Live Free with Josh Howerton - Did The Church BAN These Gospels from the Bible?! | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

What if some of the “lost” or “banned” gospels actually tell us more about the real Jesus than the Bible does? It’s a claim that continues to resurface—and a recent viral conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience brought it back into the spotlight. In this bonus episode of LIVE FREE, Pastors Carlos and Paul react to claims about the Gnostic Gospels and examine the historical evidence behind Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Were books about Jesus intentionally suppressed by the Church? Were the Gnostic Gospels actually written first? And can we trust the New Testament to give us an accurate picture of the historical Jesus? Along the way, they also discuss why Christians should pursue truth without becoming hostile toward people asking sincere questions—and why getting Jesus right matters. In this episode: What the Gnostic Gospels actually are Why they were rejected by the early Church When the biblical Gospels were written compared to the Gnostic texts The evidence supporting Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Why the full character of Jesus matters How to respond when popular voices make questionable claims about Christianity Why the real Jesus continues to transform lives 2,000 years later If you’ve ever wondered whether books were removed from the Bible, whether the Church hid alternative accounts of Jesus, or how confident we can be in the Gospels, this conversation is for you. Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free. 🧢 Want a Live Free hat of your own? Visit LiveFree.shop 📲 Looking to grow deeper in your faith? Check out the Lakepointe App to access our Discipleship Guide, daily Bible reading plan, and more. Text APP to 20411 to download

Can we really trust the New Testament gospel to tell us who Jesus really is? If the real Jesus can really change your life, how do we know who the real Jesus is and what sources and what books tell us? Well, hey, Libre, Free Nation, before we jump into today's episode, I want to let you know that today's episode is going to be a little bit different. We're going to be reacting to a particular video and address the topic of the Gnostic Gospels. And it might feel a little bit more like a deep dive Bible study. So if you're watching or listening, this is one of those episodes where you may want to grab a pen,

grab a notebook and really lean in. Maybe you've heard people talk about the lost gospels or the forbidden books or the books of the church didn't want you to read. And maybe you've seen clips online claiming that the Bible we have today is missing the real story of Jesus. And if you've ever wondered, is that true? Did the church hide certain books? Can I actually trust Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

This episode is for you. Chad Gipal and I are going to walk through the claims, slow things down, explain what the Gnostigospels actually are. why they are rejected and why Christians can have confidence that the Jesus we meet in the New Testament is the real Jesus of history. This episode may stretch you a little bit and it's a little bit more theological, it's historical, and we believe it is important. So let us know if you like this format because if it's helpful, we might do more theological deeper dive. So get ready, lean in. Let's jump into today's episode.

Well, hey, welcome to a bonus episode of the Live Free podcast. My name is Carlos Arazo and I'm here with the one and only chat G. Paul C. The Epistle Missal Pastor Paul Cunningham. What's up, man? I have not heard the Epistle Missal in a while. I always like the Epistle Missal. It started strong and I felt like it was winning and then it's just kind of faded over time.

We should have to make a little bit of a comeback. I'm going to bring it back once in a while. Hey, today's episode, we're going to be asking, did the Bible ban books called the Gnostic Gospels? Is that true? First of all, what are those and where did those book even come from? The way we're going to be answering those questions is we're going to be reacting to this viral clip of Joe Rogan interviewing John Esther Haas, who is an author and a screenwriter for movies like Flashdan and Basic Instinct, which honestly, Paul, I had never heard of these movies. These are your movies. Oh, no, they are not.

No, they are not. By that I mean, your generation's movies. If you have not Googled Basic Instinct, please don't, and please do not watch it. I'm just trying to get the bio of this gentleman over here. Wow, I'm turning red, I feel it. Wow, okay. What I meant to say is that you're more familiar because I'm too young for this movie. Anybody got to shovel?

He just keeps digging as he's going. Oh, my goodness. And we're off right now, everybody. This is great. So basically, we're going to be reacting to this video. In particular, it went viral because it had a headline which read like this. It says Joe Rogan was left completely stunned. That's too funny.

Hold on. Here's what the headline said. Joe Rogan was left completely stunned after a devout Christian Joe Esther Haas exposed who Jesus Christ really was. So ultimately, we're going to be answering the question, can we really trust? You're too funny. You're just keep laughing over here. I'm trying to keep a straight face. We're going to be asking, can we really trust the New Testament gospel is to tell us who Jesus really is?

That's right. Well, honestly, this is kind of great that this has happened, even though we did not. playing this whatsoever, just the humor, because a few things before we jump in. Number one, there are going to be some points where we have to do some correction, where we have to say, hey, what one or both of these guys says is wrong or off, but we don't want the tone to be, oh, these guys are idiots, because one of the things is what we also want to say in this video is, man, we love that they're talking about Jesus and they're interested in the things of Jesus. And so I'm kind of glad that we started all laughing because we talked about before that we really want

to try an instance to be happy warriors. We want to be people who will contend for the truth, but also not be jerks as we do it. So if anything, maybe this has set a good tone for us to get laughing as we go. And so, yeah, so I think this is a really important topic. We get asked about this all the time, specifically not about basic instinct, but about the Gnostic Gospels. Some people call them the lost or the band's Gospels. You can ask it all the time. So I think it'd be good for us to address this so that people can dive into it. There was a little bit of a hot topic with the Da Vinci Code. the day.

Big time. Big time. The DaVinci Code. And then something we'll jump into in a little bit. There was something that happened in the 80s and 90s, the quest for the historical Jesus that culminated with something called the Jesus Seminar. And what's happened is so much of that has been debunked, almost all of it. But, you know, people held on to it and now just quoted as if it's fact.

And most people don't know it has been debunked. So we'll get there in a bit. So good for us to hit it because we get asked this all the time. But I think another reason why it's important to talk about this is, you know, one of things these guys are going to kind of allude to is that Jesus can change your life, that the real Jesus can really change your life. But then the key question is, is how do we, you just can't, you can't recover right now, can you? I'm trying to be serious right now. You just can't recover. This is awesome. Is, hey, like, if the real Jesus can really change your life,

how do we know who the real Jesus is and what sources and what books tell us? Now, what we believe, I've got here called something called a synopsis of the four Gospels. And what this is is it lays out the four Gospels side by side, and it shows things that they have in common, things that once applies to the dozen and so on and so forth. And so we really just had to ask us, hey, when I read these four Gospels, am I getting the real Jesus, or their other books, sometimes called the Gnostic Gospels, that give us a Jesus who is more historical.

So that's why it really matters, because we want to know who the real Jesus is, because if we get it wrong, it has huge consequences. But again, just so people know, like, sometimes when we're answering stuff in response to Joe Rogan, especially about Christianity or his guests, I think there's two ditches people can fall in. Some immediately canonize everything they say, meaning everything they said is true and right and immediately swallow it. And so that's one ditch. The other group or the other ditches, they immediately criticize everything. It's like, no, everything they said has to be wrong.

And I just want to say it's actually like, again, it's awesome. These guys are talking about Jesus. Some of the things they say are in here, great. Some are maybe a little confused. Some are outright wrong. Let's learn how to distinguish which from rich and take the good and leave the bad. That's right. Yeah, and what's what we're going to do right now? We're literally going to react to the whole video.

That's like a four-minute clip. And so before we play, anything else on your end, Paul? That was the big stuff I wanted to say at the beginning. Okay. Let's go ahead and start playing. And I feel like sometimes, like, religion goes in, like, peaks and waves. And I think there was a wave of atheism back then, and Hollywood was very non-Christian, to put it mildly. Yes.

