Abraham God actually refuses to let him kill his son and instead provides this Ram caught in the thicket and so there's a replacement you will Abraham's amongst people who do offer their kids God goes I want you to have a heart that's willing to give me anything but I don't want you to offer your son here's a replacement then to to Like seal the deal on this this Human Sacrifice thing when God leads the people out of Egypt he says you will offer me the firstborn of the Lambs the firstborn of the cows

the firstborn of the this and the that and the this and that and he goes and your firstborn Sons they belong to me but you will redeem them you will you will give an animal instead of them this is to show that God is clearly saying even when a claim can be made made Upon a Child I would rather Have an animal instead which is what jeffa should have done when he realized the stupidity of his vow and he comes home and his daughter comes out I think according to the law what the right thing

he should have done is said oh I will offer the best the best animal I've got instead because God does not want Human Sacrifice okay that would be where I would lean on understanding that one is that it shows the Deep sin and flaws of of jeffa but there is another Um um another thing to mention I'm just making sure in my notes I'm not missing something okay yeah judges 11: 37 and 38 it tells you what happened right after all this right when jeffa fulfilled his vow what does it actually say it says here

so she said to her father let this thing be done for me leave me alone two months this is her request after she finds out right that I may go up and down on the mountains and Weep for my virginity I and my companions so she goes on a a 2mon a 60-day Mourning where she goes up and down the mountains whatever that means right like however that worked out but she's she's basically going out and having a time of mourning with some companions to accompany her and what is she mourning her virginity now you

could say well she's mourning because she'll be killed and then she'll never have kids and so his Name jeffa it's his only daughter his name will not be carried on her her progeny will not be carried on this is the end of the line of jeffa which which fits with it being a foolish vow right this F is like a rebuke I think but there's another possibility here and the idea is that she was just a virgin perpetually after this but because you can't according to the law you are not allowed to give your kids

and also according to the law you're to redeem Your children from sacrifice so you offer something instead God doesn't want that and you can actually be given the death penalty if you did go through with it like what priest what what what what priest God approves of is going to allow this none um so maybe instead okay we can't offer you maybe we'll offer you as a servant in the temple who will stay single and be devoted in the temple this was a class this like this did did happen there were people who just chose

To do Temple Service as a thing there were women in the temple we read about this actually in a couple places in scripture we read about this when the the the children of um in uh in 1 Samuel I think it is the children of Eli are sleeping with these women who would help serve in the temple we read about in uh is it Deuteronomy we read about these women who would serve in the temple as well or Exodus Exodus 388 let me show you so he made the Basin the Basin of Bronze and its

stand of bronze from the mirrors of the ministering women who administered in the entrance of the tent of meaning um there were women who would come forward and there were they were a very segregated society when it come not segregated not really the right term um they were gender paired Society so like if a woman shows up at the temple for some reason there then there's a good chance a a woman is going to somehow assist in what she needs the early Church did this too if a woman got baptized it would be another woman

there to help with the baptism because they were trying to preserve modesty and proper relations between uh male and female something we we really work hard not to do in our culture today um at any rate the there were these women that did this plus we see this with Samuel in the book of Samuel right 1 Samuel where his mom she's praying Lord please just give me a child and she finally gets pregnant And she says if if you if I have a child I will dedicate him to you completely so then she takes her

kid as soon as he's old enough and brings him to Eli the priest the high priest and he says he's going to just serve you he's dedicated to the Lord like that's what I promised I'm going to fulfill my my promise so he's dedicated to you um and then he lives there serving and ends up becoming a really great servant of God it's possible that Jeff's daughter Mourns her Virginity because she then goes into service at the temple or amongst the priests that's that's it doesn't make her a priest but it may be where she

ended up is that true I don't know I think I should at least to be because I don't know I should have an answer for both sides um I lean towards thinking that because judges is such a lawless land it's like a wild wild west of the of the Old Testament I I feel like it may just be exposing the wickedness of Mankind they don't they won't listen to what God has written in his word they keep doing it their own way even when they have Heroes those heroes are also losers that's consistent and the

further you get judges the worse it gets I hope that that helps I do think that there's no contradiction there um to be to be said and these this is not my list of contradictions this is an atheist provided list of contradictions so what was that was that four or five that was Four okay number five the power of God the power of God is supposedly in contradiction the Bible here Matthew 92 1926 says With God all things are possible but then judges 1119 shows something that God according to the this list of contradictions that

contradicts that that shows that not all things are possible with God God couldn't do this so here it says speaking of the Book of Judges the Lord was with Judah and he drave out dra it's just weird to say That and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had Chariots of iron yes it said drave that was not me so God was with Judah and I think for this to be a contradiction what do you guys think the it seems like Frank zindler

is taking the the the last he of the last part of this sentence to refer to God when it's really in reference to Judah let's read it again the Lord was With Judah and he is that God well no that's does Judah Judah drave or drove out the inhabitants of the mountain but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had Chariots of iron so the he there I think is actually talking about Judah Judah is the one who now you could say God drove out our enemies before us that sometimes it

says that but if you read the passage you'll see the active uh thing working here is is Judah not not God so Frank seems to have taken this this supposed contradiction as um being the case because God is powerless to actually drive out the armies because he's not as strong as iron chariots this is a really weird and clumsy P perspective on the text of scripture and I just want to point it out this is a guy who who was running at least for years running one of the big atheist organizations out there well-known famous

it's atheist. org is their Website right he has written many books about about why he's anti-religious and stuff um he leads others in this stuff as well he writes this article it's up on the website for years and years and years and it has this like really basic misconception a lot of the things that people say are contradictions just aren't in the Bible they're just not contradictions and I hope that that makes sense um let me say side note we we go to the next one the power of God God being able to do anything

doesn't imply God being able to do logically impossible things can God make a square circle can God make a married Bachelor um these are definitionally impossible things they're not impossible because of a lack of power they're impossible because of the constraints of logic and rationality and God's not going to go against his own logical rational character I don't believe by by creating things That are utterly irrational I don't think that those things those things can't possibly exist so God can do anything possible it's not a statement that God can do the impossible that that's the

difference between I think a more mature understanding of of omnipotence and a more clumsy one um yeah anyway I'll just move on that's just a side note there okay personal injury contradiction number six the six supposed contradiction This is uh using Jesus to say that it's a contradiction with the Old Testament and I got to Grant The Atheist here are like hey I've Heard lots of Christians say this especially Progressive Christians who want to say that Jesus really does go against the Old Testament because they're going to go against it too uh that Jesus disagrees

with with the Bible so that they can disagree with the Bible they feel like it gets Jesus on their side obviously the atheist is Doing it for a different reason they're going to say you can't really trust it's an inspired book if it has these contradictions um and of course I I actually would disagree with that logic but I I don't think it has contradictions that's what I'll stick to for today so Exodus 21:23 through 2 it tells us Thou shalt give Life For Life eye for eye tooth for tooth hand for hand foot for

foot burning for burning wound for wound stripe for stripe Equal Justice right you you do this much damage you have to bring this much restoration Matthew 5:39 though Jesus he he says and I'll I'll just quote part of it earlier on uh he says you know you've heard that it was said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth he says yet I tell you resist not evil but whoever shall shall smite thee on the right cheek turn to him the other also Jesus directly is like you heard it said I for

an ey seeming to refer to the Old Testament and then he's like but I'm telling you don't return evil for evil don't do the tooth for tooth thing if they strike you turn the other cheek um see it's understandable why people would see this as a contradiction and and I I my heart goes out to you like yeah I get it I totally get why you see this as a contradiction let me just explain to you why I don't the statement in Exodus is very context specific the eye for eye tooth For too thing is

about the legislative body in Israel right under under Mosaic law when somebody commits a crime there's an equal penalty or equal recompense that's that's the idea um you you you you strike somebody and you you blind their eye and you did it wrongly like you were the aggressor the attacker you blinded them now some would say this is barbaric but I also but it's it's also barbaric to put people people in cages for 10 years at a time like like a Lot of people would rather be like how about I get eye for eye instead

and then I get to go free like I don't stay in a cage for 10 years um am I making a case for changing our laws I'm I'm making a case for like a rational perspective on things we tend to think that everything with it involves physical violence is barbaric and things that involve cages is not I don't think that's a Biblical view I don't think it's a rational view either we should be honest that when we Impose penalties whether they're cages or they're physical uh Corporal punishments or if they are Financial punishments these things

are all extreme even though there are times when they are appropriate and right I think that that's an accurate view whether you agree or not it's up to you um at any rate you've got the legislative structure so that let's say that I blind you punch you in the eye and you're blind then I go before the court and You're like give him the death penalty cuz you're angry and your family's angry and everybody who knows you is angry and the video went viral on YouTube and everybody knows that I'm a bad guy and they're

like kill him well the law would be there to say we can't do more to him than what he did to you eye for eye so it's about equal measures in court that's the idea and you can't be favorable to the rich and you can't be harmful against the poor or Vice versa you have to be absolutely Fair every time that's the standard of Justice in the scripture uh it was a little different with theft if if you stole a person's sheep you would restore more than one sheep um but uh but that was you

know you might say well it was damages in addition to the the theft and that's that's a thing anyway it would it was also a deterrent for crime and all that stuff so you've got this like Fair Justice in the Old Testament then Jesus Comes and he's not talking to lawmakers he's not talking to people who were enforcing the law he's talking about personal Vengeance in m Matthew 5 he says to them you've heard it was said eye for an ey but the way that this verse has been Twisted in the mind of the of

the Common Man is if someone strikes me I strike him back well that's not about Justice this is about personal Vengeance so the way that the courts issue Justice I'm now issuing my Personal Justice and Jesus is saying hey look God has set up the government to exact justice but he's not creating a a nation of Vigilantes who exact their own version of Justice you know you hit me I hit you back you mess with me I mess with you back instead Jesus is like I want you to exhibit Grace and kindness to be like

