Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1138 | Sharing the Gospel with Joe Rogan | Guest: Wes Huff

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Today, we sit down with Wesley Huff, Christian apologist and Central Canada director for Apologetics Canada, to discuss apologetics, proof for the Bible, and his upbringing in a missionary family. He tells us about a rare childhood diagnosis, which left him paralyzed from the waist down, only to experience a miraculous, supernatural healing exactly one month later. We also discuss his experience going on "The Joe Rogan Experience" as well as his debate with Billy Carson a couple of months ago, which ended with Carson sending him a cease and desist letter! And we ask him some of your most pressing apologetics questions. Buy Allie's new book, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": https://a.co/d/4COtBxy --- Timecodes: (01:05) Wes Huff intro (02:30) Canadian culture and politics (13:26) Growing up & testimony (17:40) Miraculous healing (26:45) Learning apologetics (30:18) Debate with Billy Carson (42:44) Going on Joe Rogan (49:17) Audience apologetics questions ---   Today's Sponsors: Seven Weeks - Experience the best coffee while supporting the pro-life movement with Seven Weeks Coffee; use code ALLIE at https://www.sevenweekscoffee.com to save up to 25% and help save lives. Good Ranchers — Go to https://GoodRanchers.com and use code ALLIE at checkout to claim $25 off, free express shipping, and your choice of FREE ground beef, chicken, or salmon in every order for an entire year. A’del — Try A'del's hand-crafted, artisan, small-batch cosmetics and use promo code ALLIE 25% off your first time purchase at AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Masa Chips — Go to MasaChips.com and use promo code ALLIEB for a discount on your first time order of seed oil free tortilla chips! --- Links: Full unedited unaltered Wes Huff vs. Billy Carson debate https://youtu.be/F7ngjtT43-4?si=gRdEsV5Iq4ZthA1L --- Related Episodes: Ep 977 | Will All Jewish People Be Saved? | Guest: Dr. Jeremiah Johnston https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-977-will-all-jewish-people-be-saved-guest-dr-jeremiah/id1359249098?i=1000651102936 Ep 679 | Busting Atheism’s Biggest Myths | Guest: Dr. Neil Shenvi https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-679-busting-atheisms-biggest-myths-guest-dr-neil-shenvi/id1359249098?i=1000579610722 Ep 900 | How to Reach Gen Z with the Gospel | Guest: Dr. Sean McDowell (Part One) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-900-how-to-reach-gen-z-with-the-gospel-guest-dr/id1359249098?i=1000633392634 ---   Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

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That's fellowship homelones.com slash alley, term supply, see site for details, fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS, number 819382. Apologist Wes Huff had the opportunity to defend historic Christianity and the gospel to millions on the Joe Rogan podcast after he went viral in a debate against a prominent atheist, Billy Carson. So who is Wes Huff? What is his apologetics ministry? What is his testimony? He is going to share all of that with us today. Also talk about this very contentious Billy Carson debate, what it was like being on Joe Rogan. but he's also just going to share his testimony, and part of that testimony includes miraculous healing. This is just an amazing conversation at the end.

I get to ask him some of the questions, the apologetics questions that you guys sent in. You are going to be so encouraged and just edified and equipped after hearing from Wes. So without further ado, here he is. Wes, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. For those who may not know, can you just tell us who you are and what you do? Yeah, so I am a scholar and Christian apologist. I work with an organization called Apologetics Canada. I'm the director of Central Canada. So I live up here in Canada in Toronto. And I work with a national organization that seeks to equip the church with a biblically sound, intellectually robust and culturally engaged faith. So we've been around for over a decade equipping the church to be able to respond to questions regarding the Christian faith. And I myself am a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto studying early New Testament manuscripts. So that's kind of my lane where I stay in in terms of the history of the Bible and the text and canon of scripture.

A little bit of early church history stuff too. But travel, speak, and for the last number of years have been in leadership in my church, which is where my office happens to be here in Toronto. And so I'm also a family man. I have three kids, another on the way. And yeah, lots of hats, but all good things. Yes. Okay, I have so many questions just within that answer.

How would you compare and contrast the theological landscape and maybe cultural, too? They really go hand in hand in Canada versus in the United States because you're very familiar with both. Yeah, that's a good question. I think Canada tends to be five to ten years down the road in terms of the progressive left. And so we as has been on public display for the world to see in terms of our government with our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who is in the process of stepping down. He's announced his resignation, but it is still in sort of active leadership at the moment.

So I think what I can say about kind of the placement that Canada holds in terms of its politicalness is that if you were to imagine the United States going in a far more left-leaning direction, you can take a look up north in Canada and kind of glimpse where that might be. So we are far more liberal on the whole, I think, than the United States, outside of pockets of places like L.A. and areas like that where you can see sort of the liberalism take over. But our institutions are very secularized. We pride ourselves on being a very secular country. And we are one of, I think, two countries in the world who have no abortion laws. So if that tells you anything in regards to where our culture is, we are a very secular, very liberal place. And yet I think I'm optimistic

in the sense that you see a lot of kind of Christian grassroots movements in that I think people are realizing the emptiness of a secular worldview, a post-Christian. And I would actually argue that we're largely post-secular as well in terms of the fact of atheism, I think, is on the downturn and things like being spiritual but not religious or kind of a new agey vibe is on the upturn. But I think that our climate right now is in a place, not unlike the United States, where people are far more open to spiritual and religious conversations because I think they've seen the emptiness of the secular, atheistic, natural materialistic worldview. What would you say the state of the church is in Canada?