It wasn't – the Christian themes and films were never promoted. Yeah, it was absolutely right. It's not as bad now in that sense as it was in those days. Let's pause. Let's stop right here. So, Carlos, the Joe's, I'm just going to call them the Joe's, by the way, because they're first. Yeah, it's just easier to do that than to try to say Esther House's last name, and it's, to me, just really hard to pronounce for some reason. Where's that last name from? I think he's Hungarian.

Okay. He's Hungarian. At least he has a Hungarian background. And so, yeah, but they're here, they're talking about how there seems to have been a shift, even just recently. from people, it felt like for a while there was a resistance to Christianity. And now there seems to be an increased openness to it, but a lot of it has kind of gone in peaks and valleys and ebts and flows for the last 30 to 40 years. Maybe just helpful for context if you could give people kind of a little bit of some of that

Evan flow and what that's looked like. Yeah. So Aaron Wren, he has a framework that basically explains that there's been three different ways in which Christianity has been perceived by culture here in the U.S. at least in the last 40 to 50 years, and he calls them the positive world, neutral world, and negative world. So real quick, again, according to Ren,

positive world is pre-1994. This is basically a time where, generally speaking, in our American culture, culture had a positive view of Christianity. So if you're a Christian, hey, that's actually socially advantageous towards you. It is good for you, you know, for society, for Christians to kind of be around,

good for you to go to church. That's a good thing. So that's positive world pre-1994. after that, 1994 to 2014, we transitioned to a neutral world. And what Ren would say is a neutral world is basically a culture where Christianity is no longer the dominant worldview, but it is one amongst many equal worldviews. So this is like the classic old school. I don't know if you ever saw these Paul, Larry King Live shows where like you'd have like a John MacArthur Bible teacher sit down with Deepak Chopra, spiritual guru with a Catholic priest and a, a, a Catholic priest. and an atheist scholar, and they're having conversations about life, and, you know, Larry King would say

something like, so John, explain what happened in 9-11. Whose fault is here? And it usually wasn't contentious. That's one other thing is. Like, I think if people would go back in a war seat, people actually might be bored because they usually weren't contentious. Christianity had a seat at the table, and it's one worldview, and they're all equally valid, and let's have a conversation about it.

So that's neutral worldview, neutral world in 1994 to 2014. Now, Ren changes that in 2014. He says we transitioned to a negative world. And 2014 was when Obergefell happened. So gay marriage gets legalized. And now something that the Bible explicitly calls sin became legislated by law or as law. And so what that means is if you are here and you are a Christian and you believe the Bible, you no longer have a different equal perspective. Now you have a wrong and morally evil perspective.

and now I have a moral obligation to oppose you as culture. And so that's after 2014. Now, it's interesting because we've been kind of in a negative world epoch or era. But now in the last couple of years, some people might say, man, we were like transitioning or shifting into another place that I don't know if anybody has put a name on it. And basically there's been a fatigue and a disillusionment with secularism. and people are now realizing, hey, we actually have lost something

that actually matters here. And we need to figure out how to get it back. And so that's kind of what we're seeing right now. And this is why we're, you know, today when you look at the news, people, there's a renewed interest in God, church, spirituality, the Bible, Bible sales are up. People like Joe Rogan, obviously, Nicky Minaj, Sean Ryan, people in high profile government positions

are having conversation that are explicit about faith and the Bible and church attendance. And so, again, this is an ebb and flow of seasons that we're in. And honestly, is why we have an opportunity right now as Christians to, hey, let's have these conversations. And this is why, as you said, Paul, we are applauding the fact that here are two men having this conversation about Jesus. That's right. It's a prime time for us to press in and to have these conversations. And I would even say, like, it's honestly refreshing to hear these guys, like, say, hey, it may be a mistake to go after Christian principles and Christian people.

We need to course correct on that. And so to me, it's like, while the tone is the way it is, as Christians, let's dive in and not mock guys who may end up saying some things that we disagree with what we think are just outright wrong. But I said, let's engage him and let's engage him with kindness. You want to keep going? That's it. Let's do it. The Christian themes and films were never promoted.

Yeah, it was absolutely right. It's not as bad now in that sense as it was in those days. And I think that part of it, it would frustrates me is that there would be an openness to that and to Christian films if they, were real if they didn't if they weren't full of incense and piety right and actually stop again because the point of the main thing that we're hitting today is the nascent gospels but i think it's still good to comment on some of this and just the tone and the tenor what i appreciate about what they were saying was that hey culture had gotten too negative towards christianity but now it seems like

what joe sour house is saying is hey we may have brought some of this um on ourselves by presenting a jesus in a faith that didn't have many rough edges and or have tough things to say. And he seems here to be really focusing on Christian films, but I would honestly also add Christian music for a long time. Sure. And I don't want to name names and go too seriously. I'm kidding.

I'm tempted to. But it did seem like it presented a Jesus, these films and music that really wasn't compelling to culture, and I'll just be honest, especially to Mint. It was kind of hokey, and these films were cheesy and cliche. And so it seems like what's appealing not just to these two guys, but to increasingly more men and more people in culture is the rawness of faith and the rough edges that we see in people, frankly, like the disciples in the New Testament, that these were not perfect

people, they were rough around the edges. I'm like, this isn't the main thing we're hitting, but Carlos, you're a cultured guy. You know social media and media in general really well. You watch a ton of movies. I know a lot about music and pop culture. Would you agree with what these guys are saying? Again, I know it's stereotypical and there's exceptions. Would you agree with what they're saying? I mean, obviously, you know, when you look back at Christian art in music and movies, you know, there's obviously a lot that we can learn from and you can criticize a lot of things. Here's what I would say. This is a framework from Andy Crouch. I read this book a while back.

And he would say when Christians look at culture, you want to do four things. Or you have four options to do with culture. You can consume culture. So basically this is like the Christians just passively consuming culture without thinking about it. We don't want to do that. We don't just want to be cultural consumers. That's the first option, consume culture. Or you can also, number two, copy culture.

This is when Christians would just do the Christian version of whatever secular thing was out there. Consume culture, copy culture, you can critique culture. These are the Christians that just, you know, they're movie critics. They just tell us what they like, what they don't like. And, you know, but that's literally all they do. So consume culture, copy culture, critique culture, or you can create culture. At the end of the end of day, we are called as Christians to create. And so I think when we look back at some of the Christian art forms in the past that we don't like, man, honestly, like, yeah, let's point it out and let's get better.

That's good, man. And so that's kind of what I would say if somebody's kind of like into only pointing out the bad things, man, we have an opportunity right now. Let's create. That's good. It's good. Let's keep going. You know, what we've done to Jesus over the years is making him a kind of Red Rogers figure. You know, he wasn't that.

I'm not even sure that Jesus really said do not resist violence You know Jesus also said if you have a cloak but not a sword Sell the cloak and buy a sword He also said the I come not to make peace I come and not to make peace but with a sword So the there's been a lot of Of church stuff And then especially I think Catholics are more than guilty of this to romanticize and sort of

cosmeticized the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Well, there's always a problem when human beings add their own interpretation to an ancient story. Absolutely. And do it for to fit their own narrative. Let's stop it there. Yeah. Yeah. So again, here's what we would say.