me so that when someone attacks you you do what you can to diminish it to not respond in kind you can still call the Cops and guess what the government's job is when that person has attacked you is to give them justice but you're not to do vigilante personal Vengeance that's the idea that I think is the context of Matthew 5 and I can support this with other scriptures um Romans is probably the best place to go so if we go to Romans 12 we see the same tension between personally not taking Vengeance but still

honoring the the justice that comes from government right This is which often government fails in this but that is the ideal so here we see um repay no one evil for evil but give thought to do what is Honorable in the sight of all people here Paul is invoking Jesus in The Sermon on the Mount in Romans 12:8 now if possible so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all beloved never avenge yourselves personal Vengeance but leave it to the wrath of God for it is written vengeance is mine I will repace as

the Lord to the Contrary if your enem is hungry feed him if he's thirsty give him something to drink for by so doing you will heat burning coals on his head do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good this is the key when you do personal Vengeance you become overcome by by evil so give it to God he'll deal with it you be kind you be gracious even if they reject you they're just storing up more judgment for the day to come but hopefully they'll end up you know Turning but then without

a beat and remember these chapter changes were chapter uh headings were added later these these separations right literally the next words that Paul writes are about government and government Justice being good let every person be subject to the governing authorities including their what they're punishing their eye for an eye tooth for a tooth stuff for there is no Authority except from God and those that exist have been Instituted by God therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God is appointed and those who resist will incur judgment what what kind of judgment well God's judgment if

if the authority is acting rightly for rulers are not a terror to Good Conduct but to bad would you have no fear of the one who is in Authority then do what is good and you'll receive his approval for he is God's servant for your good but check this out if you do wrong be afraid for He does not bear The Sword in vain for he is the servant of God an Avenger who carries out God's Wrath on the wrongdoer now there's a lot of people thinking right now as I read this but there's police

brutality and there's abuses of people in government yeah Paul that's absolutely true but the need for real policing and the need for correct criminal justice is never going to go away because there will always be real criminals and that's what Paul's talking About that government when it's acting eye for an eye tooth for a tooth when it's doing the thing that you're told not to do it is it is God's Avenger so I'm not going to do personal justice but I can absolutely appeal to the government and say this is God instituted punishment of crime

not me doing vigilante stuff I hope that makes sense um super consistent with Jesus super consistent with Old and New Testament I see no potential Contradiction there let's look at the next one um which is our last one for today circumcision and then we're going to go to your questions hopefully we have enough coming in we'll see how it goes never know this is my Covenant Genesis says which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee every man child among you shall be circumcised so circumcise your boys okay this is to

Abraham so all the descendants of Abraham they're told they have to get circumcised that's kind of key I don't know if Frank zindler actually was aware of that this was descendants of Abraham God did not command anybody else to get circumcised I'm not a descendant of Abraham right most many of you are not um no man my my I'm Irish okay my family's descendants of of a bunch of pagans okay that's Celtics and pagans and whatever else they were um yeah then Galatians 52 though Frank iner suggest This is a contradiction it says if ye

be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing this is such a perfect example of supposed contradictions that are just on the surface to the one who's never read the Bible you're like wow that looks like a straight contradiction and to those who have read the Bible they're like wow do you ever read anything in context this is just a fair thing to ask do do you ever check the context like who is Paul writing to who Is G who is God speaking to in Genesis 17 Abraham who is Paul writing to in Galatians the Galatians they're

Gentiles God told Abraham get circumcised you and your kids and Paul says Hey Gentiles you don't need to go become physically circumcised to to have Christ here's the Dilemma that was going going on in the early church it was actually a really big deal and whole sad of scripture devoted to it and the book of Acts tracks this in detail throughout Like giv a historical account of the Dilemma then you have some teaching in the gospels that relates to this when Jesus declares all foods clean and people are like wait what does that mean um

the the the real question was Jesus is this Jewish Messiah when when non-jews start believing in Jesus do they have to become Jewish this was like the Dilemma do they have to get circumcised do they have to start obeying the law of Moses do have to Start observing the Sabbath do they have to observe kosher eating proper Foods in the feast days and going to Jerusalem and all of the Jewish things do they have to do all that can the men cut the corners of their beards and the answer in the book of Acts acts

15 was no the Gentiles do not need to do these things in fact it's a burden that we do not want to put on them it was not that the Jews can't do them it was that the Gentiles don't need To now fast forward to Galatians this was a hot bed of where this debate was taking place and there were people showing up who were who who were from Jerusalem claiming that they were like we represent the original Christians right the original Saints we're from Jerusalem so our the city we're from gives us Authority does

that sound familiar to anybody today um anyway then they go to galatia and they say you guys have to become circumcised and you have To become Jewish or else you cannot be a Christian you can't be saved you can't be forgiven by Jesus so Paul writes to them and he says guys that's so untrue and I'm paraphrasing here Mike Winger paraphrase that's so untrue to claim you have to be circumcised to get saved that it actually sort of spits in the face of the grace of Christ so that if you start doing things doing works

like you're going to improve yourself for Christ you're going to be a better person so That God will accept you you're actually saying that the cross was not enough for you see the cross was enough for the uncircumcised to be saved you don't need to get circumcised you don't need to start obeying the law Moses you you want to obey the heart of the law love your neighbor as yourself love God above all else you want to obey the heart of the law but you don't need to obey all of the ceremonial stuff why because

what I said earlier the law was our school Master our tutor to lead us to Jesus Christ now that you're in Christ you don't need those things Jews in the book of Acts would often still observe the sabbath still observe all those things it was not they weren't told they couldn't Peter even went to the temple Paul offers a sacrifice in the temple not for his sin but a sacrifice related to like an an um following the Old Testament commands about vows when you make a vow and when you finish your Vow and Paul does

this in the book of Acts and so we've got Jews observing these things but to say that Gentiles have to be circumcised to be saved is to spit upon the grace of Christ and so that's a huge issue Paul's like no no no I will not allow you to put this this law on the Believers that's not a contradiction guys that's just us understanding the Theology of Christianity and and um none of these were contradictions I didn't come up With this list this is the atheist provided list you assume they're your best examples if it's

your list if it's published on a website if it's shared on Facebook and stuff it's from atheist. org from Frank zindler you know mad mine Murray O'Hare but they were not in fact very good so I hope that you guys have given me some questions this is going to be again a mega that's the intention the mega uh long one we'll see how long I can go as long as my brain lasts and When I when I go down the the road of presidential debates I will I will just I'll call it I'll pull myself

out of the race all right number two sorry it's too funny to me um give me some Grace if that irritates you all right Andre Kira has the following question I have a co-worker that is an atheist he said that there are parts of our bodies that are not necessary and that might prove Evolution and not a Creator any thoughts um yeah I have several thoughts on that First off um personally I would want to avoid uh focusing on Evolution with a non-believer and focusing on that topic more for like in-house Christian discussions um I

know that that's going against the grain and most people would not agree with me on that uh maybe I'm wrong okay this is take this as like this guy on the internet has a thought that you can think about um I would avoid this topic I there are Christians Who believe in evolution and Christians who do not in and and you may say well obviously one side is wrong but what I would affirm is that they're both actually genuinely Christians meaning why am I arguing about an a discussion that while it matters it isn't ultimately

salvific like you can you can believe in this or not and still be a Christian I want to focus on the topics that bring this person to Christ does that make Sense one way to do this is to try to draw out the implications of evolution so this is this is true um I've heard many Skeptics say Evolution means that we know we we we don't need a god um or string theory if vibrating strings are really the source of all the matter and everything we see in the universe then we don't need a God

or um the Multiverse theory that if you trace back the origin of the universe to there being just multiple universes there's so many Universes that surely enough some of them are going to have the perfect situation for life that this means we don't need a God all of these arguments make the same flaw is they have an artificial stopping point for their explanatory power I don't need to explain where the strings come from or I don't need to explain where the multiple universes come from these infinite universes I don't need to Explain um on the

evolution question how on Earth things were so coincidentally put together in a way that intelligent life would form purely by force of chemical reactions with no controls that's a big big leap like if if you were to say um I I reject Evolution and therefore clearly we're designed someone could say aliens did it then you have to ask where the aliens come from because that's an artificial stopping point too um and you would Eventually get back to God but let's suppose that you were to affirm no no no we really did evolve it started with

just like big bang boo bunch of hydrogen boom splits up into different kinds of atoms and chemicals in the universe and you've got energy and matter and dark matter and you've got all this stuff and eventually Sun's form and planets form and then water and H2 H2O and then some chemical reactions happen that go from non-life to life and then some chemical Reactions take place where that life starts to actually have natural selection going on and that eventually continues to develop and grow until we have intelligent life today and it all happened you could say

by random but it all happened let's be more specific based upon the fundamental nature of chemical interactions the laws of physics and the quantities of of what um materials are In the universe those are some really big claims how can I you know we get the watchmaker explanation that some people have is like if you know if you see a watch there's a watch maker even if you show me that the watch like let's say a watch uh the watch was a result of a random explosion where a bunch of material that was all I

don't know iron or something it blew up and then it just sort of fell together in just the right Way to create a watch and some would say Mike you've skipped natural selection and you've skipped biological yeah I get that but try to follow the analogy I'm not making analogy about those things um would you not say wow an explosion led to that that that seems like a very carefully engineered explosion I mean how amazing do you have to be to make an explosion that results in that but the but the universe is more intense

than that because some of the factors that That are involved here and this is what I would want the atheist evolutionist to consider is the amount of material in the universe matters the rate that the explosion happens really really matters right if it happens too fast or too slow we don't get our universe uh no intelligent life will exist no life will exist the amount of things like gravity or the strong nuclear force or the weak nuclear force um that fine-tuning stuff like grav what makes gravity just the Way it is and no different if

it was slightly different we would not have any life the the table had to be set in such an intricate way for life to exist on this planet that that just saying we evolved does not answer the question you then have to ask what on Earth can explain such a particular set of circumstances that it allowed intelligent life to happen through chemical reactions like what made a hydrogen atom that shape what Made what made the the carbon atoms this perfect environment for life to end up developing carbon based life doesn't really work with anything else