And I know that's a big question because there are so many different subsets of what someone would call the church just like there is in America. But I'm curious if the prevailing secularism and progressivism in Canada really bolsters the church. Or if you think that that has seeped into the point to where it's a lot like, you know, a lot of places in Europe where for the most part, people are Christians in name only, if at all, and the church itself is actually very watered down and weak. Yeah, it's an interesting way of kind of looking at the pulse of where the church is. I think what I see is actually something that's relatively optimistic in that the culture

used to be far more culturally Christian. And you see this sort of in the state. statistics of church attendance, where it used to look like a lot of people attended church in somewhere like Canada, and the laws reflected more of kind of a Christianized perspective. We had something like the Lord's Day Act, which meant that you couldn't open a business on Sunday. But as the culture moved away from that, what I think happened is that a good portion of people who were culturally Christian, going to church on Sunday because it's something that you did as part of kind of the cultural milieu, they stopped doing that because the culture shifted. And what that ended up with was churches that largely, I mean, core churches, churches that were actually preaching the gospel had a biblically grounded perspective in terms of the teaching and equipping and evangelizing.

Those people, those congregations were left with people who I think were genuine believers. And in that sense, even though it looks statistically like the churches were getting smaller, I think what we ended up with was actually a far, more core central group of Christians who are actually on fire for the gospel message. And I'm seeing, as I said, kind of in that zeitgeist of people moving away from atheism, being more open spiritually, that the churches in terms of the conservative churches in Canada, I would actually argue are growing, whereas the mainstream churches that have capitulated on issues that, you know, you would think of in terms of LGBTQ issues. or kind of universalistic perspectives, all religions lead to God.

Those churches are dying. Those churches are empty. But the churches that are sticking to the guns on what historic biblical Christianity has always claimed are growing. And so I attend a church that's not very big. We only have about, you know, any given Sunday has somewhere between 70 and 100, maybe 120 on a full Sunday people. And we are, we are growing.

We are having visitors on a regular basis and adding congregants and we're baptizing people. And I think that that's emblematic of the churches that are actually sticking to their guns on what the Bible actually teaches and what the historic Christian faith is actually proclaimed. So it's a mixed bag. You know, you look at the broader denominations in Canada that have kind of been the historic denominations. A lot of them are not doing well. But I think if you actually looked at what they are holding to, theologically, you could actually track. You know, if they are caving on these issues that our culture is saying,

these are things that the church should cave on, then that actually people realize, well, if you don't stand for something, you fall for everything. And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing that people realize that if church just becomes a social club, then there are lots of other social clubs that they could spend their Sunday morning going to. Exactly. Like I say, I say, if you're going to go to a progressive church, just go to brunch because it's a waste of time.

If the church is saying what everyone else is saying, well, you can find community elsewhere. If you are looking for self-affirmation, if you are looking for someone to celebrate sin, you can get that anywhere and you don't have to waste your time getting dressed up to go to church. And I think a lot of people, it seems to me, maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but that Gen Z seems to understand that maybe even better. than some preceding generations. When I look at college campuses across the country, there does seem to be some kind of movement. And while, yes, Gen Z is overwhelmingly progressive, at least here in the United States,

I'm sure they're in Canada too. When it comes to some of these more controversial cultural issues like LGBTQ, it seems to me like those who are Christians and who do have the biblical view of those things are actually firmer and bolder on. those things than millennials are and certainly gen X and in some ways maybe even boomers too. And so that that gives me hope. Of course, I have hope in general just as a Christian.

But when I'm just talking about practically, the next generation, I do think could carry the torch of courage maybe even better than our generation has. Yeah, I think I'm seeing that in Canada too. I'm I'm cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless in what we're seeing in terms of the tides of where our society is going. I think a lot of people are seeing the end result of the progressive dogma that's being spouted by our culture and realizing that you can progress off the end of a cliff and that's still progression. And so that is not necessarily the progress you want to see. But actually, if you want true progress, if you want to see the movements globally that are and historically, that's, have given agency to women, have given value to the marginalized, have grown culture and built

groups and places like the Western world, that's historic biblical Christianity. And I think we're seeing that in a different way with individuals who are kind of moving towards that kind of perspective in the culture, even individuals who wouldn't necessarily describe themselves as Christian, or at least, or are Christianly influenced but are not, say, confessing the historic Christian belief of Jesus being the son of God, predicting his own death and resurrection and rising from the dead, the Jordan Peterson's, the Douglas Murray's, the Tom Hollins of the world, who see the reality of something like the Christian faith and what it is built in our modern world. And I think that's trickling down, as you said, into some of the younger

generations who are kind of peering up into the millennials and, you know, the gen Xers, the boomers and going, hmm, I don't know if I really want to get on board with some of that stuff. I think I'm going to try to find, I'm going to try to plant my feet on something firmer than midair. Praise God. I hope that that is true. Quick break for our first sponsor for the day.

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Yeah. So I grew up in a missionary family. My parents were missionaries in 1989. They moved to Pakistan, which is where I was born. And then we left Pakistan not too long after. For a number of reasons, the Gulf War had broken out and Pakistan had taken the side of Saddam Hussein. And so that made things complicated. And then my parents were accused of proselytizing, giving Bibles to Muslims.

And so we had to leave the country and came back to Canada, which is where my parents are from. And then we eventually went back out into the mission field in the Middle East in the country of Jordan. And so I was very young, but spent a little bit, a portion of my childhood in Jordan and then came back from overseas. But yeah, Christian family, missionary family, my dad pastored here in Canada, in Ontario. Well, we were in a couple different provinces, but particularly in Ontario, spent my high school years in northern Ontario. And so solid Christian family. But my faith journey really started after we came back from overseas when just before my 12th birthday, I was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that left me paralyzed from the waist down. And that was a diagnosis from a condition that was called acute transverse myelitis where the pediatric neurologists told me that I would be a paraplegic for the rest of my life.