One, man, we want to affirm, again, any time two grown men, sit down and have a conversation about Jesus in this case, the two Joe's, man, we applaud that. That's a good thing. Second, in many ways, I've got to say, Paul, like some of the things that they're saying, like, they're right. Yeah. Oftentimes, Jesus has been portrayed mostly as a quote-unquote nice guy, and that is a problem because the Bible doesn't describe Jesus as being a nice guy. If you read the Bible, the Bible says Jesus was tender, he was compassionate, he was merciful with some people. That's true. And it also says that he was tough, firm, bold, confrontative with another group of people.

And that group of people probably wouldn't have said that Jesus was a kind guy or a nice guy. And so people often miss this, but Jesus is a man of humility. It's what the Bible says, but he is also a man of glory. Jesus is like a lion, but he's also portrayed as a lion. Jesus, you will see him crying and you will also see him with righteous anger. And to his point, Jesus tells Peter at one point, hey, put down the sword. But then also before that, they were going to go in a missionary trip. and Jesus says, hey, if you don't have a sword, go get one.

And then Peter said, hey, we got two swords, Jesus. And Jesus is like, great, that will do. That's enough. So, that's right. So again, Jesus is both compassionate and merciful, and he is also confrontative and righteous. And so when somebody talks about Jesus, and I know you're about to speak more on this, but basically you want to make sure you have the full character of Jesus. That's right.

Not a caricature of Jesus, but the full character of Jesus. So the full character of Jesus would be, hey, what does the Bible say about Jesus? as a whole person. Now, a caricature of Jesus is when you just grab one particular aspect of his character and make it significantly bigger than what it already is to the point that it obscures everything else about who Jesus is. And so, Paul, I want to ask you about this. When he specifically said about the thing, Jesus never said to resist violence,

what say you? Yeah, well, first, I love that play in words, actually, that you said. The character versus caricature, because if people don't even know what a caricature is, If you'd go like a theme park or a carnivore, you'll see people doing drawings of people. And usually exactly, they'll take one aspect of you and heavily over-emphasize that to the neglect of the other features of you. And I think this is happening here. And so I'm just at times as we're doing this, by the way, I'm going to almost pretend like if Joe were here if we were just having a conversation. Because again, I love that he's seeking after Jesus.

And he seems to love Jesus. And I say, man, Joe, like, yes, he did say those things. but he also did say in the Surin of the Mount to turn the other cheek if someone strikes you on the cheek. And he also, even though he did say, go, yeah, go grab two swords. When Peter took a sword and tried to kill someone who was trying to arrest Jesus, he rebuked Peter. And so he was like, oh, he didn't kill him. He tried to cut off his ear. Peter was probably not a depth where he could literally just swipe it like that.

And he was trying to kill the guy. Exactly. He missed. He was going for the kill shot. And because Peter was a fisherman and not a soldier, he missed his hands. head and hit his ear. And so, yeah, you do have times where Jesus does lean into maybe a justified form of violence. And we don't have the time to get into that today of, hey, when is it just? For example, in like, in matters of war and self-defense. That's another podcast for another time. But yeah,

there are places where Jesus is not just a nice guy. But you also do see places where he advocates for nonviolent resistance, like turning the other cheek. And he did not come to take over through violent means. And so I'd say, hey, to your point, when we're thinking about the character of Jesus, we have to take all of the data from all the Gospels and all the New Testament, the entire Bible, because we have to remember, if we believe that Jesus is God incarnate, this is the same God as the Old Testament as well. And we have to put them together to get a complete picture of him. And there's a visual I've used for a while to kind of help me understand that sometimes people have a lopsided view of who Jesus is. Before we put this picture up on the screen,

I want to clarify it for people. I am not making fun of this individual. It's actually kind of a cool thing. There's this arm wrestler who has this genetic defect, which basically makes one side of his body hypergrow, and the other side say the same, which this is even just a cool illustration that could be used one day where he used something that some people would call a defect, and he actually used as a superpower. That's the ceremony illustration waiting to happen. But we've actually got a picture of this guy, Matthias Schlit. He is a champion arm wrestler. And so if you're just listening to this, this would be a great time or later to go watch YouTube or just Google this guy's name, Matthias Schlit.

And so literally, to me, it's like, you've got a guy. He's lopsided. And so to me, this is a picture of sometimes what people would do with Jesus. They over-emphasize one aspect of who he is and under-emphasize the other. So I would say to you, like, yeah, for sure, man, Jesus did so they say things. But then he also said these other things. We got to remember when it's appropriate to resist and when it's violence and when it is appropriate not to you.

I mean, you have to turn the other cheek. So we could go on and get more further into that. That's all I'll say for now. That's all I'll say for now. That's all I'll keep watching this video. we're about the transition to the main part of the video where Joe Esther Haas will say some things that honestly, respectfully, we will strongly disagree with.

Yes. And I don't want to say disagree. He's wrong. That's right. That's right. That's right. And we'll explain why. Yeah.

Because he's about to infer that the Jesus of the New Testament is not necessarily the real Jesus of history. Yeah. And then what he'll do is he'll bring up the Gnostic Gospels and he'll say some things about those books that are just not true. Yeah. And so, but we'll find out. we keep going, Paul, because this will be helpful, what are the Gnostic Gospels versus people that don't know?

And why are they called that way? That's good. And this is really where we're getting, in a sense, to the meat of the video. And we're going to slow down a lot. We've been going pretty fast and shorter clips. We're going to slow down. And kind of like in the React video I did on the Apocrypha, I'll go ahead and give a warning now that we're going to have to give a lot of detail and a lot of nuance because there's a lot of stuff here. But it'll be worth it if you stick with us because it will bolster your confidence. Because part of why we want to, to do this video is we don't want people to be led astray by this. And so if any Christian watches this, we hope that this bolsters are confidence that the real Jesus can be found in the four Gospels we have in the New Testament. But also, if you hear other people who espouse these

kinds of things, I want to give you the ability to help gently correct them and help them know that we can know the real Jesus through the Bible. So we're going to give a good amount of detail. But a few things to set up the stage before we move on in the video. So yeah, the idea of Gnostic Gospels. Gnostic comes from the word nosis, which simply is the Greek word for knowledge. Nosticism wasn't any specific organized religion, but was really an overall philosophical concept and movement from about the second to fourth centuries AD. So from 100s to about the 300s, it came from the east. And really the idea of it is this, is that there is this secret knowledge that is true of you, Carlos, that if you would come to find out about it by learning and by absorbing the secret knowledge,

you can figure out what is already true of you, and that is that you are divine, or at least in some sense, divine. You've got a spark of divinity, but the only way you can come to realize that and see that is if I give you the secret knowledge that you don't have yet. So this was basically true of all these different systems. They had some differences between them, but at the heart of it was, hey, there is the secret knowledge that if you can unlock, you will realize that you are in some sense divine. Another unifying factor would be that they saw the material physical world as evil, but the spiritual as good. That gave us even like one story where people retold the story of Genesis where it was actually a lesser God who created the physical world because he

was bitter and he was actually a lesser God. And so their whole thing was say physical matter doesn't matter if anything is evil and we're trapped in it and we have to escape. And here's why this matters. Salvation for these people would not have been Jesus coming and dying for your sins and rising from the grave. Salvation would be you need to get knowledge that is already true about you that I have to give you and then you need to escape the physical world, whereas Jesus came to redeem us and to redeem the physical world. The story at the end of the book of Revelation is that not that we go up to heaven and we leave earth behind, but actually heaven comes down to earth and recreates the physical world. Okay, but so here's a very helpful thing to know as we're about to jump into the actual