silicon based life and all that it's all good Sci-Fi but it doesn't work to my knowledge I would want to push them on their own worldview and show them their own beliefs about the universe already point to God and if they go well Multiverse and they go what makes all those universes well I don't know like Some big universe making machine or something you keep getting back to God String Theory okay and where did the strings come from you need some Eternal uncaused thing no matter what you start with and that's where I would go

with that um as far as uh vestigal body parts which you asked about Andre uh he said there are parts of our bodies that are not necessary and that might prove Evolution and not a Creator losing body parts um Would demonstrate evolution in the sense of some change happening right loss loss of body Hearts could could demonstrate some change happening that's not the same as saying we all have the same common ancestor that's a huge leap and it's not the same as saying that a biogenesis takes place these are just very different categories but I

really wouldn't want to argue with them about it you could say well hey they found out the appendix really has a Purpose and a lot of the vestigal items which means like evolutionary leftovers actually do have functions and purposes in humankind um also losing things like losing the use of your your wisdom teeth doesn't prove Improvement it just proves change you need a lot of special novel information to prove Evolution but I want to avoid those debates to be honest I'd rather first get them to God um and then move from there to Jesus and

the Bible personally all right number three um Abes says one of my biggest issues is that you need to believe in Jesus to be saved if someone is born in a Muslim country they would have to sacrifice way more than the average Westerner how is that fair um it's not fair um but I but I I want to challenge ABS I want to challenge what I what might be an unwise view of fairness that you're requiring the universe to have Because if you gosh how many I have so many things I want to say about

this um what is the basis of the idea let's think about it like why does God have to give us all the same experience in life I can't think of a reason I'd like him to but when we we all grow up with this when we're kids you know I tried to run that race and that other guy beat me and he tried but but I tried even harder and I lost it's not fair he just has longer Legs he's just more athletic than I am it's not fair and your parents would be like what

they say you guys know the phrase life's not fair the assumption that God has to give everybody the same experience spiritually speaking is an assumption that I do not think we find in scripture now on the front end he doesn't give us the same experience but on the back end he gives us a different judgment this is one thing I'd offer that would I think Help to some degree so I did not have the same opportunities as a Muslim born in an Islamic country to receive Christ they had different opportunities in some ways it might

have been more maybe God like directly gave them revelation of Jesus Christ and we have heard many stories of Muslims where they get saved I met a guy I was getting a coat at a at like a suit store years ago and who was who was a Muslim the guy was measuring me from um I can't remember what country It was he was from anyway what it was a Middle Eastern country and um he had said that God revealed Jesus to him just divinely powerfully supernaturally boom Jesus was revealed to him he became a Christian

even though nobody else around him was that that guy obviously had a more intense experience than most westerners most atheists who were like I I just wish God would reveal himself to me and um and yet that's what happened with this guy I mean you could say he's A liar um but I but I I don't assume people who say things like that are lying he had he had an experience that he's really talking about so yeah there was a guy who you're the guy who's in the category you're discussing who actually had in a

sense greater revelation of Jesus Christ than most people would say they've received in their lives so it's a little hard to assume but am I can I can I drop my whole Answer on that I cannot absolutely not because it's not like I'm going to think every Muslim gets like a special revelation of Christ but I'm not going to Discount the work of God's spirit and what he is doing in their lives um I talked to another Muslim who uh he was he was from England but he was part of a Muslim subculture within England

so all of his friends are Muslim and all this other stuff and he he just found himself getting intensely interested in Jesus And he this was when I back when I worked at the church um and I was answering the phones one day and he called for prayer and I was like yeah I'll pray and he had seen my I just started my my videos online so he called for prayer and he found the church and called so I talked to him we talked for a while we talked a bunch of times I sent him

a box of Bibles and stuff like that and books to give out to Muslims in his community his story went like this He said that he suddenly became very interested in Jesus because in Islam Jesus is a prophet of Allah in Islam according to Islam so he was more interested in Jesus and he goes you know Jesus is one of the prophets how come we never talk about him I want to learn more about Jesus and so he starts like reading a littleit the Bible here and stuff and digging in more and more long story

short the guy gets saved radically gives his life to Jesus Christ his family beats him up and cripples him because it's part of the the culture and so they him because of this stuff one of his relatives threatened we're going to kill you if you don't Rec can't if you don't stop talking about Jesus another one secretly came to him he's telling me a brother of his came to him and said if Jesus really did that that for you you should be you shouldn't be ashamed of him but he wouldn't say it publicly cuz He

was afraid what I'm saying is life is more complicated than this like um picture that what we often paint of other cultures we have a one-dimensional monocolor picture of other cultures I pick England I have one picture of them Saudi Arabia okay all that being said on the back end right the front end is all your experiences your revelation of Jesus how much knowledge you have of God how much the Spirit Works in you what people God sends to you moments where you just go I just know that I need God um those types of

things happen on the front end of your life but on the back end of your life is Judgment when an Islamic person who is raised in Islamic country stands in judgment they will be judged according to what they had revealed to them that is they're not judged based upon names they've never heard although if you're Islamic you've heard the name Jesus probably but you're not judged upon information you've never heard you're judged based upon what God has revealed and how you have responded that's the fairness it's fairness in judgment it's not fairness and everyone has

the same life experience fairness and judgment were judged differently Jesus affirms this when he's like hey um amongst those who saw him physically walking the Earth he shall tells them they'll have stricter judgment than Sodom and Gomorrah why well Jesus didn't didn't go to Sodom and Gomora they're still judged but it's different it's it's a it's a fair judgment on the back end I trust God to do that judgment perfectly fairly I hope that helps answer that question uh question number four this is Jose and 97 um how can we believe in a historical Jesus

if the oldest manuscripts we have are from the second or third Century that's a great question um so the this Really bugged me a lot when I was younger I remember feeling like hey we've got perfect we have perfect Bibles everything we know is perfectly accurate and then finding out that there are debates like how did I not know like pick a Bible here's here's one where the print is starting to get too small for me to read and and uh and here on the footnotes oops you're going to see you're going to see these

little footnotes and amongst these footnotes Are statements like the in text and the M text read likewise for which thing I hate wait what is this other readings there's all sorts of footnotes about these same verses that I'm reading about how they're they look different in a different text what's that about I mean it's always been in my Bible I just didn't pay attention to it when I started digging into this stuff and finding out about it at first I got nervous cuz I Heard a lot of people claiming scary things about the Bible like

you can't it's not reliable look at all these different versions look it's been translated too many times there's too many debates upon about different verses and what they mean you don't you don't even know who wrote the gospels you don't know this and a bunch of forgeries and I heard all these claims I got to fix this bugging me all right and I dug deep Into the topic I did a a a series called uh evidence for the Bible where I did this like over 20 videos and three of the videos are just devoted to

this topic of like how do I know I have a reliable scrip scripture in front of me in my hands and I'm looking at the text that Paul really wrote I will link those down below for the long answer okay I'll give you the short answer now but the long answer is going to be linked down below three videos I have them in a Playlist by themselves the maybe one of the mods can put in there if someone's like I want to jump on that right away go for it um at the end of this

research it changed my view of scripture to a degree not of the reliability of the Bible but um I learned that the newer translations right the ones that are often demonized by people that they're actually pretty good for the most part I also learned that the reason why we know we have the Bible is not because we have One ancient copy that we see as perfectly reliable but because we have so many different versions different copies I should say not versions versions is a wrong word so many different copies that we know what the original

said let me give you an example um some guys do this in class they'll sit down with their class 20 students or modern classes 385 students and they'll say everybody write out what I'm going to Say to you so he gives them like a maybe he get put something on the wall he writes it out then they write it out they copy it to the best of their ability or maybe he says it out loud he gives a speech and Records it has everybody write down what he says then he gathers all their papers now

imagine you have access ACC to these papers and um you then using these papers try to piece together what did he really say well this paper has the word Plow and this paper has the word now which one did he probably really say and you start to do what's called textual criticism hm does the sentence make more sense like with the word plow or with the word now does it does it look like the word now is original and it led to someone him saying that is what led to someone thinking he said plow an

example in script is where Paul says we were like children among you there's this verse where he says we were like Children among you but one ancient text that has Paul writing this writes we were like horses among you if I remember correctly we were horses among you which is ridiculous it doesn't mean anything but the word children and horses there's like oneel difference in Greek they're almost the same word so we can compare copies and we go what did Paul really write originally there's no debate about it he wrote children among you it fits

the context it makes sense it explains Why someone put horses because there was just a typo there most of the issues we have are are things like that um there are some challenging topics but uh long story short the New Testament is widely agreed upon by Scholars to have the same content in it in your Bible as what it originally had when it was written this is not a big debate in scholarship they'll debate over specific little verses but usually the debate is hey in your footnote it says it might read this Way and then

in the text it has this and the debate is usually like do we switch those do we put the footnote here and this there the degree of uncertainty is minimal and non-impacting for the most part there's two major passages in the New Testament that are more debated Mark the end of Mark last eight verses of Mark and then John um the story of the woman caught in adultery these are the only two passages that I think would get on your radar if you were to look at all The different verses where there might be some

level of debate these are the only two passages I cover those in my three video series I encourage you to check it out but the way that we know the the Bible says what it says has to do with families of manuscripts there's a whole there's a whole um basically you can make a whole career out of studying this stuff and people do and we have great strong confidence that the that the Bibles we have today if you get an ESV an ASV something like that you're you're going to get a very very reliable representation

of what was originally written and any question section or issue or verse is going to be either not questionable at all really or something that will not really be impacting your faith um or impacting the teaching of scripture on that topic um it does get complicated admittedly but that's the simplic the simple version of this so Bart Erman is famous for writing a book Called misquoting Jesus where he says like basically if you read the book your your impression and this is debatable that I'm saying this but my I believe your impression will be I