But the chances of recovery were very, very low, slim to none. and the short version of this story is that one month from the day that I woke up and couldn't feel my legs on January 8th. I woke up on February 8th on a Saturday morning, got out of bed, walked over to my wheelchair and sat down. And it was the doctors who first used the word miracle because they said they had no medical explanation for the non-existence of the swelling that was on my spinal cord, which the condition had caused, which was cutting off the communication from my leg. to my brain. And also no evidence of muscle atrophy from not using my legs for that 30-day period. And so that marked a very powerful supernatural experience in my life, where I believed that God had healed me and saw the kind of outward evidence of that in a very practical real way. And grounding that in the faith that I was raised in, but also later in life, despite having

that, you know, what I described as a powerful supernatural experience, still wrestling with some intellectual doubts. And fortunately, being in an environment where my parents, you know, along missionary heritage, were, had raised me with this perspective, I think, more passively than actively, where we had things like the Quran and the Book of Mormon on the shelf in the living room. And so when I was wrestling with some of the questions about worldview issues, I, you know, pulled those off the shelf and read them and kind of wade them in regard to what I had been raised to believe because I figured that what I had been raised to believe, it wasn't a bad reason to hold to that. It certainly isn't. And I hope my children also hold to the worldview perspective

that I raised them to believe. But also, I also understood that even just, the admission of having these other worldview perspectives, the literature on the bookshelf, was kind of an admittance by my parents that the Christian worldview could hold up to scrutiny. And so you're open to read these things because if Christianity is true, God can handle your doubts and that the Bible and Christianity can stand up to examination. And so as much as I could as a teenager, investigated some of those things. And it was a combination of, you know, the confidence and the foundation that my parents had lain and this kind of experience that I had as a paraplegic and then no longer being a paraplegic. And then investigating some of these questions about the worldview issues that I had that ultimately grounded me in the perspectives and worldview that I now hold today.

Yes. Okay. I have so many questions because I have a feeling there is a lot packed into that overview. I want to go back to this miraculous healing. So before you were diagnosed with this, you said it was right before you turned 12, correct? So did you wake up one morning and you were paralyzed or was this kind of degenerative or you thought it was degenerative where you were having multiple symptoms and then finally it culminated in you losing the ability to use your legs? Yeah, so I had the flu and my body's immune system, instead of attacking the flu, attack the nerve endings at the base of my spinal cord.

So it's a flu condition that happens, you know, to one in however many million people. And there really was no reason why this took place. There's no, you know, reason why the body's immune system would do this in particular. But it was instantaneous as far as we know. I had, I was having a nap. And when I woke up from my nap, I couldn't feel my legs. I bet that was terrifying. Do you remember that moment?

Yeah, yeah, very much. I mean, it was kind of disorienting in the fact that, you know, you think you've slept funny, you know, maybe your legs are asleep. Yeah. And you can't feel them because of that. And it was a period of time of trying to like, you know, restore feeling somehow back into my legs. And when that, that obviously was not taking place when they were, you know, fully numb. I called my mom who then called a friend of hers, who was a nurse.

and then one thing led to eventually calling an ambulance and I was rushed to the local hospital and then on to another hospital here in London, Ontario, where they specialized in, they had a pediatric wing. And so that's when I was eventually diagnosed. But the paralysis itself was instantaneous. And they said, sorry, this is just what it's going to be. You're just never going to be able to walk. And after you were given that diagnosis, I mean, did you accept it? Did your parents accept it? Or were you guys thinking, no, we're going to beat the odds and we're going to figure out a way to get you back? Yeah, we had basically accepted that I would be paralyzed. We had done things like put a ramp on our house. We were basically, you know, digging in for the long haul in terms

of years later, I asked my parents, because I got asked all the time, did anyone pray for for healing. You know, anyone lay hands on you or something like that. And nothing like that took place. At least not, I mean, I knew that there were people all over the world who were praying for me and, you know, extended family, friends. So it wasn't that no one was praying for healing. But if you talk to my parents, they would say that they weren't necessarily praying for healing. My mom always says that they were praying that God would be glorified amidst the circumstance. So it wasn't necessarily that they were looking for a miracle. I think that they had in sort of a pragmatic way accepted,

this is what has taken place. God in his sovereignty has allowed this to happen. And so whatever the outcome of this, we are going to make sure that we are able to glorify God through it. And so there wasn't one instance that I could necessarily point to where someone prayed over me and then that's what felt different. And I think it was, you know, much more organic than that in that I literally woke up and couldn't feel my legs.

And then I woke up and I could feel my legs. And so not your sort of typical, if you want to describe it as a charismatic experience, it wasn't that in any way. But I think it was in a very practical way what I would describe as a supernatural healing. Right. And you said that you felt that, well, first, the doctors used the word miracle. but you felt that, okay, this is God healing me. And God has used it, obviously, as a part of your testimony, to bring himself glory.

And was that something that you realized right away, or is this a realization that grew over time? In terms of the like worldview significance of it? Yes. Or recognizing that this is the Lord healing me miraculously, and he's doing it for his glory. Whereas, like, I have the tendency to, although, of course, I know that God can heal. I have the tendency to first think of the pragmatic and to find all of the practical, tangible reasons why something happens. And sometimes I have to have friends in my life remind me, you know, spiritual warfare exists

or God can do whatever he wants to do. And I'm not sure what I would think if I were 12. But yeah, I'm just curious how it did shape you spiritually if it was something that progressed over time as you can learn more about your faith or if it was just kind of like an instant knowledge that this had been the Lord. Yeah, I mean, I think at the as much as you can as an 11, almost 12 year old, realizing that something very unusual took place and when the medical professionals themselves tell you, well, we have no medical explanation, then it means that something is going on. And so at the time, even if it was.

very, you know, naively, I definitely felt that God had allowed me to experience something where I had taken advantage of something as simple as walking in and out of the room, being able to utilize my legs in that very basic way. And so that played a big part in later. I was very involved in athletics and track and field. I competed competitively all through my high school and then my university years of being a sprinter in varsity in university. And although I wasn't necessarily the most talented athlete on the team, I always felt that there was an aspect of this is a way that I can use to glorify God through what he has revealed to me.

And so, you know, even then, you know, like Calvin says, our hearts are factories of idols. There were times where I made that all about me and was convinced that, you know, God had healed me and I was going to be an Olympic athlete and be next Eric Little type and realizing as I, you know, overtrained and got injured that that was me making the story about me when realistically it's not about me. So we can always take those types of positives and spin them in this beautiful get broken world to be about us.