Gospels and see more in this video. What happened is as this philosophical concept would come into new areas, they wouldn't just simply try to replace the religion or beliefs that were there. Instead, they would attach themselves to it and recreate it, but using the same names. Okay. So in the case of Jesus, Jesus goes from being a person who had to die for your sins and rise again to he's now of like this sage philosopher. And he's the the one who's going to give you the secret knowledge. So that's why when you read these books that they then produce that sometimes people would call the Gnostic Gospels, he's more giving them the secret knowledge. In fact, the Gospel of Thomas, which is probably the most famous of

them, is literally a collection of over a hundred, simply sayings of Jesus. It's not focused on his actions, it's focused on his teaching and his philosophical concepts. Before we continue, and we actually get into the meat of some of what Joe Esther House has to say, let me clarify this. these so-called gospels are often called the lost gospels as if like, oh, we didn't have these forever and then they were discovered. And this is by the way true. These these gospels were discovered in 1945 in a place called Nag Hammadi in Egypt in a former monastery. But people are like, oh, before that, no one had any idea what these were and the church was trying

to hide them. That's simply not true. We literally have church history from the 100s where they talked about these things. and they talked about how insane and crazy they were, which, by the way, I think we're going to read a selection of some of them, because don't just take our word for it. You're going to get to hear from them. So we've known about these forever,

but then in 1945, we did find them, and they simply confirmed what all the church... It was a very big deal. People didn't hear about it at first, because, you know, there was a little thing going on in 1945 called World War II. Yeah, so it took a while for it to get out. But anyway, so we found these things,

and we began reading them, and it's like, oh, yeah, well, this is why so many of these early churches fathers and leaders were saying, yeah, these are crazy things because we could actually read them. But I just wanted clear of these are not things that were lost or suppressed. We knew about them for a long time. We just didn't have any manuscripts until about 1945. Okay, so the church didn't intentionally hide them. And then like for years, like, oh, no, these, these don't serve as well. So we're just going to put them away and somebody just got, okay, that's not true. We'll get back to this in a bit. If anything, it should tell you that for most of the

snotic gospels, which is, again, was basically, hey, let's take Jesus. Let's take this philosophy that we're bringing in and attach it to him, we only have between one and four copies of each of them, whereas we have thousands of manuscripts for the New Testament. So it actually should tell you something that these were not widely accepted in their time as legit. There you go. All right, you want to actually go into the video

and get into some of his claims? Yeah, one more thing, I will say, so people, you know, because you mentioned Gnosticism, and there's a couple things that goes without belief. Some people might say, oh, that's a belief back then, right? Oh, no. But people don't know this,

but narcissism is alive. well in many different ways today. Let me just give you two examples, especially in secular modern gender ideology, especially with transgenderism and homosexuality. And very brief, we don't have time for this, but super quick for transgenderism, it goes like this. So narcissism will say, hey, body is bad. The inner you is good.

Transgenderism says, hey, your body is the wrong one. Therefore, it's bad. It's a prison and the quote unquote true you or the quote unquote, the real self inside of you needs to come out or needs to be freed. And so if you want to have, if you want to experience that freedom, you just need to figure what to do with your body to kind of get out of the situation that you're in. Again, transgenderism. Homosexuality for this, it will go like this.

Nosticism says because your body is bad, you should deny the body that you have or you should indulge in it because it doesn't even matter. That would be a very gnostic idea. Homosexuality says, even though your body is designed as a counterpart to the opposite sex on the level of biology, physiology, and anatomy, you can and you should deny that reality of your body and embrace your quote-unquote your inner self or your real self. And now you can indulge in that same-sex relationships because the telos or the purpose of the body doesn't even matter that much. Again, new age, same heresies. Keep going.

That's good. That's good. Let's keep going with the video and we'll get into some of the specific claims that we are going to have to lovingly debunk. Let's keep going. Absolutely. It's a great problem. But in this case, there is historical evidence on the other side, and they simply ignore that and pretend it doesn't happen. The Nostic Gospels are full of so-called revolutionary things, and the truth is that the Gnostic Gospels were written 30, 40 years after the death of Jesus, whereas the Xenoptic Gospels, the ones that the churches have accepted,

were written 80, 90 years after the death of Jesus. Let's stop by here. It's painful. It's painful to hear. So, Joe Esther has said right now that this is what he said, that the Gnostic Gospels were written 30 to 40 years after the time of Jesus. And then he said that the New Testament Gospels were written 80 to 90 years after the time of Jesus. Sounds like he's saying the Gnostic Gospels were written first.

And then New Testament Gospels, is that true? And if they were written first, therefore, they're more reliable about who Jesus really was. If you show her with me, be like, Joe, I love you. I don't know who has taught you this, but you have been severely misled. because you literally just flipped the truth. You literally flipped it. That the synoptic gospels, when we say that, we mean Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were literally written as early as 30 years after the death of Jesus.

That you have Mark, which people would say it was the first gospel that was written, which was probably written in the early to mid-60s. And then you have the gospel of John, which was the latest one written, and that's between 75 to 95 AD. And by the way, not just conservative evangelicals would say that, like just regular, modern now critical scholars who don't even accept the things that are written the gospos would say that exact same thing. Whereas the Gnostic Gospels, the earliest one, the Gospel of Thomas that people would say was written, was written between 130 and 150, so a full almost 100 years after Jesus' death. So he literally flips it. And I would also say to Joe, Mike, Joe, have you

actually read these things? Sure. Because Carlos, when I'm asked about the Gnostic Gospels and people were intrigued or like, ooh, I'm like, I'll just say, have you actually read them? And you know what people almost always say. Probably not. And you know, like, oh, are you like, afraid I'm going to go read? I'm like, no, I actually do want you to go read them. Because there's a reason if you actually

will go read them out, you'll know why this stuff is rejected, because it contains, he said revolutionary, I would say it contains some crazy out there stuff. We're going to help you out because we're about to read it in just a second. I think you actually have some things. I'd love for you now. Like, let's actually read some selections.

Oh, sure. People know, we're not trying to hide what these things say. Let's actually say some things they say and show people like, this is why they were rejected because you had had the synoptic gospels that had already been around for like, let's say this, by the time these came around, the synoptic gospos had been around for almost 90 years in the Book of Mark, and then 60 years, maybe with the Book of John.

And then that's why when they read the things you're out here, they're like, what are these people talking about? So Joe described them as the so-called revolutionary things. Here they are. The first one, I got a couple lines here from the Gospel of Thomas. Simon Peter said to them, let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, see, I shall lead her so that I will.

make her male, that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. By the way, that's not affirming the trans movement. It is literally saying that you have to become a man to become worthy of the kingdom. Yeah. It's basically saying women aren't going to make it into heaven, so I have to make them a male. And by the way, it said a living spirit. Again, the emphasis is on, oh, I've got to do something in the spirit.

But by the way, that's literally how the Gospel of Thomas ends. Here's another one, Gospel of Philip. The world came about through a mistake. Hmm. Okay. A little different. Okay. Another from the infancy gospel of Thomas. Ooh, this is a good one.

This child Jesus, when five years old, was playing at the ford of a brook. Then the son of Anas, the scribe came by and stood near Joseph and took a willow branch and dispersed the waters which Jesus had gathered together. Jesus became angry and said to him, you insulin, godless fool. What harm did the pools and waters do to you? see now, you also shall wither like a tree, and immediately that boy withered away. Real quick. So let's just fit the picture here.