cannot trust what I'm reading in the the gospels that that was even what was really written however in debates and in certain moments bar will admit that that was not the impression he was trying to give when he wrote his book even though it is the impression people get that he Thinks somebody asked him once was an interview or something where they were like well what would if you could fix the Bible so it said what what it orig originally said so that like Mark says what Mark really originally said Matthew said what Matthew originally

really wrote what would you how different would it be and Bart's like oh yeah I'd be pretty much the same because this isn't this is more smok in mirrors than it is actual things To worry about um that would be my response long video series I will link below in as soon as the stream is over and you guys can check that out let's go to the next question this comes in from Dennis who says how do I know Christianity is right true compared to other world religions um there's a number of ways to to

know that Christianity is true um one of them is is simply to say like I have experiential experiential Knowledge in my relationship with God in my Supernatural experiences that Christianity is true I don't think every Christian will say this but certainly if you feel like the Holy Spirit cries out like I trusted in Christ and I God is with me I have been indwelt by the spirit this is great evidence let me qualify it for you for the person who has it it's great evidence it is not great evidence for the non-Christian because they don't

have it so all you're Telling them is I have an experience you don't have trust me it's for real not the best evidence right like understandably it's not going to be super persuasive to others to some it might but but in general I could see why people would doubt it there's other evidences you can add to this Christianity is not a one trick pony when it comes to evidence so you can add things like um testable truth claims so for instance The Hindu understanding of the nature of Heaven and Earth and all those things or

maybe the Japanese understanding U the Japanese Islands were formed by the the the death of Gods okay can we can we examine and see if if the islands were created by biological material um this is not the case so you can look at different religions you can you can test their claims their truth claims now they can always say well that was a metaphor and maybe it was a Metaphor but let's make sure we're not just using that as a copout right um there are sometimes where people do use metaphors they use pictoral language they

use like archetypal language to talk about the past that does happen sometimes but many religions have truth claims that they make for instance Islam has a truth claim that for up until recently has been at the center of Islam they're moving some of them are moving away from It now because it's indefensible but not because it's not at the center of Islam the truth claim is that Jesus was never crucified it only looked like he was crucified it wasn't Jesus he was never crucified think about that oh so if Jesus was crucified Islam's not true

right this this is a pretty serious claim on Islam it's part of like their a major claim it's not just a minor claim um the these claims can be proven false It's been claimed historically on on Islam they've claimed that uh Muhammad himself was prophesied in the Bible in the Old Testament that it prophesies about Muhammad but when you look at those prophecies they're clearly not about him or anything like him when we say Jesus was prophesied that's a testable claim I can look at the Old Testament and try to say does this make sense

and I'll just give you the short answer It makes so much sense that usually What I Hear nonbelievers say is oh well they just wrote that about Jesus specifically to make it fit the prophecy why would they say that let's follow the logic it's because Jesus really does fit Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and so they're going to go oh well you must have wrote that about him after the fact why because it does match so we can at least acknowledge it matches then we can ask a new question the things that you say They

made up about Jesus how historically reliable are those things like I don't know did he go around proclaiming that he was God's eschatological agent the Messiah did you know that there's historical consensus among believing and non-believing historians that Jesus did in fact believe that that he was God's eschatological agent they like to use the they're Scholars they like to use these fancy words he was God's end times Guy um that's historical consensus that's like over 90% they believe that that Jesus went around um preaching that he was the son of man that that that's consensus

this says you don't need to be a Bible believer to say this he he used the title son of man all the time that one of the reasons he was crucified was because of his claims about being the son of man and that that ties into the prophecy of the Old Testament like in Daniel he's Coming as judge do you know that one of the greatest things that we see about Jesus in Prophecy is the cross and how he dies on the cross at Passover picturing the the Passover Lamb and the sacrifice there and how

there's all these connections with all this Old Testament sacrifice stuff that's been sort of set up ahead of time but here's what's cool historically speaking you do not have to be a Christian you do not have to believe the Bible to believe this Jesus was absolutely crucified under Pontius Pilate he was crucified on Passover he was crucified and then very likely the majority believe buried in a tomb that was later found to be empty these are testable historical claims that have a lot of verification in them in history even the the type of Tomb that

is described it only it's only exist in Jerusalem there okay this going to sound like I'm making stuff up to People um there's been historical work on this a lot of work on this because Jesus is kind of an important figure in history so when when it comes to burials you know it was the sanhedrin's job to bury and take care of people who died in Jerusalem that didn't have family there were visitors who died in Jerusalem so Joseph of arthea a representative of the Sanhedrin shows up and says can I take Jesus's body Nicodemus

a Pharisee does it they bury them in a tomb a tomb in Which no man had laid historically speaking you couldn't put a crucified victim in a tomb where someone else had been because it it defiles the tomb it's it's considered in a they were considered judged by God so it defiles the tomb so he so it puts him in a tomb where wherein no one had laid um oh but there you know Mark and Matthew and John and Luke they're all writing historical fiction that didn't exist at the time like nobody wrote fiction like

that Where they would carefully write historical details just to make a fake story like that um not not like close to the time not in this not in this kind of sty just that that genre of literature didn't exist the the tomb itself the design and description of the Tomb that Jesus was buried in that's given in the New Testament fits tombs found in Israel in the first century in particular it does not fit tombs found outside Israel like in Rome or other places and a lot Of people have suggested that oh well they made

up this stuff about Jesus from Rome 30 40 years later how'd they get the tombs right Roman tombs didn't look like that the Romans didn't have these practices with Sadducees and Pharisees they didn't have these discussions they didn't have the geography of Israel and stuff figured out they didn't know these things they didn't have Google they couldn't just uh do That so at any rate what I'm suggesting is the prophetic statements about Jesus in the Old Testament many of the most impressive ones can be demonstrably proven true using historical analysis not relying on the New

Testament as Divine that's really important that's at least some interesting evidence for Christianity you can't do that for any other religion no other religion has fulfilled prophecy like this like this right they can claim stuff I know There's this this Hindu Prophet guy uh I think he's Hindu some Eastern Mystic Prophet dude on YouTube and he'll literally look at weather reports and then he'll get up and he'll prophesy about the weather and he's just and if you Google like when the day he does his thing you could see like he's just reading weather reports and

then pretending it's prophecy this is bigger than that this is much more than that um Christianity is demonstrably true when It comes to phcy when it comes to evidence for the resurrection of Jesus when it comes to um um yeah your life experiences and that sort of thing as well there's other aspects that you can look at and go out this is this is valid the internal consistency of scripture is is blows my mind you have to study the Bible a lot to get there usually people aren't willing to do that so it's hard to

make the case for the internal consistency of The Bible for that I'd recommend a very long series I have called Jesus in the Old Testament or how to find Jesus in the Old Testament speaking of the internal consistency of scripture so does that make sense uh you can have an internal Revelation that Christianity is true and that works for you but it's hard to communicate that to someone else but when you have external things like prophecy the resurrection of Christ historical evidence for that the Internal connectedness showing inspiration of the scriptures you have things like

that um that's pretty powerful you have some stuff that's even like scientific in nature Hebrews reveals to us that God created everything in the universe out of nothing so Hebrews shows us a non-eternal universe that had an origin in time that was not a popular view in fact until Big Bang Theory became extremely popular and I'm not talking About the TV show um that was when they were like I guess the universe is not past Eternal there were all these theories about how the universe was just Eternal in the past yeah the whole time the

Bible was saying it was not so that's that's interesting that's at least soft evidence in support of the text all right let's go to the next question number six Libby NE has a question I often hear the argument quote if God Doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender then what about disabilities how would you respond um usually when I hear questions like this I don't know about you guys but I think of what assumptions are loaded into the question like sometimes when people make you answer a question they're making you affirm things Without You

realizing it so the phrase God doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender I think That that we're affirming when we say that is we're we're supposed to be affirming that if you're born female that was not a mistake you really are female even though you internally feel male you're not you're actually female or vice versa and that this is based on the idea that God doesn't make mistakes um I wouldn't put it that way um I wouldn't say God doesn't make mistakes and that's how I know the difference between male and female so Then

I then the next thing what about disabilities wouldn't be a challenge to me cuz I go hey when the the reason why gender is real and gender is not changeable is not because God doesn't make mistakes like you don't you don't need God to be a mistak maker to say that you know transgender is a real thing that you you can you can change your gender based upon how you feel or that gender is an internal reality the reason is that Gender is based on sex gender is this is the policy that I'd have in

mind gender is based on biological sex that's what it's based on it is not based on your internal feelings about some amorphous idea of gender that's just feelings that's just feelings you feel like a dinosaur that's okay cuz your your who you are is based on your biology here you're a human right and and someone could say so you're saying God made a mistake with me Um or something I don't know I don't know what that means all I know is you who you are is based on biology here your biological status of human not

dinosaur or male not female is based on biology not based on your feelings your feelings do not dictate your reality they are your feelings if your feelings don't line up with your biological gender it's because your feelings are wrong not because your gender is wrong there's no wrong or right about your Gender there's fact and there's truth and falsity about your gender it's not like a I feel good about it whether I like it or not I'm a male I was born male now there's some who are born inter sex and you go are you

do we classify this this as male or female do we because there's these complicated and there's there's a whole variety within that realm and in some cases you be like okay well yeah I could see your kind of inter six but you're really male or you Kind of but you're really female and there's some people that in in the middle there where you're like I'm not sure what to say I don't have to know how to answer that question as long as I'm still and you know why I don't know how to because your gender

is based on your biology I'm still looking at biology to dictate what you are as as gender what we've done is we've separated sex from gender in our culture and this is completely artificial this Is brand new this is changing the definitions of words in the in the in the name of progress It's not progress It's delusion I know I'm offending a lot of people when I say this um in in in let me say this really quick in all of human history in all of human history you're the only people that have been offended