But yeah, I think I did feel a sense of, okay, there's something here. Something has happened. And like I said before, in terms of my teenage youth, years, having that, that, okay, well, something took place. The medical doctors didn't really have an explanation for it. Well, okay, how do I then make that leap to that being connected with Jesus, the second person of the Trinity stepping out of eternity and into humanity, being the cause of that? And I think that that's where I connected some of the heart and head later on in my teenage years. But as a, you know, teenager, an early teenager,

I did definitely feel that there was a significance to God revealing this experience to me. Next sponsor is Good Ranchers. You guys know how much I love Good Ranchers. We are eating Good Ranchers almost every night in our home. We love their ground beef. I made some ground beef casadillas for Super Bowl Sunday. And we love our Good Ranchers meat because it tastes really good. And also it is all harvested in the U.S.

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Tell me how you got interested in manuscripts. I listened to the whole Joe Rogan podcast, very interesting. And as someone who I love theology and apologetics. and I like history and I've been a Christian my whole life. You talked about things that I had never heard of before. And I felt like, okay, I think I need some more basic historical knowledge to even kind of like understand what he is talking about here. So obviously you have very specialized, very deep knowledge in the manuscripts and as you said,

some of early church history. So tell me how you started on that endeavor from a scholar. perspective. I know you were raised a Christian. You talked about seeing the Quran, the Book of Mormon at your home and kind of getting your kind of like apologetics footing then. But you decided to pursue this and kind of go into this niche. Tell me about that. Yeah. So I realized when I went off to university and I was engaging in a lot of what you would typically call apologetic evangelistic conversations, although I wouldn't necessarily have been able to tell you what the word apologetics meant at that point in time. That's what I was doing. is giving reasons for the hope that I had in Jesus Christ and aiming to do so with gentleness and respect keeping a clear conscience as Peter writes in 1st Peter 315. And so I noticed a pattern that when I would talk about, say, the existence of God or the ethics of humanity or the life of the preborn, that a lot of people would say, okay, West, that sounds great, but a good portion of your reasoning is coming from the Bible.

And you can't trust the Bible. All you're dealing with is a translation of a translation of a translation. You're dealing with error-ridden copies. You're reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But what about the Gospel of Mary? What about the Gospel of Thomas? Have you ever heard of those? And so I realized that there were these types of objections that, if true, actually did undermine what I believed.

Because I claimed to be following Jesus, right? Jesus Christ. A friend of mine, Andy Bannister, who works out in the UK with an organization called Solas. He likes to say that if you take Christ out of Christian, all you're left with his Ian. And Ian's a great guy, but he can't save you from your sins, right? And so kind of with that perspective and mind, thinking, okay, well, if I'm going to attach my identity to Christ, I find the primary source historically for his life, death, and resurrection in the Gospels. And if I can't trust those, then I really don't have a reason to put my hope and faith in Jesus. And so digging into those questions in terms of historical reliability, the canon of scripture, textual transmission.

and ultimately leading me to being fascinated with these copies of the Bible that go back thousands of years and really trying to track down, how do we go from ancient papyrus and parchment to modern day print? And that's where my interest really delved into, going down that rabbit hole and ultimately leading me to where I am right now in terms of finishing up my doctoral dissertation at the University of Toronto on dealing with early Christian manuscripts. Okay, tell me how all of this led to you getting into a viral debate with someone named Billy Carson. And this is actually when I know that you've been doing this for a long time, but this is when I first heard about you and started listening to you and digging into you. I had someone who works here and say, you've got to check this guy out and watch this.

And then, of course, I followed as you went on Joe Rogan after Billy Carson went on Joe Rogan. So tell me about that. Like how did that debate come to be and what has happened since then? Yeah. So that was kind of an interesting, God ordained kind of set of events where I was making a number of, I was just making these short response videos that I was putting on Instagram Reels. And it started with just things that people would send me. I, you know, had been working and doing presentations on the historical reliability of the Bible

and the historical Jesus and things like that. And so it was gaining a growing, but very meager audience on social media. But I would have people send me videos of individuals making claims about the Bible. And you know, there's no lack of kind of crazy takes about the Bible and Jesus on the Internet. But a part of the group of these kind of clips that people would send me were really at the beginning of last summer, This guy, Billy Carson, who is the CEO of an organization called Forbidden Knowledge, who is kind of a strange mix of conspiracy theory, ancient aliens, and New Age. It's all kind of grouped into one and smushed together.

But he was going on these big podcasts, particularly he went on Joe Rogan and then PBD, Patrick Bet David, and Andrew Schultz's flagrant. And so there were these groupings of clips where he was talking. and really saying pretty demonstrably false kind of silly things about Christianity in the Bible, but he seemed to be getting away with it. You know, saying the Hebrew word for God is Elohim, and Elohim is a plural. And so every time you see the word God in the Bible, well, it really means gods, because the Bible is trying to cover up the fact that there's multiple gods that the Israelites worshipped.

Or you know, Jesus in Greek is Jesus, and Jesus just means Hail Zeus. So every time you say in Jesus's name when you pray, you're really praying to Zeus, or even just saying that the earliest copies of the Bible deny the crucifixion. And so that really fell into my area of expertise. And these things were not hard to debunk. And so I just made some short clips, you know, no more than a 90 seconds long, playing a clip of Billy Carson saying these things. And then without attacking Billy Carson, but just addressing what he was saying,

explaining why they were untrue. And so I made a group of these, along with response videos to a bunch of other people. They weren't, you know, solely Billy Carson. But what happened is that those gained traction because just of the fact that Billy Carson was very popular. And early in the fall of last year, I was reached out to by an individual named Mark Menard. And so I was out for lunch with a friend and I saw a message pop up on my Instagram DMs where someone said, you don't know me. I'm a friend of Billy Carson's, and Billy Carson is going to be in my studio tomorrow. Do you want to debate him on some of the things he said about the Bible? And so,