So what happened is Jesus is like flexing in front of some other kids, and he's gathered all the water together and already showing some miracles. Another kid takes like a stick and kind of disperses it, and the boy Jesus just gets mad at him and strikes him dead on the spot. That's right. Okay. Here's another part. After this, again, he went through the village, and a child ran and struck against his

shoulder. Jesus was angered and said to him, you shall not go first. on your way and immediately he fell down dead. So like right now we've had like kids camp going on at church and if you've ever, if you don't have something like you can picture like early days of like growing up like a vacation Bible school or something and just imagine kids run into each other. And so Jesus just didn't like it when this kid ran into him. He's like, you're dead.

On the spot struck him dead. Sounds like a Jesus I want to give my life to right here, man. He said, you shall not pass. And it did not go well for the other child. Here's another one from the Gospel of Peter. this one is from the resurrection scene. And unlike the Gospels, by the way, women were not the first witnesses

in this book since at the time there would have been an embarrassment for that to happen. So here's what happens instead. Here's what happened. This is what it says. They saw three men coming out of the tomb, two of them supporting the other, and a cross following them. The cross is just walking out of the tomb on its own.

I don't know. The heads of the two reached to heaven, but the head of the one being led by them surpassed the heavens. So it seems like it's saying here Jesus is emerging from the tomb and he's so big that his head extends beyond the heavens. And then the cross that somehow is walking out of the tomb with Jesus starts talking. And I guess there's a voice that says, have you preached to those who sleep and the response was heard from the cross? Yes.

I mean, it's super over the top and it reads more like mythology. Exactly. And so even because sometimes people read this synoptic gospels, the gospels that are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. that are in the New Testament, like, man, this contains some crazy stuff. I'm like, yeah, and go read those now. And you was like, that is so far out there and just weird. And they don't feel historical at all.

They feel more like mythology. And so I just tell people like, if actually go and read these things, they were crazy. And so that's why we have the historical records of the early church leaders actually, when they read these things, like, no, this contains heresy. In fact, the first Gnostic gospel that is mentioned, people don't think it was the first one was written, but it was the first one that was mentioned was the gospel of Judas. And by the way, notice what they were. notice what they all do. They all try to take one of the apostles and claim they were written by them.

And the gospel of Judas is the first one that's mentioned around 180 AD. And it's literally found in a book called Against Heresies. And so it's a whole book saying, hey, this is weird stuff. Don't believe it. And you can see why after we read some of that stuff. Now, I think just, you know, you don't need to just take our word for it of, hey, like, our books are right and these books are wrong. I think instead what I want to do is I want to give people a criteria that I've done this before and I think it's a helpful thing. And even like when I'm in conversations with people about the Gnostic Gospels, and again, if I were with Joe right now, I would do this with them and says, hey, Joe, let me ask you just some objective questions over how do we establish the truth of two different sets of books that are

competing against each other or two different accounts. And almost always people come to the same criteria. And it's the criteria that the early church used for which Gospels, which books they were going to accept and which ones they reject. but let's do it like this, because I like to take it out of the New Testament world. Okay, Carlos, let's imagine you got 250th anniversary of the founding of America is coming up, independence. Come on, still praying for, I don't know when this will air, but still praying that we faced England on July 4th for the World Cup, would just be the best thing ever.

But yeah, okay, so you have the founding fathers, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, we have documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution a few years later, so on and so far, so we have these, okay? but then imagine that we don't have digital technology, so it's all handwritten. But imagine then, like, we have other documents that were also claimed to have been written by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson that seem to contradict the things that are in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. So, Carlos, if this were just you and you had to come up with some criteria, and I would again, would ask Joe the same thing, I'm guessing he would say some of the same things that you're about to say, what are some criteria that you would personally use to say, okay,

if we had to figure out which of these were actually by the founding fathers, and which ones were not, what would be some criteria you would use? Yeah, do we know if they were written at the time that the founding fathers lived? Yeah, it's like, we're the earliest ones. Because if we want to know if the founding fathers wrote these, if one document was likely written in the 1770s to 1790s,

it's probably by them. But if another one was written in, let's say, like, 1830, George Washington couldn't have written that because he was dead. And so even this is an idea when we're talking about the New Testament that's called apostolicity. We want to know was this document actually, written in the time of an apostle by an apostle or a close associate of one. So same criteria. Can we get back as close as we can in this case to the historical Jesus? So right on, right on.

Any other criteria you'd use? Does the whatever it is, whatever is contained in these writings, does it align with things that actually happen at the time? Yeah, yeah. And like, and their general beliefs at the time. And so, if you start reading things in them that reflect like later thoughts and developments, from like the 1800s, you're like, hey, they weren't even thinking about this then, and they weren't talking this way. And like, if you found names in some of the documents, and like one of the names was, I don't know, Claudio. And they're like, dude, no one had that name in the 1700s. You'd be like, hey, something seems a little off. I mean, they could have. I mean, they could have

theoretically. He may have been the first one named Claudio, and maybe he was the pace setter for it. But so you kind of, and we're being asleep, but this is actually going to matter in a bit when we talk about the historicity of the New Testament Gospels versus the Gnostic Gospels. Another big criteria that most people would say was like, okay, if it seems like people everywhere accepted one group of writings, but only a few people accepted this other one, hey, we should probably prize the one that's more widespread. I'm like, exactly. Almost everyone I've asked this to always comes up with these same criteria. And this is the same criteria that the early church used and that we use today. We would say is that apostolic, did the actual apostles who were closest to Jesus write these things?

Okay. Number two would be Catholicities, is the fancy word for it? basically is how widespread are these books? Did just a few random people accept it, or did everyone else accept these other books? And then finally and final category was orthodoxy, which kind of went into when you said, hey, this is fit in with what was talked about and said and accepted in most places. And so when you use this criteria, you have to say that the Gospels and our new testament, Matthew Mark, Luke and John, are reliable and that the Gnostic Gospels were not. The Gnostic Gospels literally fell each one of these criteria. And it makes sense because, again, hence, some of the things that are included in these gospels

are just completely far off from what the New Testament gospel say. So in the gospel of Philip, Jesus supposedly kissed Mary Magdalene. This was written over 100 years after Jesus. So again, it's just like, and the kiss is actually meant to be symbolic for knowledge and receiving spiritual truth. Again, so there's more there. In the gospel of Judas, Judas is the hero. And Jesus' most trusted disciple.