by this think about that for a second why am I the why in the history of humanity Am I the only person that's offended by the idea that how I feel does not dictate my reality that I cannot create my identity based upon my impressions of myself why does that offend me why am I so mad about that you've been trained to be mad about that you've been taught to be mad about that if I feel different than I am my feelings are wrong and my amness has not changed there's plenty of people out There

who feel all sorts of things about themselves you this is this is um not new um I remember there's there's there's people who believe that they're God right who was it there was this famous actress years ago I was too I was too young to even be aware I don't think I don't think I was alive but who stood on the beach and she proclaimed out to the world she goes I am God I am God and there's this like I guess video or something of her screaming into the air That she is God on

the beach and most people looked at her and thought you're crazy like you're obviously not God even though she totally felt like God like she was not you're not you're just wrong your feelings are wrong same as the person who says and catch this this is where I can help people well now Mike you've made me feel worthless oh well see here I've helped you cuz your feelings are wrong you're Not worthless you have great worth you just don't feel it you're not a a a female you're a male you just don't feel it let's

fix the feelings let's not Chop off body parts and that sort of thing that this is the feelings are not creating your reality and those feelings will change over time and it will be very self-destructive if you feed into and Chase those things as lifestyle it creat a temporary Euphoria but it creates a Long-term harm so the argument if God doesn't make mistakes when it comes to gender what about disabilities don't don't use the line of reasoning you God Made You male and he didn't make a mistake that that's a clumsy awkward way of putting

it God Made You male how do I know because your biology dictates your your gender and your sex both right they're the same thing we've only recently made gender into a new term that refers to like your Internal sensation of how you identify that's brand new that is not what the word ever meant before um and it's it's we've invented that and it's causing a lot of harm to people your feelings don't dictate your reality reality should dictate your feelings but your feelings sometimes conflict and sometimes are in line with it let's go to question

number seven and this comes from CNA C Inna who says if the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is Just sorry guys my back is being my back if the doctrine of penal as in penalty short for penalty for those of you who are in junior high substitutionary atonement is just if that's a just Doctrine would it be just for an Earthly judge to impute the guilt of a murderer to an innocent volunteer and sentence the volunteer to death instead of the murderer if not why so this is a um a skeptical Challenge on what I

consider to be a Core element of the Cross so this is a a challenge to Christianity Jesus dies on the cross for my sin I I deserve to be punished but he gets punished instead that the nature of the Cross there's other aspects to the Cross it's moral example and and all these other sort of things but that's part of it is the doctrine we abbreviate PSA penal substitutionary atonement he suffers the penalty as my substitution to bring me to God to fix my Relationship with God and deal with my sin um so yeah but

if if if God can do that why can't a judge who's going to send it a murder to death be like anybody want to volunteer to take his place and then someone takes his place and the answer to that that is um no the there's there's one dissimilarity here Jesus isn't a random volunteer this is very important in the New Testament this is not just something I'm bringing after the fact in the New Testament Jesus is The second Adam now some of you in the comments are like you mean he's the last Adam well the

New Testament calls them both second Adam last Adam just read more of the New Testament um so he is he is like Adam Adam in the garden Adam represents us all Jesus from birth is appointed to be the represent ative of all Humanity he's not a random volunteer he's literally come for this purpose to represent us all there's another difference too Jesus Is not just another human dying for a human he is God himself with us so God creates us and then he our our who's Now by adoption my heavenly father and my Creator he

takes on the the burdens of humanity sends his son so we have we have the doctrine that Trinity and all that right but God sends his son who is God With Us taking on human flesh for the ex expressed purpose of saving his own creatures from their own sins this is very different than a random Stranger so we get a little bit of this in our justice system um with not with prison or death penalty but with other elements so if I'm given a fine let's say I was given a $50,000 fine and my dad

showed up and was like I want to pay that $50,000 fine they would accept that they would let somebody else pay my fine financially but not my penalty in other ways in like the prison time I deserve and stuff like that that would not be Considered right but it's he's not just a random volunteer this is the second Adam the the one who was literally by God's design command and planed to be the representative of all Humanity on the cross who was also God himself with us so he's the Creator amongst the creatures he's definitely

not a random person so you can't relate it to like random people doing things for us so much more than that number eight tarar said or Tara car says any idea why Matthew and Luke list Joseph's genealogy when he's not Jesus's birth father does that mean Jesus's lineage isn't what needs to be what it needs to be to fulfill the prophecy so this gets into a lot of detail and I'll just give you the quick answer because I want to answer more questions today I really want to get as many as I can um Matthew

and Luke both have different genealogies of Jesus they both mention Joseph but I think that one of them is mentioning Joseph as His literal biological ancestry and the other one is mentioning Joseph as the um married into ancestry so when it says Joseph when it talks about Joseph's dad in one of the genealogies it's actually Mary's dad so that we have Mary's line and Joseph's line you go back far enough they come together but for the beginning they're different like he lies over here but not over here you know you kind of have different genealogies

um that is uh one way to Look at those two genealogies uh why would Joseph's genealogy be given and not just Mary's I think because we're establishing that both Joseph and Mary his adopted dad as well as his biological mom they both have a davidic line and so it's just giving double Assurance of the davidic claim that Jesus has that he see the Messiah had to be the son of David that was very important he was even born in Bethlehem the town of David you know so that's how I understand those genealogies other people have

there's other views as well that are out there on what is going on there Joseph's name is used twice but I think only biologically is he being referred to Once number nine and by the way geneal Jewish genealogies so back up Jewish genealogies are a lot more flexible in the way that they handle things like they'll skip Generations they'll be like so and so beet so and so and it was Really like a grandpa or something sometimes they do that too so that there's a lot more flexibility amongst the way they handle genealogies than what

you might be thinking of uh number nine Paul Ral says why do Christians think there is an afterlife why not just look at death as a return to the quantum State like before we were born um I would say there's a few things there Paul uh interesting question the um the the view that Christians have of The afterlife is not like a view that we've come up with because we like it so I don't get to like come up with oh you know be cool if we did this when we died that would be in

the realm of like fantasy um but instead our view of the afterlife is based upon Revelation it's the idea that God has told us this is what it's going to be like let me show you this is what it's going to be like and so when Jesus is dying on the cross and he says to this thief on the cross Next to him he goes today you'll be with me in paradise and I go ah okay there's there's a immediacy upon death of being with God Paul talks about this in Philippians where he's he's torn

this might sound weird he's not suicidal don't get me wrong there's no desire for him to hurt himself but he's torn between the the the desire to continue serving and helping people and making a difference in the world and the desire to just go and be with Christ and he'll Be with the Lord in other words he'll you have to have a personhood you can't just be in a Quantum State you have to be a person who has awareness to be able to be in relation and with someone else right um so what I'm saying

is Paul has that expectation that when he dies 'll be with the Lord at that at that very next moment when step is being killed in the book of Acts and he's being martyred he looks up and Heavens open to him a vision and he sees Jesus Sitting at the right hand of the or standing at the right hand of the father to receive Stephen this first martyr of the church so he's going to be with Christ not a Quantum state but actually with him then we have more that's just the intermediate State what Christians

call the intermediate State there's a Time coming where Christ returns and he resurrects all those who died giving them new Eternal bodies that's very much not a Quantum state but It's so much better in my opinion now I don't believe it because it's better but I want to acknowledge that it's better I will live in a body that is perfect that is without corruption that is not going to get sick or ill or old or any of that that is going to be relational there's going to be physical tactile experiences and for eternity it'll be

an idealized experience forever looking forward to it so the reason why Christians don't believe we go to a Quantum state is Because Revelation says the opposite of that like got not The Book of Revelation that too but the fact that God has revealed to us what's coming if you're a Christian you believe Jesus you know you believe what he says about what's coming um but I would also encourage you with this Paul Quantum state is not as romantic as you might think at least consider the possibility Quantum state is a fancy way of saying nothing

it's it's hard for our brains to Imagine Quantum things it's so so tiny and what we do is then we watch like Avengers movie and we see the quantum realm as this sort of like amazing scientifically wonderful place and in reality it's like probably not like that at all right because all what what we see in movies is the Quantum realm is a is a place you can shrink down to and a visit and it's just a place of endless possibilities and wonder that is very much a Sci-Fi Version of it uh Quantum space and

Quantum you know it's it's very much unknown it's very confusing but it's certainly not avengers version of things um so if you were to go to a Quantum state where that's you die and your particles are broken apart to such a small state that you call it quantum you're it seems to me you're effectively saying I'm gone but I would like to call that Quantum State I maybe am Romanticizing ni Annihilation when I say that and it doesn't seem as as as attractive as it sounds I think at first number 10 Rachel blue 73 says

for my 12-year-old if God created everything why did he create cancer as a Christian mother I still struggle with this with these sort of questions yeah um this is tough to answer for a 12-year-old because I want to immediately make categories and say okay well God didn't create cancer cancer cancer was not Created it's not like it didn't exist and then God like brought it into existence out of nothing the nature of cancer is it's a corruption it's a malfunction so when it comes to Creation God creates Adam and Eve and they're and they're ideal

right there's no cancer there when man sins our world becomes corrupt things go bad right so God made a world where people could do actions and live and and live consequences of those actions and when they sin it Brought corruption into the world so that cancer what cancer is to my knowledge is it's a cell that is growing when it where it shouldn't grow you know like a uh there's a kidney cell and that kidney cell goes over to your lung and tries to build a kidney inside your lung um and it just keeps repopulating

itself not even a whole kidney just like a piece of a and so it's building things that shouldn't be there that's my understanding of cancer forgive me if I Get some of the details wrong I'm not MediCal guy um although everyone in my family ends up with cancer so so one day I'll know it very well I'm sure um the uh the nature of that is that it's corruption it's not creation does that make sense so if your if your 12-year-old builds like a really cool Tower and then populates it with like little toys and

things that come alive and there are like living little beings crawling all over this Tower and some of Those beings start messing with the tower and hurting the Tower and the tower starts falling and they're like why did the why did you make this falling Tower and you're like well I mean it always had the potential to fall but but really it's falling as a result of the work of the stuff you guys are doing the Bible traces the corruption that is going on in nature to Rebellion against God and that corruption is temporary right