unbeknownst to me, this individual Mark Menard, his media manager, a guy named Anton, were talking, had been talking with Billy Carson, who lived in Mark's neighborhood, still lives in Mark's neighborhood, and Mark is a Christian, and Billy is obviously not. And so they'd been talking back and forth about just having a conversation and hashing out some of their differences. And so Mark's media manager, Anton, had put together a Google Doc of different resources that Mark should look at in terms of really holding Billy's feet to the fire on some of these things that he was saying about Christianity. And as the kind of date approached, Mark, and I found this out since, because I've become good friends with Mark and Anton, Mark felt unprepared

for going into this conversation because Billy always was so confident. He would always say these things very confidently. And so 20, you know, the day before this conversation was supposed to happen, Mark apparently talks to Anton and says, well, Wes Huff's name is all over this dock. Why don't I just reach out to him and ask him if he'll do it?

And so that's exactly what he did. He reached out to me. I happened to see the message that, you know, it was literally 24 hours before him. He didn't know where he lived. He didn't know I was Canadian and that I couldn't necessarily get down to Florida for this to take place. Yeah. But said, hey, if you can hop on an online call, let's do this thing.

And so I said, yeah, sure, let's do it. And so the next day, October 17th, I jumped on this call and I, to, you know, Billy's face virtually, dismantled a lot of these things that he had claimed. And to be totally honest, the conversation was, you know, we had some technical difficulties and the conversation kind of meandered and the time was limited. And we really didn't get to a whole lot of things that I would have hoped to have gotten to. And so I kind of came away from this conversation, this interaction, feeling like it was a bit of a nothing burger. Yeah. And that nothing would really transpire from it, you know, we really didn't get to the meat and potatoes of what I really wanted to.

talk about. I was hoping that maybe it would kind of get my foot in the door to eventually get down to Florida and do an in-person thing. But behind the scenes, as that conversation, you know, happened, what I didn't know was that Billy was really not happy with the way that he had been debunked. Okay. Because I think he had been pretty careful to not put himself in a situation where he could be called on the silly things that he was saying.

Right. And that was very purposeful on, on his end. And this had happened. And I think he, he, he'd sold his friend Mark short and thinking that Mark could get someone that could actually interact with him. And, and he, I think, had kind of assumed a level of arrogance. So the long story is that Billy tried to cover this up, told Mark he did not want it released and then a number of things transpired where he threatened legal action against Mark

and Anton and then myself sent us all cease and desist letters showed up to Mark's house at 2 a.m. Yeah, so that's an interesting question. So in reality, this was a, this was a bluff. It was meant to intimidate me in particular. To get you to stop sharing clips or? Yeah. So the C. And desist specifically said, don't use my face. Don't use my name. Don't talk about me. So, I mean, from a legal perspective, it was pretty baseless.

And I'm up in Canada. So it would have been an international suit. And so that's, it's just not going to work. Right? So I got sent the cease and desist letter. And I promptly that day made a video where I screenshoted it, put it online and basically said, you know, losing a debate is not legal grounds to litigate. but I will comply with all of your terms and conditions if you decide to run it back and we do this thing in person again.

And of course he didn't do that because he's not interested in that. Yeah. Can you – sorry to interject. Before we move on to the rest of the story, can you give me an example of one thing that you debunked that he did not like? Did you get into some people – I encourage everyone to go watch the debate. It's still up, right? Yeah, it's on my channel. Okay, yes.

So everyone should go watch it. But did you get to debunk the idea that we're saying, Hail Zeus when we pray to Jesus, or the Elohim is really just like a cover for paganism or polytheism? So, no, not those ones specifically. Those were some of the more egregious ones that I was hoping to get to. The one that I think really stood out that kind of went viral was that we started. we started off the conversation and Mark simply asked, hey, Billy, you say that Jesus wasn't crucified.

Why do you say that? And so Billy brought up two documents, Codex Sinaticus, which he calls the Sinai Bible, which is, in his defense, the oldest kind of cover-to-cover copy Genesis to Revelation, copy of the Bible that we have. And he says, well, the crucifixion isn't in there. And then he pointed to the gospel of Jesus' wife,

which he says, you know, is evidence. that Jesus was married and therefore brings into question whether he was ever crucified. Not necessarily a one-to-one correlation there, but that's part of the argument that he used. And so I simply asked, you know, when you say the Sinai Bible, are you referring to Codex Sinaiticus? And he said yes. And so I happened and still happened to have a facsimile behind me on my shelf of Codex Sinaiticus, of the New Testament of Codex Sinaiticus. I have the, I have a of the whole new test, or the whole Codex Sinaiticus, but it's like, 40 pounds. But the one I keep on my bookshelf is just the New Testament. So I just pulled it off

my shelf and I said, I'm looking at the gospels in this fourth century Greek Bible and I'm seeing the crucifixion. Could you just explain to me why you say that it denies the crucifixion? And his response was, oh, I misspoke. I didn't mean Codex Sinaticus. I meant the gospel of Barnabas. And so I said, okay, well, the gospel of Barnabas, that's also an interesting I've worked with the companies of the Gospel of Barnabas, and it's a medieval forgery. In fact, it paraphrases Dante's Inferno, which was written in 1413. And so that's problematic, right? If someone is quoting Dante's Inferno, it's obviously not a first century document.

It says that Jesus is the Messiah, but he's not the Christ. So there's all sorts of issues there, right? And so the interesting thing about the way that Billy responded was that if you watch him on say the PBD podcast or on Joe Rogan or even some of the videos that he puts out, he always has an answer. He always is Mr. Confident, talks in paragraphs. And yet when I kind of pointed out the inaccuracies and problems with his statements, he did not have a rebuttal. In fact, he just wanted to move on to the next topic. And so the rebuttal's really amounted to that's fair enough, or I'll take your word for it.