In the Gnosted Gospels, also Jesus didn't really suffer on the cross. the Creator God is a lesser being, the physical world is a mistake. Humans contain a divine spark, like you said. Salvation comes from awakening to who you really are and a secret knowledge saves you. That's very different than the New Testament Gospels that would written way before. It's way different. I think it'd be helpful, and again, I know we're going to the details right now, but I think it's really important for you to have confidence that when you read the New Testament,

you're reading about the real Jesus who can really change your life, and you shouldn't be taken in by false Jesuses who can wreck your life. It's really important. And so I know if you're listening to this, maybe you're even so skeptical or even like, okay, you're not, but you're like, okay, well, like, how do we know, though, that these were earlier? Like, how do we come to that conclusion? And again, how do even non-Christian scholars come to the conclusion that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John written first? Let's break it into two categories, external evidence. I've actually got a slide on the screen that helps us with our external evidence. I think it'd be helpful to kind of give us some things. When we say external evidence, we mean, hey, getting out of the four gospels and getting out of the text, the the Gospels. Can we just look at history and kind of get a sense? Is there evidence for which was written first? There is. So around 30 AD, Jesus dies and rises. You then have a 95 idea a guy named Clement of Rome. There are other writers at this time, but early church leaders who are citing the Gospels. They're citing stories from, again, the canonical Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They're talking about him a lot. They're referencing them a lot. You have a guy named Papius, who is, I believe, a bishop in Turkey. He names Mark and Matthew as authors of two of two. the Gospels. Between 110 and 1.30 is when this is when this comes out. But here's a key thing to note is that the way he talks in his writings that we have records of, and it was a letter guy named Musebius who actually references. One day, if we could ever find his original writings,

would be amazing because it could tell us a lot. He was an early church historian guy. Anyways, he talks as if he were still alive while John the Apostle was alive. And he was born when the other Gospels were being written. So while this didn't come out to 110 to 130, he talks about being alive and being conversant with people who either knew John or maybe being potentially he talked to John. Okay. Now let's fast forward to 150 to 160 AD. We're now 120 to 130 years after Jesus dying and rising.

That's the first time any Gnostic group is mentioned by a guy named Justin Martyr. Okay. So like already right here, if one group has already been talked about repeatedly, and we've already heard about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John repeatedly. But the other group is not first mentioned until over 100 years later. It would seem like a logical person would say, hey, that the books that we have in the New Testament are the earliest ones. The first mention of a Gnostic gospel isn't until 180 AD. We're now 150 years after Jesus. So like to put that kind of back into the founding father's time frame, imagine that if we didn't hear about something until 1920,

but they were claiming to be all the way back to 1776. That gives you an idea of the kind of time frame we're talking about. And then in 230 AD is the first mention of the Gospel of Thomas, which is usually claimed to be one of the earliest Gnostic, if not the earliest Gnostic gospel. And you had some very liberal and non-believing scholars who in the 80s and 90s said, actually it's earlier than the synoptics, but almost no credible person believes this anymore.

Because if it was the earliest, why did it take over 200 years for us to hear about it? So on the external evidence alone, we see a strong case for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But let's talk briefly about the internal evidence. A few things. I can mention a ton. By the way, great book on this stuff in general is Jesus and the eyewitnesses by Richard Bacham,

mainly focusing on, hey, how do we know if these actual actual firsthand accounts of eyewitnesses? Jesus and eyewitnesses by Richard Bacham, maybe we could put a thing in the show notes whenever we release it. So here's some internal evidence. Number one, the Gospel of Thomas, again, the earliest. gospel, a Gnostic gospel, I should say. 50 to 65% of it is pulled from the canonical Gospels. It overlaps with it.

But the canonical Gospels never pull anything from the gospel of Thomas. Here's why this matters. So let's say you and I are sitting together by each other and we're taking a test, okay? And it's on modern movies and it's on basic instincts, which you've never seen. And apparently I have. And by the way...

Modern, you mean like post-2000s or like 80s, 90s? So making jokes about my age again. Listen, anyways, I'm just out of just curious with you. Anyways, we're taking it as by each other. And hey, 50 to 65% of your answers, it seemed based off of mine. They're either direct copied or they're very similar, but none of mine come from you. What's the teacher going to conclude that you took it off me?

And if you took it off me, then who had to have written their answers first? That's right. So that's one of the big things. Another thing, and this is an interesting one, is the names that are used. the names that are used in the Gnostic Gospels are not popular until the 100s and the 200s and the 300s and sometimes even the 400s in some of the ones that we have. Whereas there's actually been a study done, and again, this is nerdy, but to me it's really cool. There's been a study done on the names that are found in the New Testament. The names, and again, it's great, if you're just listening to this, great thing for you to go watch and look at later.

Maybe again, we can even have this in the show notes as well. The names that are used in the New Testament are also used around the same time by other, outside sources, they in the New Testament, people like Josephus, ossuaries, which is kind of like basically where people's bones would be collected, and Dead Sea Scrolls. And so all the names that we have in the New Testament, including Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, match the names that are in that same time, whereas the Nasa Gospels don't have names that commonly match the same time in the first century. So using this and just some other things, if you just look at the internal evidence that we

actually have in the documents themselves, it's very clear that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written by or people close to eyewitnesses of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, whereas the Nassah Gospels came hundreds of years later. That's great. And this should strengthen. By the way, if you're listening to this, you're like, my, that's really geeky. Well, this should strengthen your view of the four gospels that you have in your Bible. They are telling the truth.

Yes. This stuff happened. There is historical evidence for you to be confident that when you read of all the things that Jesus did and he said the things he said in your book, in the Bible. That actually happened. Yes. Anyways. Yeah.

Let's keep going. We drilled down to send out. I feel like we made our point lovingly for God, Joe. Let's keep going. So they had to have been taken secondhand from people who said they saw things. Right. Where with the previous, there's a shot that people directly saw them. The people in the church gospels were named like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not the people.

who are in the gospel is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then nobody knows who write them. They took with those names. But they were not those people. Really? Yeah. Yeah, let's stop there. Okay. You know, honestly, I feel like Joe right there, Joe Rogan.

He's like, really? Yeah. And I hope he was just doing that to be kind and not to contradict his guest. But there's part of me that's really afraid that he actually thinks this is legit. So a couple of things. One, he said that we know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John didn't write. the Gospels and then nobody knows who wrote the gospel, but I want to ask you that in just a second here.

But then he said, even the churches admit this at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I would ask Joe, man, what churches are you talking about? I'm like, which people are you talking to? Which churches? He said he goes to Catholic Mass. So, you know, it can't be the Catholic Church because the, I got this right here, Second Vatican

Council in 1965. this is what the Catholic Church declared. It says, the church has always and everywhere held and continues to hold that the four gospels are of apostolic origin. For what the apostles preached in fulfillment of the commission of Christ, afterwards they themselves and the apostolic men, under the inspiration of the divine spirit handed on to us in writing, the foundation of faith, namely the fourfold gospel

according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then before that, at the Pontifical Biblical Commission in the early 1900s, the Catholic Church held that Matthew and John genuinely wrote the Gospels. Literally almost every major Protestant denomination would say the same thing. The only people maybe that would deny

that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John typically come from more liberal backgrounds. Maybe some liberal college professors. I've had a couple of those. You know, maybe a couple of liberal authors. I've read some of those books as well. That doesn't mean that their views officially represent the churches.

Exactly. I think this is a good example. And here's what I'd say about Joe at our house right now is that, because again, the post that we originally saw this clip and is like, oh, devout Christian says this. You can be sincere and be sincerely wrong. Or in this case, I'd probably say, I want to give Joe the benefit of doubt sincerely misled. You can be devout and love Jesus, but you can still get some things wrong. I think this is just a case where he's just been told some things. Well, we'll share in a minute.

I think I know against some of the sources, and I even mentioned them, earlier in the video where I think he got them from. We'll get to that in just a minute. I just wanted to highlight that. That's right. We're not bashing Joe. We're not trying to shred him or anything. I just think he's been sincerely misled.

And we're just trying to give some gentle corrections for this stuff. I think it's important, though, to say, hey, just because someone claims to be a Christian or as a part of a quote-unquote church, just because they're saying something doesn't automatically make it right. They start to tell people like, check your source. is like when we do theology classes for our staff and for our ministry residents here at Lake Point, when the first session we do is how to be a good theologian.