because God is good all That sin all that suffering is very much temporary when God remakes the new Heaven and new earth we read about in 1 Peter 3 I think it's 1 Peter 3 then there will be no cancer there'll be no pain there will be no sickness there'll be none of that stuff so we have temporary Damage Done to God's created a world which includes cancer disease and all that right and then there is eventual Perfection that's coming so um I hope that that helps answer the Question and it's always okay to Simply

say you know if you ask questions I don't know that's a good question I'll think about it and um but my understanding is I would I would say uh the only other thing I'd say is this if if you can't get past the idea and you ever like no I still feel like God's somehow responsible and then I'll stop arguing with you about that and I'll just say the following it's temporary and God will use it for good these are Things you should know it it it will be used for bad don't get me wrong

cancer is bad but God will use it for good in the end he'll bring something good out of what has gone on when my mom got cancer it did cause her to be a lot more serious about God and that was a good moment that was a good thing you know we had we had the first like really serious open conversation in years um because of it and um God used it for good and so I'm grateful for that at least okay Number 11 Nana has a question why do you what do you think is

the best evidence argument that there is a God um I think that that I don't have a solid one time answer for that um so the answers depend I think that there's a lot of really good Arguments for God's existence um so the fine-tuning argument from the nature of the universe uh the fine tuning of the that's not a biology argument but the fine tuning of the Universe that's a really good one um the design argument from biological design especially coupled with fine tuning that's super powerful to me but guess what it's also really complicated

and it's about science and things like that that some people will be super interested in and other people will just tune out and zone out so I use it selectively fine-tuning great argument for the more scientifically inclined how about the moral argument you have people Who you know that are very much about Justice and about what's right and what's wrong and they care a lot about that stuff I think if you can use the moral argument you can show them that the morals they already believe in are pointing to a moral lawgiver that without the

the The Giver of the these moral truths you would you would have nothing if there was no God these morals that they hold so dear wouldn't exist the fact that they believe them is Evidence for God I think that's a really powerful argument for some people some people just roll their eyes and move on maybe I try a different argument um for others I think common sense is actually the best I think probably for the majority of people in the world it's common sense that God exists and the best argument is common sense he's look

around and be like you really think this all just happened look at the hills look at the sky look at the stars look at the The beach listen to the seagulls you think this all just happened with no Creator and they go yeah you're right is that like a a the theological philosophical argument well in a sense it is it's just not presented in the theological philosophical way I think common sense is the strongest argument for God's existence and for those who reject that common sense more careful thoughtful philosophical Arguments are the things that I

would I would probably move towards so yeah there isn't maybe one best argument maybe it depends on the person um fulfill prophecy is a great argument if people have a lot of time and are willing to listen to you talk for a long time um then you have like evidence for Jesus because with that argument you get not only God but you get Jesus in the Bible along with it and so that's like a really powerful thing to do if Successful so maybe that helps number 12 anonymous question it says here if you have to

believe First in order to experience the reality of Christianity if the proof only comes alive when one chooses to trust isn't that truth make believe um I I I don't think so but let let me Grant you're hypothetical let's say that the only people that know that Christianity is true is those who first choose to believe it and then they experience Something that confirms that it's true that wouldn't make their belief make believe because in the hypothetical it's true and they're just not able to confirm it until they choose to trust it what it would

do is it would make the belief difficult to access or the knowledge of the truth of Christ difficult to access because the unbeliever would never access it um but it would still be true rationally it would still be true I mean That's the basis of the hypothetical um but I but the hypothetical I don't think represents chrisan Christianity so Jesus himself says that the Holy Spirit Will um will bring conviction of sin righteousness and judgment to come Jesus himself uses evidences to prove who he is in John chapter 5 we read about this he tells

the the the people he's witnessing to they're Jews so they've been sitting with the scriptures he's like look you have Moses Moses spoke of Me I have multiple Witnesses if you lived in the first century of John the Baptist who was the Forerunner for Christ and that may not be impressive to you well of course you're 2,000 years removed from that culture and that environment but to the Jew in the first century that that was that was meaningful and now in the in the in the 21st century we have things like evidence for the resurrection

of Christ you have the you do have now this is Soft evidence I admit to some but it is evidence the testimony of Christians the people you know and maybe you don't but I hope you do who they gave their lives to Christ and their lives really changed and they really experienced spiritual fulfillment and they can say like man this was for real that at least means something right it it's not without meaning that something and you have um evidence for the reliability of the scriptures you have evidence for the Existence of God using things

like I didn't talk about this today but the colam cosmological argument k a l m check that out look it up think about it I I pray that any skeptic watching you don't just Google skeptic response to the colum you never even read what someone wrote about it like a thoughtful explanation because guys like say William L Craig who's really pushed this particular argument for God's existence from the beginning of the universe he Answers objections in his writings and yet people make rebuttal to him with no awareness that he's already answered those rebuttal so it's

something to like go a letter deeper is what I would encourage so yeah let me read your question one more time and then summarize the answer if you have to believe First in order to experience the reality of Christianity if the proof only comes alive when one chooses to trust it isn't that truth make believe And the answer is in your hypothetical no that not make believe it's just inaccessible to the non-believer but that hypothetical is not actually representative of Christianity you may have met Christians who said that you got to believe and then you'll

see well you can end up believing and then receiving confirmation but that doesn't mean you have to that's the that's the part I'm stopping them on don't say you have to believe before you can see Because the people who witnessed the the miracles of Jesus they saw and still didn't believe so so yeah you uh you can definitely see and not believe it can go either way uh Nels Brash says when Jesus said for the person who would betray him it would be better not to be born I assume hell is worse than non-existence how

does this match with a good god um so the the challenge I've had with this Nils and and I taught through the gospels where Jesus says this my Challenge on this has been um um did Jesus mean that literally or is is it a figure of speech you better if that man had not existed does he mean literally and we even use the word literally weird right we say literally all the time nowadays when what we mean is not literally we literally use the word literally non literally it's the weirdest thing in the world that

we do All the time um so did Jesus mean that literally and I don't know for sure the answer to this I think a more careful analysis would involve going into to ancient Greek texts and papy and looking for the phrase you know better if he'd not been born and trying to find out like is this used in literal ways maybe Jesus is just using a phrase to say and he does this a lot this is kind of a Hebrew thing they say things like this a lot to say like Boy oh boy is it

going to be bad for that guy and that may well just be the meaning um so you say hell is worse than non-existence um if you did take it that way if you do interpret it a way to say that hell is worse than non-existence it would only be for that man and actually not for everybody else it was woe to the man who betrays me for him it would be better not to be born this would imply that his unique experience is going to be far worse than somebody else's Meaning hell is not worse

than non-existence um I think that that's uh a a more careful thought for that thought all right whatever moving on to 14 I'm sorry I stopped to read a text and totally distracted myself Mikey Larry says if I believe in my heart that Jesus rose from the dead and trust in him alone for salvation why would God then send me to hell for being actively gay am I not saved by my faith instead of my Works um yeah Mikey Larry there's A there's a passage of scripture that is specifically written for you um for your

question so it's in James let me take you there um but I'm warning you you might not like what I'm going to share with you because you're obviously very invested in this question but I want to give you truth because this question matters your Eternal Soul matters your eternal life matters and whether or not you can be Actively gay which means regularly this is adults may want to skip ahead on this not for kids you're regularly engaging in homosexual sex acts between you and other men or or another man and you might say it's just

one guy we try to be as monogamous as we can or what ever of course the Bible doesn't define marriage as a male and male it's only male female so then you know you're doing a thing that the Bible says um hold on let me first take you to 1 Corinthians 6 this is what the Bible says right do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God do not be deceived meaning what this is something people can easily be deceived about neither the sexually immoral nor idolators nor adulterers nor men

who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards yep drunkards too you have you you're an active ongoing alcoholic you're salvation is at least in question it's like are you Really saved you at least have a genuine question about it I I cannot take away what scripture says I know this is a super unpopular thing to teach I'm going to have literally have video responses to me saying about how bad I am but why on Earth does Paul say don't be deceived except that he knows that Christians may be deceived about this these people

will not quote inherit the kingdom of God now you can formerly in having engaged in homosexual acts formerly Drunkard and greedy and reviler idolator sexually immoral adulterer you could formerly do those things but if you're actively living those Lifestyles you're living the lifestyle of somebody who is not going to inherit the kingdom of God that's a scary thought and then your response could be your question but Mike I I believe but I have faith I don't know who's ringing my doorbell but I wish they would Stop um literally tapping on the window of my house

whoever this is I've never had someone do that um whatever you're selling me I'm never never going to buy it okay so back to what's more important um James 21:14 what good is is it my brothers if someone says he has Faith but does not have Works what does this mean not that you have faith but but that the person hypothetically claims to have Faith but their Works their lifestyle contradicts their claims it doesn't mean they're not this about earning your way to heaven this is about is my faith real I say I believe in