And so in one sense, it was a very unusual conversation, especially if you've watched Billy's content. Yeah. But I think going out from there, he was very uncomfortable with the fact that he basically looked like he didn't know what he was talking about. Right. And that was really kind of the uncomfortability and the embarrassment that he felt that this cannot go out into the world because my whole persona is that I know all the answers about these ancient things. and this reveals that I actually don't know any of the answers. Yeah. Wow. And I think that the legal action that he attempted to take after just further discredits him, whereas maybe if he had made another video, whether it was sincere or not, even just thinking from a PR perspective, if he had made another video and said, wow, okay, I realize that there's some more digging that I need to do. I thought that I knew some things that I didn't really understand. I'm going to go back to the books and make sure I really get this and I'm even going to like ask, Huff to help me with that. He actually probably could have retained some integrity and

respect by doing that without even losing like his atheist creeds, you know? But I think the fact that he said cease and desist, not only does that make him look like a sore loser, but that makes him in, from my perspective, like a complete and total fraud. And like he has actually no idea what he's talking about and he's actually very, very insecure about that. I mean, it's even worse than saying, I'm just going to take my ball and go home. It's like you can't ever play basketball again because you beat me. That's really bad. But that led to you then being on Joe Rogan because Billy Carson had bit on Joe Rogan and kind of made these assertions. Joe Rogan, I could see him liking someone like Billy Carson. He likes talking about aliens. He likes talking about

new age stuff. He's open to talking about Christianity. So it doesn't surprise me that, you know, that that happened, that he kind of, that he had him on and maybe even agreed with him on some stuff. But then he reached out to you via Instagram DM, right? And was like, okay, I want to hear the other side of this. Yeah. So it was a sort of a funny happenstance that one thing led to another in a way that I could never have predicted. And the Joe Rogan eventually did reach out. On Christmas Steve by Instagram DM. So and simply said, you know, can you be here by December 30th? And so it was a pretty short turnover.

Yeah. But that's what led to, yeah, he saw the debate and wanted to talk about that and some other things that, you know, that were part and parcel to my research. And that's what happened. Yeah. And the one part that stood out to me, and you kind of already mentioned this, that Billy Carson claimed, oh, the crucifixion didn't really happen, Gospel of Barnabas, and that was one question that Joe Rogan asked you, like, isn't it possible? If we believe that the, like,

resurrection happened, isn't it possible that, like, he just didn't die? And that he almost died, but then he woke up and that he walked around and everyone thought that he rose from the dead, but he didn't really. And I just thought that your response was very straightforward and compelling. So can you kind of just debunk that, this idea that maybe Jesus was just in a coma and he didn't really rise from the dead? Yeah, I think this is what's typically been referred to as the swoon theory. It's whether Joe Rogan knew it or not. And I don't think he was actually necessarily advocating for that. Yeah.

But this is an argument we hear amongst groups like Muslims who because of the Quran and the fact that chapter 4 verse 157 denies the crucifixion in a very vague. way, some Muslims have come up with the theory that Jesus actually survived the crucifixion, and that because he survived the crucifixion, he was then, you know, in the tomb, recovered. And when his disciples saw him afterwards, that he was, you know, then the not resurrected, but just recovered Jesus. And the problem with that is that, and this is what I explained to Joe, is we know a lot about Roman crucifixion in the sense of what takes place. And we know that the Romans were very good at it. And so you have the data of broader, you know, historical evidence of what takes place in a Roman

crucifixion, but then you also simply have what took place in the descriptions from the biblical gospels. And nothing about that description indicates that Jesus would have been alive. In fact, if on the off chance, let's say that what we see described in the gospels did take place, and Jesus didn't die if you put him in the tomb and he survived and his disciples saw him afterwards, there is no way they would have come to the conclusion that he was in a resurrected, glorified body. He would have been so beat up and so, you know, tortured that, and I jokingly said to Rogan, you know, the first thing you say to your disciples is not, peace be with you, it's get me to a hospital. Because that's the state he would have been in.

but undoubtedly, and I don't think there really isn't a question historically, that Jesus survived the crucifixion, given all that took place. I mean, it literally says that the reason they didn't break his knees like they did the other individuals of the thieves on the cross was because he was dead. And then, you know, they stab his side and out comes blood and water, once again, indicating that there was death that took place. And so I referenced a JAMA article to Rogan, the Journal of the American Medical Association, where there was actual an investigation done by medical professionals and historians on looking at the description in the gospels about coming up with a conclusion as to how Jesus may have died medically. And the conclusion was, undoubtedly, well, he did die. So there's no qualms about that. But how, if we were to say, diagnose it, how would we do that?

So there's historical data. there's medical data there's lots on the side there's just the face value understanding of what takes place in Roman crucifixion and the fact that if Jesus had not died then it would be the Roman centurions were on the hook and they would have been put

to death so there's just a cumulative case that takes place in terms of something like denying that the crucifixion actually happened in the way that it happened that's just it goes beyond the bounds of just simple

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Okay, I have a bit of a challenge for you because we have gotten a ton of questions, a ton of apologetics questions, history questions, and we don't have time to get into all of them. So I would like to do kind of like a rapid fire. Now, I know that's difficult because these are obviously deep questions that I'm not asking you to just give a one word answer, but as concise as you can, I'd love to go through a few of these. What is the single best piece of evidence that you have found for the Bible, our biblical canon being the inerrant, infallible word of God? Well, I think just the fact that it stood up to history, the fact that you have this first century Jewish itinerant Roman preacher, a rabbi,

who walked the dusty streets of first century Judea and then predicted his own death and resurrection and the fact that we're still talking about him, Ali, 2,000 years, despite the fact that, you know, other messianic figures existed in the ancient world. And when they died, their movement died along with them. And so I think when you read something like the Old Testament predicting this individual who would come, who would be the solution to the problem of sin and death and release humanity from the effects of the curse. And then Jesus comes on the scene and he he fulfills. those predictions in various and many ways. And then he does miraculous things, you know, walking on water, raising the dead, making the blind sea and the lame walk, turning water into wine. And then he predicts his own death and resurrection, and then he pulls it off. And sometimes I like to say that people who rise from the dead have more credibility and authority than people who don't rise from the dead. And so at minimum, I would say the best evidence for the word of God is the word made flesh, who made his dwelling among us, and that he has changed people's lives for the last 2,000 years.