I give them, I think, 12 words of how to do theology well, how to think about and talk about God well. One of the words is to do theology critically, critically. And what I mean by that is, not to be critical, and not to be a person who's just a continual skeptic and that you're mean and you're judgmental, but the idea of don't automatically swallow everything that everyone sets.

That's right. to just slow down and learn to take in the good from the bad, or like I've heard one time the idea of, hey, eat the fish, leave the bones. There you go. Or some people would say, eat the meat, spit the bones. That's right. And so, and just to weigh in briefly on this, because you already hit some of the stuff. But we do, actually, I want to admit the Gospels do not self-identify who wrote them. They don't.

Like, if you read the Gospels, it never says, I am Luke. I am Mark. It doesn't do that. And I think there, by the way, some good reasons why it doesn't do that. Number one, they're not trying to draw attention to themselves. It's about Jesus. And this was also just a common thing in this day, that people didn't always self-obscribe. I am the author of this.

So then we have to rely more on external evidence, and we have it. I mentioned another guy named Papias, who was born and lived around the time of when these things were being written. Alive, and again, we believe conversant with the Apostle John, or at least with some of John's representatives. And he said, like, that Matthew and Mark wrote these Gospels. Then within a few generations later, a few years later, we've got Theophilus and Renaeus writing around 180A.D. Who they actually give it. I've got the quote right here. Matthew issued a gospel written among the Hebrews.

Mark the disciple and Herbert of Peter himself handed down to us the writings things preached by Peter. Luke, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple, the Lord, published a gospel while living at Ephesus. So we have a strong early church tradition of this. And here, if I was talking to John, I'd ask him this. I'd say, okay, even if, but that was written afterwards, I'd say, if they were making it up, why would they choose Mark and Luke? Like, because if you think about the Nasta Gospels, they would say the gospel of Peter. Sure.

The gospel of Judas, although it's kind of weird to choose Judas, but still, they said the gospel of Thomas. People who were actually apostles. Well, Judas is making sure people know that he was, Jesus was closest friend and, you know, he was actually the hero. Maybe he was just misunderstood. We got the story wrong. We're getting the story from his perspective and everything. But the point is, if the church was just making stuff up, you would think they would like, oh, this is the gospel written by Peter.

Instead, they're like, no, this was written by Mark. And it just said, and he got his stuff from Peter. So I'm always kind of like, and this is my point in general when people are like, oh, they made this up. I'm like, if they made this up, they did a crappy job of flying, whether it's about the names that were attributed to the gospels or, as we've talked about before, this is kind of your thing when you mentioned how in one Nostic gospel the women were not the witnesses. because in that day, the witness of women was not admitted in a court. The reason that that's found in the Gospels is because it's actually true.

If I were making up something, I wouldn't have women be the first half witnesses, but they weren't. And so we'll get into this a little bit because it's a good criteria for how do we know what to accept and what to reject. I just want to say, like, hey, we can have confidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the authoritative writers of these Gospels. That's great. Let's keep going. No idea. Absolutely. No doubt.

Even the churches admit that at this point. Yeah. There you go. There you go. 2,000 years is such a hard time for us to conceptualize to put it into our head as to how much time has passed. Yes. Such a, you know, to try to get an accurate understanding of what was going on back then. It's insanely difficult.

Let's stop for a second, actually. He said insanely difficult and almost impossible. Would you agree? Yeah, you know, not really. No. Like, you know, you said this, Paul. I mean, we know the New Testament of Gospels were written within 35 to 65 years of Jesus. Jesus' crucifixion.

So they were written while eyewitnesses were still alive. Luke explicitly says he investigated eyewitnesses' account. There are over 24,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts or fragments, plus tens of thousands of quotes from early church fathers. By the way, that's significantly more than other ancient documents. Another reason historians, like you mentioned, believe the Gospels accounts are legit is because you have multiple independent sources. You got the four Gospels.

You got Paul's letters. You got more. you have other non-biblical, non-Christian historians talking about these events, Tacitus, Josephus. Is it Pliny the Younger? Is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pliny the Younger. These guys are writing these things 80 to 85 years within Jesus' crucifixion.

So, man, I'm not so sure that is insanely difficult. There's just, there's a hyper-scepticism applied because it's related to Christianity in the Bible. Yeah, it's because of what's in there. Yeah. It's like, if it didn't talk about miracles and a resurrection, probably people would not be so slow to adopt it because people don't sit here and continuously doubt the records that we have of Roman history and Greek history because people are worried about miracles and those. They just accept the history as it is written, even though there's way more evidence and it's way closer to

the events when it comes to the Gospels. Here's an analogy I like to use with this. It's like we actually have criteria because to your point, the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. You didn't mention this, but I think Pastor Josh has actually said this in another episode one time. You have names of people that it doesn't make sense to put their name in because they're minor characters. People like Rufus, which I believe was like the child of Simon of Siren who carry Jesus' cross. You got a person named Cleopis, who's, I believe, in Luke, one of the disciples that walks with Jesus after his resurrection. One of my favorites is in the book of Mark. Almost everyone that is healed by Jesus, like, oh, that was the blind man. It was a paralytic.

But it actually names his name, Bartimaeus. He's the guy who is blind saying, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. Well, here's an interesting. tidbit is that unlike the other people who most of the time when they're healed, they just go their way. It says after Bartimaeus is healed, he then followed the Lord along the way. He became a disciple of Jesus. He became a part of the community. So they actually know this guy's name. Why put the name in there? Why? Because he's an actual guy. They're like, hey, you can go and actually ask him about the story. So we have eyewitness accounts. So here's the thing, let's just talk about eyewitness accounts in terms of their validity. Usually there's a few big

criteria. In addition to the character of the eyewitness and maybe do they have ulterior motives? And by the way, with the rioters of the New Testament, they were being killed for their faith. So if they were lying, why would you lie if you're going to get killed for it? But that's another thing for another time. Here's the three big categories in terms of we establish, is this a credible eyewitness? And you said some of these. Number one, multiple attestations are multiple people saying the same thing. And so that's why it's amazing. We have Matthew, Mark, Mark, Luke, and John, though, they have different details and put different emphases on things, they're all telling the same basic story. You mentioned the Apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians, he quotes what now many people recognize as one of the first creeds of the church.

And this is within just a couple decades of Jesus' death when he said, I passed on to what was in first importance, that Jesus died according to the scriptures and that he rose according to the scripture. So you have multiple counts pointing to the same truth. Also, a huge thing is early testimony. Were these people actually there and did they see the event happen? And there's a final criteria, and that's a criteria of embarrassment. Would a detail be embarrassing if this thing came out? It's interesting. Mark is the first gospel, and again, church history tells us that he wrote this in conjunction with Peter. Peter looks like an idiot in the gospel. He abandons Jesus. He fails at every turn. All the disciples do. Why would they commission something? And these are the leaders of the early church.

Why would they commission something that makes them look weak and stupid, unless these things were just actually true stories of what happened? And coward. And so here's my thing. imagine like we had a trial that happened right now, 2026, and all these criteria met with eyewitnesses, and we believe that whatever story they were telling was true. Okay, now let's have 2,000 years passed, and we're in the year 4026. Has really anything changed to change the story? No. The only thing that could change the validity of the story is if we had new evidence came out that they didn't have before that contradicted it. And here's what I would tell people. In the last 2,000 years, there has been zero zilch, nada, no evidence that has come out that has changed the testimony

of those who walked and lived with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. That's amazing. Let's keep you going. It become a since my sort of conversion to Christianity, and I would sound myself a devout Christian, but not a devout Catholic, even though I go to Mass. And I love the Mass and believe in it. But since 2001, when this process really began, I've become a real student of the historical Jesus. Actually, stop right there.