Jesus but I'm going to knowingly intentionally and actively these are very important words knowingly intentionally and actively engage in sinful lifestyle that God has told me are the lifestyles of people who will not inherit the Kingdom but it's okay cuz I believe I believe so I can Continue my active knowing ongoing sinful lifestyle well maybe that person's Faith isn't really faith can that Faith save him if a brother or sister's poorly clothed and lacking in Daily food and one of you says to them go in peace and be warmed and filled without giving them the

things needed for the body what good is that your nice intentions in saying oh be warm and filled you didn't really mean it why not cuz you you had the Ability to help them be warm and filled and you didn't you did nothing so you didn't really mean it did you so it was an empty claim so also Faith as an empty Claim by itself does not have if it doesn't have works it's dead Faith Works proves that faith is real works don't save you but they demonstrate that your faith is genuine um we can

go through this I've read through this passage many times just last week I think we went through It but let me um let me just just say read James chapter 2 please read it please read it very seriously read it very slow read it very thoughtfully and and know this that your question Mike lry which I am so grateful that you asked I'm so grateful that you asked this I think your question is answered in scripture and let me answer you read your question again and answer you shortly briefly if I believe in my heart

that Jesus rose from the dead and trust In him alone for salvation what good why would God then send me to hell for being actively gay am I not saved by my faith instead of my works that is literally the exact situation that James talks about a person who says I have the intellectual beliefs I'm just living in a sinful lifestyle won't God accept me James is saying you think you believe but your belief is lacking something and the fact that you won't live it out it shows you That your faith is somehow empty your

faith is somehow vain your faith is somehow lacking put true faith and Trust in Christ and there are many of those who are watching today who are thinking about your own lifestyle and and it's maybe it's not homosexuality something else and you're like oh man I don't know if I'm saved or not or maybe I'm just on some borderline but the point is I'm in a scary situation I need to get serious about Jesus Christ I don't need to earn My way to heaven my Works will not save me one iota I cannot add one

good thing to the work that Jesus has done but one thing I can do is I can have faith that is genuine and if I have genuine faith and the spirit is really working in my life life then I'm I'm going to see it play out in my life in ways that are tangible and if it's not then I got to question that Faith the solution is to get real Faith real genuine trust and faith in Christ it's not to fix yourself it's to fully commit yourself that's the solution and then you will see it

play out ups and downs failure and success but you will see it play out with a change of life let's go to question 15 this is from bean pie who says how were people saved in the Old Testament before Jesus and if they were saved without believing in Jesus then why did it change um I think that they were saved by uh by faith believing in God even Though they didn't know all the details about Jesus Romans chapter 4 talks about this I think it's such a cool passage in Romans it really mattered to Paul

the Apostle that the gospel he preached was consistent with the old testament which is the question you're asking here so when the question is how was Abraham saved was he saved by his works or something like how was AB saved before Jesus shows up he it says here in Romans 4 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham Our Father our forefather according to the flesh for If Abraham was justified by works he's talking about a similar topic as James James is saying if your faith really saves you it will it will produce works

and Paul is saying faith is what saves you and it's not your works that save so Paul rejects that works are required for salvation but James makes sure to air affirm that works are a result of Salvation does that make sense like easy way to put is Works are the fruit faith is the root if there's no fruit maybe there ain't a root but it's the root that makes the fruit try not to rhyme with to Oops I Did It for If Abraham was justified by works he has something to boast about but not before

God for what does the scripture say how is Abraham saved this is your question Old Testament Saint Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness that's so cool wait hold On before we move on what is it what did Abraham believe what was it that Abraham believed God about let's go to Genesis 15:6 this is the verse what is he believing the Lord told to Abraham told to Abraham the following this man shall not be your Heir right his his his servant Eleazar uh your very own son shall be your Heir and

he brought him outside and said look toward heaven and Number the Stars if you're able to number them then he Said to him so shall your Offspring be and he believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness Abraham was righteous by faith he didn't hear about Jesus but he did hear about his offspring meaning he had this like this this like uh embryonic understanding of the Messiah and he believed this much he knew about God and this much about Jes he really believed it he had accurate knowledge of God but very narrow

and he believed it and he was saved as as more Revelation comes you have to believe more because more is being revealed but if Abraham had had learned more of Jesus he would have trusted it as well they were saved by faith the same as you and me they just had less information but they did respond in faith to God and the same is true of those who today don't hear the name of Jesus they there may be something they can hear and respond to that God counts as faith and on behalf of Christ they

can be saved I know this Is a a controversial topic it took me years to to figure this out because I didn't I thought about it like uh through the tradition of my church instead of through the lens of verse by verse studying scripture so I did a video called what about those who never hear the gospel and I'll link that below at the end of the study here the message or the Q&A here today you can check that out I go verse by verse I talk about specific people you know nahome I talk About

uh I forget his name right now anyway I talk about the leper um anyway whatever his name was um and I go through those sorts of things in detail verse by verse like examining what Paul says about the Old Testament and specific characters and how much knowledge did they have and what does that mean for people today and what does that mean for people in Pagan religions and stuff he said people don't get a free pass for being in a Pagan religion Just because they don't hear about Jesus but it's more nuanced than that so

I try to give the answer biblically all right uh link down below as soon as the Q&A is over Danny boy says question from a skeptic if you are already saved why do you still ask for forgiveness for your sins um the short answer is and I'm move real quick for these other few answers if I can the short answer is that while our we don't lose our relationship with God when we Sin it's not like I lose my my whole salvation I still want forgiveness because there is a there's relational harm caused in because

I have a living active relationship with God I don't just have a ticket to Heaven I have a relationship with my Father in heaven and while I'm not ousted out of heaven when I sin it hurts that relationship and I am sorry and I want forgiveness and so I have sinned freshly so I freshly ask for forgiveness foress I Think that's a healthy thing to do as a Christian and there's a lot more to it I'm sure than that but that's like the short answer uh I like the example of marriage when I blow it

with my wife if I sin against my wife somehow I don't have to apologize to keep her from divorcing me I'm not going to lose the marriage but the relationship is still hurt and so I still want to come and be like honey I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that and it restores the health of The relationship right I didn't lose the relationship but I lost some of the health of it so active actively asking for forgiveness does that question number 17 theology ponderer says is Jesus being God and man a contradiction the Bible says

that the son doesn't know the day or the hour of his coming can Jesus know as God and not know as man at the same time um my answer to this is yes and I do I have a a a lot more I've done on this in video form but I'll give You a short answer today um you have the power of sight but if you close your eyes you can't see anything right right I have the power of of arms to pick things up but if I tie one arm behind my back I lack

the ability to do the very thing that I could I'm I'm self-limiting in a way that literally makes me incapable to in in in a in a real way of doing something I normally could do Jesus Is God and man he has all the powers of God omniscience Uh omnipotence he could he could do anything yet he chooses to limit himself so in a sense you you can close your eyes and this limits your vision even though you could see everything you're going to close yourself off to it Jesus in his omnipotence could know all

things but he chooses to close himself off to that like closing his eyes so to speak to the knowledge of the day or the hour this is part of his submission to the father as a son to come humbly to think That God limits himself even in his own conscious awareness of things um is it's it's staggering to think about this to think about the the reality of the Incarnation but that's how I understand it um I don't see that as a contradiction I think that it's helping us understand the nature of the Incarnation better

if there was times where Jesus probably as a human went to pick something up and the thing was too heavy For him and it was humanly too heavy and he chose not to use his divine power to just force it up you can you can do this um it it makes sense all we're doing is we're not saying Jesus is less powerful because he can close his mind off to knowing certain things that we're saying no that's one of his powers he can he can close his mind off to knowing certain things not access them

I think that that makes a lot of sense I don't see a Problem with that view number 18 carvalo says As a Christian or carvalo maybe um what is an appropriate answer to an atheist claiming quote the Bible is pure fiction um this is challenging because to be honest and maybe Skeptics listening you you'll hopefully hear me out on this when I hear a uh somebody claimed the Bible is pure fiction or the Bible's like Harry Potter um it tell it informs me about the perspective of the person making the Claim I realized that I'm

I might be wasting my time um talking about those things like this person is probably better to like go get lunch with them and build a relationship with them first tactfully because I I just think you're not going to get that far on the internet talking to them nobody in their right mind thinks the Bible is pure fiction nobody right The Atheist historians atheist total hardened Atheist historians will say that the Bible is our best source for historical information about Jesus and the early church the early Christians The Atheist will say it's our best historical

Source even the most non-believing Old Testament Scholars are going to say that there's a lot of historical factual information in the Old Testament they're going to look at that and go yep there's a lot of historical stuff there for instance let me talk about the Hittites The Bible has all these ites Hittites is one of them right the Hittites are this group and they're involved in all these different interactions with Israel and and some historians some secular historians and even who would say they were Christian many of them said the Hittites never existed they were

fabricated by the Jews in part of their storytelling about their fictional like legendary history we have now uncovered so much Archaeological confirmation of the reality of the Hittites that you can go and get your degree in hittite studies in University because and catch this because for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years the only knowledge the world had about this ancient civilization the Hittites was the Bible and doubters of the Bible thought they made that up archaeological discoveries prove that Was in fact true there's other stuff too the names of people in the Bible fit

the locations and time periods that people had those names right if you live a thousand miles away and you're writing about someone 500 years ago from a th000 miles away you're not going to get the names right you're just not it's it's not modern times where you can go and look up literature from those times easily um but the names are correct there's so much historical evidence for The verification of scripture it's it's um it means that if somebody says the the Bible is pure fiction they're they're pure they are a pure fiction person when

it comes to the Bible Well the Bible is just like Harry Potter like you don't even know the difference between fiction and like the gospels like are the gospels classed as fiction the general popular view among Scholars is that the four gospels are Greco Roman biographies Biographies they're actually meant to be the account of a person's life um they're definitely not written as fiction they don't they don't class and count as fiction when someone says the Bible's pure fiction it it means that they're so far behind intellectually when it comes to scripture that I genuinely

don't know where to start and so I I pray Lord give me wisdom I don't want to offend this person I'm not trying to hurt their Feelings I'm not trying to um say bad things about them but there's a reason why amongst atheist circles and this is something atheist I've never seen them come to reckon with this or okay most atheists I've never seen reckon with this um atheists among their circles are What's called the mythicist those who believe Jesus never existed this is considered among historians not just Christian ones among historians such a Preposterous

Idea that they don't even like talking about it or writing about it because the statement that Jesus never existed is laughably bad laughably bad and then some atheists respond to this online they go well I'm not saying look a first century Jew named Jesus probably existed well like no duh like Jesus was one of the most popular first century names for Jews we know from archaeological studies so obviously but you're saying that Jesus of the Bible didn't exist not just That you don't think he did that Miracle or you don't think he rose from the

dead he didn't exist he didn't make these son of man statements that you see in the scripture that the full consensus belief he absolutely did even the non-believers these this is saying something skeptic communities can be just as gullible as anybody else that's why they are the Forefront of the Jesus mythicist movement it's irrational it is not based on on on good Research it's based on like um conspiratorial versions of history and research where you you look at you go well the Bible has all this evidence about Jesus yes but who wrote it Christians and