And so we need an explanation of something like the spread of Christianity in the ancient world, how 11 scared disciples went from hiding in an upper room to changing the fundamental fabric of the ancient Roman world, and then that leading to us living in an era almost 2,000 years later, where we are not just talking about it as a historical reality. Jesus was no less than a historical person, but he was so much more than historical person because people like you, Ali, and myself, we can testify that our lives have been fundamentally changed

in ways that we can't even fully explain by this individual. And I think that testifies to the inspiration and infallibility and just transformation of the word of God, ultimately. You know, I remember Ben Shapiro was on Joe Rogan a few years ago, and I'm a big Ben Shapiro fan. I'm very grateful for what he's contributed to conservatism, but he was asked by Joe, like, who do you think Jesus was? And he said, I think he's a guy who led a revolution against Rome and was killed for his trouble, like a lot of other people at the time. But it sounds like you're saying that is not a compelling argument. Of course, not from our perspective, theologically and spiritually and experientially, but also historically.

Yeah, I mean, there are other individuals, Simon Bar Giora in the first century, Dosteus of Samaria in the first century, Simon Barcoccova in the second century. These were individuals who claimed to be the Messiah, you know, much more in, I think, the expectation of the way that they would have understood the Messiah in that day being kind of an actual revolutionary. But what's interesting about Jesus is that he didn't just claim to be a revolutionary. In fact, when he stands in front of Pilot and Pilot says, You know, are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. And so there's something fundamentally different about Jesus. He's not just a murdered revolutionary. If he was, we would not be talking about him right now in the same way that we're not talking about Simon Bargeora. You know, a lot of listeners may have never even heard of Simon Bargeora. And so it's, I think, the best evidence for the historical Jesus is that you've heard of him. And what I mean by that is that not only have you heard of him, but that he's being talked about in the same breadth by individuals like Jirogan to individuals like Ben Shapiro. And that really, I think, testifies to there's something different going on here.

Yes, the fact that our entire calendar is still centered on. on his life certainly speaks to something. Okay, you have described yourself. I heard that she referenced John Calvin and the Idol Factory of Our Hearts quote earlier. You describe yourself as a Calvinist, correct? Yes. Yes, and so do I.

And that is maybe like one of the most maligned parts of me when people like to throw on me. You're just a Calvinist. You don't know what you're talking about, which is kind of amazing. Can you describe, in the most concise way that you can, what it means to be a Calvinist. Yeah, I think what I would ultimately say is I'm reformed with a capital R,

in that when I look at something like the Protestant Reformation and the outpouring of individuals like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Maluncton, ultimately in the stream of individuals like Luther and Knox, I hold to doctrines of grace. I think that that is what scripture teaches. You know, if you want to simplify it in something like the five points of Calvinism or the tulip, I'm fine with that. I think that those are articulations that kind of came after Calvin, but synthesized what he held to that ultimately testify to God's sovereign plan and his overarching sovereignty in the universe, that he has a plan that encompasses his divine will being the ultimate progenitor of all things, that he is both the beginning and the end.

and there's no such thing as something like unplanned, you know, what's a good way to put it? There is, nothing catches God off guard in that God is the author of creation and time is part of his creation. And so I think what we can look at in the timeline of history is that God is in control of all things. And that, you know, is interwoven with free will. But I would say free will in terms of the way that the Bible would understand it in that God has free will and you have free will. But when your free will runs into God's free will, yours loses because he is the author of creation. And so I have comfort and confidence that all things are done according to the Council of His Will.

and that he, via the golden chain of redemption that we see in places like Romans, has from eternity past saved his people. And so in that sense, when I do apologetics, when I do evangelism, I can have confidence that even if I do it ineffectively, that it is not my job to change people's hearts because the spirit is the one who changes hearts of stone and gives them a heart of flesh. and my application to join the doctrine of the Trinity has been denied. I fail the minimum requirements, and so I should not try to take God's job.

And that gives me confidence when I preach the gospel that in a very simple way, there is 100% effectiveness in that evangelistic effort. Because although I am called to preach the gospel to always give an answer for the reason for the hope that I have, that ultimately being faithful to that does not negate that God ordains the ends and the means. Yes, and there are a lot of misunderstandings about Calvinism, and obviously we don't have time to get into all of them, but someone might say why even evangelize,

if you believe that everyone is preordained, but of course we believe that God has preordained evangelism and prayer as one of the means by which he is going to save people. That doesn't mean that it is within our control. That means that that's something he's. He's called us to do. We do it for obedience. And obedience glorifies him. We do it for his glory. And we also do it because of perhaps a mystery that we can't fully explain. He has ordained that. He has ordained evangelism and prayer to really work, not just as something that we do like ceremonially, but something that actually has great power as it is working, as James says, about prayer.

And so there is a mystery there, but it comes down to knowing that God is totally sovereign. Job 42, 2, nothing can thwart his will. And everything falls within that, even salvation. Last sponsor is Mossa chips. And so you will probably see a common theme in a lot of my sponsors, a lot of my products that I promote. And that is that they all contain really good ingredients. and that is especially true of Mossa chips. They are some of the only chips that you can find that have no seed oils.

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You're wrong because Sola Scripura is wrong. So can you explain your perspective on Sola Scripura? Yeah, I think much like kind of pushbacks on Calvinism, pushbacks on Sola Scriptera are largely misunderstandings of what Sola Scripura is rather than an actual addressing of what the historical perspective within historical Protestantism has articulated. Simply put, Sola Scripura is the perspective that inspired scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church. And so the defense of the idea goes something like this. Scripture ontologically is unique. So it's the direct speech of God. And nothing else we possess as a rule is

akin to it. And scripture likewise functions with unrivaled authority. Nothing we possess as a rule does that. And so both in what it is and what it does, scripture is unique. So infallibility as a rule of faith and practice is the outcome of its nature. It does not mean something like tradition is not important. It does not mean that experience is not important. Tradition and experience in the life of the believer and the practice of the church, my systematic theology professor would always say, have a voice and have a vote, but it's scripture that has the veto.