I'll do this briefly because I know we need to kind of maybe put a bow on this here in a few minutes. I think we've made a lot of our big points. But this is the big clue I've mentioned a few times in this video if I think maybe were Joe, our friend, who loves Jesus and that's awesome. But maybe he's been misled. whenever I usually hear, oh, like the quest for the historical Jesus, usually referencing, and he says, I think it was like 20 years ago, so early thousands, he is probably referring to something I mentioned earlier called the Jesus Seminar. So let me give brief context of what this is.

So there's this idea that, hey, the Jesus that we have in the four Gospels of the New Testament, that's not really the real historical Jesus. That's who they wanted him to be or that's who they presented him as or get power. That was their interpretation of Jesus. So we want to find out who this real Jesus is using historical method to find the Jesus behind this Jesus. Who is the actual real historical Jesus? So you had a guy in 1985, the name of Robert Funk, and it included other scholars such as John Dominant Croson, Marcus Borg, all very liberal scholars. Did not believe in the miracles, did not believe that Jesus was divine.

And so they basically got this group together, and they used this voting method using beads. And they went through basically the Gospels, just a verse or a few verses. time to say, okay, a red bead meant Jesus definitely said or did this. Okay. A pink would be, ah, he probably said it. Can't be sure, but he probably said it. Gray would be he probably didn't. And black would be he definitely did not say or do this.

And at the end, shockingly, they said, oh, he probably said or did nothing that anything that is in the gospel. It's only a few of these things. And this comes out and be like, oh, my goodness, all the gospels are made up. Here's what people need to know. And there's what I would want Joe to know. this has been debunked, not just by conservative scholars, but most liberal scholars don't even hold to any of the findings of the Jesus seminar, at least not most of them. Because really three big

reasons. Number one, the voting was kind of gimmicky. Like the idea that we're going to have this like scientific method using beads where we just drop in with our predisposed opinions is not really actually doing good, credible, historic research. Number two, and I kind of already just said it, it began with questionable assumptions. So if I come in and I'm one of the guys voting and I believe that there's no way the miracles could happen because miracles don't happen.

Then you know where I'm going to vote whenever a miracle was voted on. So if you come in with an assumption, then it's kind of a loaded vote already. And if most of the people in the seminar believe there is no way that the miracles happen, there's no way the resurrection happened, that all the apocalyptic traditions

that are in there, that Jesus was talking about the end of the world, oh, that was made up. Well, then, yeah, I'm going to believe most of it was made up. So that was a big thing. And then a third thing is their findings presented a really unusual Jesus who didn't fit the first century whatsoever. He wasn't a man of his times.

So just know when people hear about this, this has been debunked. We again very much believe that the Jesus we see in Matthew, Mark, Luca, and John is the real historical Jesus. Let me put it this way. Is it more likely that a group of people, 2,000 years removed from the person, has the right interpretation of that person or the person who walked and lived with them did. The person who locked and lived with them.

And in 1st John, Chapter 1, John is talking about this Jesus who they had touched with their hands and seen with their eyes and heard with their ears. They're with them. Their testimony is reliable. That's great. All right. You want to wrap it up?

You want to get it to our last segment? Let's wrap it out, man. Here we got a little bit more. And I learn more and more and I'm more and more astounded at what's been done to cosmeticize this man who is Jesus of Nazareth. Well, it's also, he had some of the most profound and insanely resonating teachings, like even today. The words that he spoke 2,000 years ago, there's still today people, I mean, they resonate with people. if you live your life by the teachings of Jesus Christ,

you will be a better person. Yes, you will. It is a great framework to live your life. Yes. Which is incredible when you think about a person that lived so long ago. Man, I love that, Joe is saying, honestly, it seems like he's seen it. He knows people. He's seen it.

He's wrestling with it. How can this man who was a Middle Eastern man born in a poor family 2,000 years ago, raised as a construction worker who only lived to be. 33 can change somebody's life today. And so I love that he's resting with that. Here's how I would land. When you think about the story of Jesus, the same Jesus that we find in our Bibles.

And we say, man, how is it possible that that man today, whether you believe in Christianity or not, you have to explain how no person has attracted more followers, more attention, more devotion across cross. cultures, languages, and nations than Jesus. Every event in history is defined by whether it happened before Jesus or after Jesus. No emperor, no philosopher, no military conqueror

became the reference point for time. Jesus did. If you think about it again, Jesus never wrote a book. Today, millions of books have been written about him. Jesus never wrote a song today. Millions and millions of songs are sung to him and are about him. Usually when the leader of the leader of the book,

of a movement is killed, usually the movement dies. Jesus got the most humiliating and excruciating and brutal death in history. And today, one of the three people in the world worship him as God. The best paintings, sculptures, cathedrals in the world. We're talking the Last Supper, the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which took 144 years to build.

By the way, I'm going there literally like in a couple days. They're all about him. The most prestigious universities in the world, Yale, Notre Dame, Oxford, Cambridge, all started as universities to train people in their devotion to Jesus or were rooted in strongly in faith in Jesus. Today, this is crazy too, today, most Hindus are still Indian, most Muslims are still South Asian slash Indonesian, most Buddhists are still East and Southeast Asian Christianity started in Jerusalem. It spread across the Roman Empire, then the Mediterranean, then it went to Asia, then it moved to Europe, then to North

America. And today, the average Christian is a young woman of course. color, likely black or brown, living in Africa, Latin America, or Asia. How is that possible? Here's how. Jesus said in his gospel, Jesus said in the gospel is that his message, his good news will be preached to all nations, all tribes, all people, all languages. Jesus had no servants, yet we call him Lord. He had no formal education, yet we call him teacher.

He practiced no medicine, yet we call him a healer. He commanded no army, yet he has conquered the world. he never ran for political office yet today he is still king of king and lord of lords how do you explain that here's how philippians chapter 2 verse 9 to 11 therefore god has highly exalted Jesus and bestowed on him the name

that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father amen that's how he is the real Jesus who can really change us. And that is because he wasn't just really a man.

He was also really the God of all time. And so the reason he is timeless is because he is the God who stepped out of time and into time to change people for all time. And it's amazing that we get to encounter this real Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Martin, Luke, and John. It's just awesome. Come on, man.

Come on. Are I pray for us? I would love to. Yes, and Jesus, we do. Thank you for stepping down out of heaven and into time and into this earth Lord to change the world and to change us individually. And God, we want to, we want to know the real you. Jesus, we don't want to know counterfeit versions of you or slightly altered versions of you.

We want to know the real you. And so, God, I pray that you would help us to be great students of your word. I want to pray for the two Joes on here. It just seems like they really are drawn in by you. And I pray that you continue to draw them into know you more. I pray that for all of us, not just for the Joe's, but for all of us, Lord, that we would be constantly looking out for lies or for half-truths that could potentially draw us away from you to a counterfeit version of you. And so Holy Spirit, would you lead us into your truth? And we continue to help us capture everything that is not from you. And Lord, to submit everything to you.

Lord, we love you. Does your name and we pray in your name? Amen. Amen. Live free, brother. Live free.