I am so bigoted against Christians that I completely discount anything they've written in history and Josephus yeah but that was interpolated actually Scholars think that part part of it was but but there's a core there that is about Jesus it's actually ah no I reject that it's just difficult you know tacitus talks about it there's others many secular sources talk about it um gullibility exists on all sides there's plenty of gullible Christians plenty of gable Christians and there are just as many or at least ratio-wise Gable atheists it goes on every side gullibility is a

universal human quality that we all have to fight to get ourselves out of so um so so yeah not All atheists are like that um but the ones online that I've interacted with are disproportionately like that I think a lot of atheists who are prone to fight online tend to be more in that camp and there's many who are like I'm more watching I don't really want to get in the fights and that's kind of more the people who these videos are for this video here is for because you're you're actually you're notd in your

head in agreement you're like yeah man those the The mythicist thing is pretty embarrassing and I'm grateful for you okay question number 19 this is Landon matus who says I lost my faith and I'm so sorry to hear that Landon due to all the mixed messages in the Bible for example is salvation faith alone like John 5:24 or faith plus works like James 2 why doesn't this cause you to doubt so Landon I'm uh my heart breaks to hear you say that um uh I've studied James 2 very very carefully in a Lot of detail

and I don't think it teaches that Faith plus Works saves you I think he's saying faith that works saves you and here's the big difference right faith that works means that the faith is I have confidence and Trust in Christ and when you combine that confidence in Jesus with the work of the holy spirit in your life your life starts to change but imagine that this Faith you have in Jesus isn't genuine it's kind of Like intellectual only that's why James Goes even the demons believe and they tremble because they don't have confidence in Christ

they just know he's true um that is an empty faith that doesn't produce any Works James is not teaching you that Faith plus works is what gets you saved he's teaching you that Faith plus works is how you demonstrate that you really are saved or faith that results in works So Paul in Romans he's teaching you how to get saved James is explaining how you can prove that you really are saved to other people and yourself right one is about how you get there one is about how you show it to others how did I

get the job I applied and they hired me that's very different than how I proved I had the job that is I went to work and there you watched me in my uniform doing the job I proved it to you in a very different way than I got it Romans how You get saved James how you prove it to others I don't see a contradiction there Landon I really don't and I'm so sorry that that you do and that it's hurt your faith I hope you'll be open to listening to other explanations um and hopefully

slowly working through your your biggest concern and it brings you back to a place of saying I trust in Christ I didn't realize this is all consistent It's just sometimes challenging question 20 we're almost Done here but this is extra long Skeptics version Look because I have a heart for Skeptics as many as as as uh other Skeptics online who maybe don't realize that about me is like I I really care about you um I desire you to know the hope and the grace and the love and the truth of Christ that there is I

desire you to know that the Bible is true I want you to have that joy and that truth and that forgiveness that you can Have that's there and um the the debates often feel animic is that a word there's a lot of animosity that's felt that's there and um you know I'm not looking to fight people as much as evangelize but uh but sometimes that gets into the back and forth all right so smack dab says is God holy and sinless can God do things which if we did them would be considered sin one example

killing the firstborn of Egypt does the concept of sin or being sinless even apply to God Um well the Bible if you're going to affirm biblical Christianity which I will the Bible clearly teaches that God is Holy that he is sinless that he is always right that he is just and he is always doing things that are morally good everything he does is morally good it also affirms that he killed the firstborn of Egypt which people imagine them all being babies uh I'm the firstborn son of my father I'm not a baby um so I'm

just saying let's have Clarity doesn't mean there weren't any children involved that's a very harsh judgment that's a very harsh strong judgment it was avoidable right they were able to enter into the to the Jewish homes and say hey look I want to avoid this judgment before it comes from God and they would absolutely have been delivered from it so all they had to have was faith in the god of Israel and they've been demonstrated through many plagues that that was that God was the Real God and that their gods were false and all this

but the Judgment came if you went around doing that you would be in sin I agree so your question is reasonably can God do things which if we did them would be considered sin and my answer is yes but they're not sin when he does them that's how I would qualify it and I'll give you a parallel I cannot drive down the road at 90 mes an hour but a cop Can and all of a sudden you go I see where you're going with this mic um how can a cop go over 90 M an

hour down the road Road Sirens blazing whereas if I drove 90 M hour toad down the road honking my horn really loud I would get multiple tickets and all sorts of problems because a cop has a position that I do not have he is law enforcement and I'm not let me give you another example this Is a judge example am I allowed to take a man and throw him into a cage for say 6 months I'm pretty sure that'd be called kidnapping right that that would be very illegal throwing people in cages for 6 months

can a judge throw down a verdict or get a verdict from a from the jury I suppose and then throw down a judgment okay you're been judged Guilty by the jury I sentence you to 6 months in prison or jail probably six month Sentence very likely in California very likely is to be in jail so you go to jail is that judge sinning now some of you are anti-government or anti jail that's a separate issue like pretend it's a judgment that you are approve of or whatever um the point is the judge does actually have

a different set of Rights in His function as judge than I do as a citizen the the police have a different set of Rights than I do as a citizen now they can't do whatever they Want but there are some things that they can do that I can't do God how much more creator of all mankind judge of all mankind exalted Eternal omnipotent omnipresent Transcendent God allmighty has more rights to do things to his creatures than I do as one of his creatures that makes total sense to me I don't think it's a irrational I

think we do it all the time a parent can ground a kid but a kid can't ground a parent if a Kid tried to ground their parent it would be disrespectful slightly funny but actually very inappropriate and very much a rebellion against that parents rightful Authority if a parent grounds a kid it's considered like no big deal like you mean hopefully they did it wisely and with re good reason and stuff but it's not a big deal this is every layer of our society has this bosses have rights that that that employees don't um cops

have rights that citizens Don't judges have rights that plaintiffs don't in courtrooms lawyers have rights that that their the people they represent don't have this is all very normal and uh we don't talk about in our culture because I feel like we're sort of allergic to the Nuance of understanding these types of things we don't like Authority in general we don't like Authority but Authority is good it's just easily abused but it's a good thing God absolutely can do things that If I did them it would be a sin but but if God does them

it's it's not and that's entirely appropriate because a judge does it and a cop does it and a parent does it and a teacher does it and a boss does it and everybody else does it we understand this and then when it comes to God the most exalted ative being in all of reality we like not you you don't get any special rights over your creation that would seem to be irrational all right last question this Is a bonus question from Daniel Morales um and just for those you who don't know maybe you're joining for

the first time I don't get to read these questions ahead of time the first question I know what's coming okay I prepare that question everything else all the other nine or or 20 that come in I answer them all off the cuff I'll give you my best off the cuff off the top of my head thoughts um surely if I spent more time might get better answers but I'm hoping This points you towards Christ points you towards God leads you a little closer to the eternal life that there is in Jesus Christ and to learning

how this is the goal of my channel to think biblically about everything to think biblically about everything so Daniel Morales says I'm a Bible believing non-Christian that hurt myself from absorbing bad charismatic teachings I have always had trouble trusting and accepting Christ how would one begin to As a skeptic Daniel um you're in a tough spot because I feel like a lot of pastors might not be well equipped to help you and I I would want to cly like hey man I can tell just from reading your question you need more one-on-one help than just

an answer from me but you got to find like an an apologetic minded leader or Christian someone who like thinks about skeptical questions they don't get offended when you ask a hard question that's a really Important thing but also who perhaps understands some of the hurt that you've received from charismatic circles and I I'm this sounds weird for me to say this I'm a little bit like that because I've seen some stuff and I've told you guys a little bit some stories over the years but I've seen some stuff where I thought that was not

charismatic like I'm a continuationist I believe that I'm I'm believe in the gifts of the Spirit I'm hopeful and Desiring for things like Prophecy in the church but I am want to be Discerning and not gullible and I only want what's authentic and real and I absolutely reject any fakeness in the Name of Christ 100% reject it not interested whatsoever um and I'm also I I care about apologetics and so I find somebody like me it sounds so weird to say that um but but I hope you'll find someone Daniel to talk to um You

probably have a lot of questions and a lot of topics and a lot Of issues let me say this one thing um it's easy to get hurt and to overreact this happens a lot um I feel like I had a faith that was a little bit gullible that was a little bit sort of anti-intellectual and then I sort of realized wow my understanding of scripture was kind of shallow my belief about faith and about God and about a Lot of things was really shallow my my apologetics defenses of the Bible and all this were really

shallow and so I'm going to reject confidence in all those things when I should really only reject the shallow confidence I used to have and you can overreact my experience has been um going deep into apologetics and deep into theology has been very rewarding it has Stripped Away some shallowness in my Christian faith but it has replaced it With anchored deeper greater confidence just with more Nuance more thought more care more consideration I believe the Bible is reliable I still believe that there's sometimes verse where you're like wait is it does it read this way

or the way it is in the footnote that's an open discussion and I'm okay with that because I don't have this sort of wooden shallow apologetic in my Christian faith Daniel I hope that that helps don't overreact to the mistakes of the Past by just making the opposite mistakes today you you can well have confidence in scripture maybe this will help check out my series evidence for the Bible I will link it down below um I'm about to click off this video or close close it down and everything check out that series I hope you

do I think you'll find it very rewarding all right let's uh let's pray father we thank you for Daniel for everybody else Skeptics who Watch today who are struggling who have questions we pray that you would help them work through them and reason through these issues in ways that bring them the light of Jesus Christ that bring them confidence in the truth of scripture that bring them closer to the knowledge of God that they would become skeptical of their skepticisms that they would have as much critical processing and thought about unbelief as they have in

the past about Belief in Jesus name amen