So often I think what people accuse Sola Scripura of being is what's sometimes referred to as Sola Scriptera, not Sola Scriptera, but Solo Scriptera, in that it's just me and my Bible and any interpretation that I come up with is, well, that's what the scripture actually says. Well, that's not what historic Protestantism has ever said Sola Scriptera is. You know, you do proper hermeneutics, a biblical interpretation. You look at exegesis bringing out the meaning of the original words in the Hebrew and the Greek. Greek. Now, there is a right and wrong interpretation of Scripture, and that plays into how we read it. But ultimately, solar scripture is simply that scripture is the sole infallible rule and faith of practice for the church. So it's not negating tradition. You know, Protestants have tradition. We have a longstanding tradition within our churches. And we look at something like the early church fathers,

and we see the value in those perspectives as a branch, Protestantism being a branch of the long family history of the tree of historical Christianity. So that's simply what it is. It's that we look at scripture as something that is ontologically unique because it comes from God and nothing else comes from God. Thank you for that. Okay. Last question. Should be a pretty easy one. What is your favorite book of the Bible and why? That should be an easy one. I know. You know, I think there's so much going on in the Bible in that here let me throw you for a loop i'll give you two um leviticus and hebrews okay leviticus is not the one if i've ever gotten that answer okay i think and and them together and in that when you read the book of hebrews the author of hebrews is really trying to communicate

to you i mean he's what we think he's doing is he's writing to a group of jews who believe in jesus as the messiah but they're kind of having this identity crisis because their communities ostracizing them for believing in Jesus as the Messiah. And so there's a temptation to go back, go back to this temple, go back to the priest, go back to the sacrificial system, go back to the history of the patriarchs, of Moses, of the angels. And the author of Hebrews goes through this exhaustive list of explaining why Jesus is the fulfillment of all those things. And why I connect that with Leviticus is because if you go back and read Leviticus, I know some people have a lot of trouble going back and reading, you know, the, the Mosaic law, and it can seem tedious.

But I think if you read it within the lens of understanding that those things are pointing to Jesus, that the ethics of the law are an outpouring of God's goodness in communicating who he is via his character to us and then seeing how that is fulfilled in Christ. I think it changes your perspective in that a lot of these things change from commands to promises. You know, we, we are able to live out the image of God in us because we obey the commands. And now it's, you know, you can love your neighbor as yourself. You know, you're not obligated to love your neighbor as yourself. And you love your neighbor as yourself because God in his character exists in a set of living, loving relationships in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And so now

you can live out the image that you bear as an image. bearer of your creator in doing that. Or, you know, don't, you know, murder. Because God is not a murderer, so therefore live out that image in you. And so when you read Leviticus and you see these ways that God is trying to section out Israel as his chosen people, there's a reason for that. And ultimately, it culminates in sandwich between the two sections of the Holiness Code, right in the middle of Leviticus is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. And we see within Jesus, as the author of Hebrews dictates, that Jesus is the fulfillment of that. That as the prophets say, you know, the, the blood of bulls and goats are not going to cleanse you. But the reason why you do that is because,

remember, the priest was your butcher. You know, they didn't just sacrifice these animals and throw them in the ditch. They ate them. And there was a recognition that this, gives its life so that you can live to give you sustenance in life. And Jesus gave his life so that you can live. And so this picture, this shadow, as the author of Hebrews call said, is a fulfillment of that ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the true fulfillment. He's the thing that's casting the shadow that all these laws, all these prescriptions, which in their time had a purpose and our good, they are meaningful because now you understand what they were pointing to all the way along. So I think, you know, oftentimes we can look at the Mosaic law and we can see it as confusing

and we can see it as kind of, well, what's going on here, this ancient near eastern law code. But I think when we read it through the lens of Christ, we can truly say how in its true and greater fulfillment, all of these things which were meant to set Israel apart are fulfilling. fulfilled in now we see Jesus fulfills them in a way that we can't and never could. And then we're set apart because Christ is truly set apart. That it's not about what we can do, but it's about what he has done. And that the one who steps down from the highest highs into the lowliest of lows in the person of Jesus and lives as a servant changes the fundamental way that we can live in that our final goal is to stand before the father and here, well done, good and faithful servant, living a

servant life out like Jesus did. Amen. Well, thank you so much. You know, I often ask some of my guests to share the gospel at the end of the episode, but you really just did that. And so I appreciate that so much. And now I'm going to have to read Leviticus and Hebrews at the same time because I've never done that together. And so I'm going to go do that. Last, thank you so much. Where can people find you? Yeah, well, the first informant's place you can find me is either at Wesleyhuff.com or at a Apologetics Canada.com. So as I mentioned, I work for Apologetics Canada as a regional director. And so if you want to know about what we're doing, any of the projects that we are participating in, I have an ongoing video docu-series that I write and produce that we're going to be adding episodes to.

But the first two episodes of the Can I Trust the Bible series can be found on the Apologetics Canada website and on the YouTube page that can be linked from the website. And then if you want to see any of the articles or the videos or the infographics that I make, those are all available at wesley huff.com awesome well thank you so much and i just love i've loved hearing your story and hearing about how quickly everything came together with the joe rogan interview and millions and millions of people hearing you defend scripture um and how obviously the lord had been preparing you for that and so many unseen and unknown ways and while everything seemed so precipitous from your perspective from the outside perspective, you know, as we've already covered, like, God and his

sovereignty had been preparing you every day for that moment. And I just love to see that. I love to see that. So thank you for what you do. Yeah, well, thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. Thanks.