Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 784 | Did the Resurrection Really Happen? | Guest: Jeremiah Johnston

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Today we're joined by Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, president of the Christian Thinkers Society, pastor of apologetics and cultural engagement at Prestonwood Baptist Church, and author of "Body of Proof: The 7 Best Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus—and Why it Matters Today," to discuss Jesus' resurrection and apologetics as a whole. We touch both on how to raise Christian thinkers and how to become Christian thinkers ourselves, citing how Jesus asks us to love God with our hearts and minds. We discuss the legacy of the Christian faith and the many wonderful things Christian thinking has brought to societies. Then we look specifically at the resurrection and why it's so fundamental to not just our beliefs as Christians but to the world overall. We cover some of the facts that prove it really happened and answer the question of why it matters for us now. --- Timecodes: (01:11) Interview with Jeremiah begins (02:49) Raising Christian thinkers (06:40) How to start being a Christian thinker (11:40) Apologetics (15:42) Christianity makes sense (20:52) Christian ideas & legacy of faith (27:13) How do we deal with criticism of Christianity (34:53) Body of Proof (38:51) Facts / reasons bodily resurrection is essential (42:20) What does this mean for us? --- Today's Sponsors: Naturally It's Clean — visit https://naturallyitsclean.com/allie and use promo code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your order. If you are an Amazon shopper you can visit https://amzn.to/3IyjFUJ. The promo code discount is only valid on their direct website at www.naturallyitsclean.com/Allie. Constitution Wealth — align your values with your investments through your financial management. Go to ConstitutionWealth.com/ALLIE and schedule a FREE consultation! Fearless Army: Roll Call — join hundreds of like-minded men in Nashville on April 15th for Fearless Army: Roll Call - an all-day event to encourage men to put on the full armor of God to take a stand against the evil forces destroying American culture. Tickets will likely sell out, so secure yours today by going to FearlessArmyRollCall.com. Nefarious — catch the psychological thriller (based on the book by Steve Deace) that deals with the true nature of good and evil, out April 14 nationwide. Watch the trailer now at whoisnefarious.com. --- Relevant Episodes: BONUS: What the Resurrection Means for All of Us https://apple.co/3zTva3H Ep 679 | Busting Atheism’s Biggest Myths | Guest: Dr. Neil Shenvi https://apple.co/3GkQ6UH --- 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

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed. You can watch

this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Christians are to love God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength. Loving God with all of our mind means we need to know what we believe and why. That's why apologetics are so important. So today I'm sitting down with Dr. Jeremiah Johnston. He is an apologetics pastor. He is also a New Testament scholar. We will be talking through some apologetics questions, but we will also be discussing the resurrection, why it is a factual truth on which Christians rest are faith. He wrote this book, Body of Proof, Seven Reasons to Believe in the Resurrection of Jesus in why it matters today. Oh my gosh, I could have

talked to him for five hours because our entire discussion, was so fascinating and encouraging, you guys are going to love it. This episode is brought to you by our friends at GoodRanchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's good ranchers.com. Code Allie. Jeremiah, thanks so much for joining us.

If you could tell us first who you are and what you do. Allie, Beth, I'm the overstressed father of multiples. My wife and I have five children, three of which are triplet boys. They're six years old. Oh my gosh. So we haven't slept in six years in the Johnston household. At least six years. Heck yeah.

Oh my goodness. Okay, so that's one thing. That's the main thing that you do. What about the other stuff? So I'm a New Testament scholar. I studied in Oxford did my Ph.D. on the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus. 93,000 word thesis. Oh, my goodness. Lived in England in Oxford for three years. And then in the course of doing that, my wife, Audrey and I, what sent us to Oxford, Allie Beth, is we didn't, we wouldn't have described ourselves as Christian thinkers. We read the Great Commandment, Matthew, Mark 12. Matthew Mark 12. excuse me, love God with your heart, soul, and mind. Jesus messianizes the shema, and he applies it to himself. And he says, love God with your mind too. And Audrey and I were like, you know what, we don't, we're Christians, but we're not loving God with our mind like we should. And we started a ministry called Christian Thinkers Society because we wanted to teach Christians to be thinkers, thinkers to be Christians. And God has just really blessed it. It was this side hustle for a long time, and then God just blew it up. And so, you know, I love what you do. This is why I'm so excited to be

on your show because you're a Christian thinker. You can answer first and foremost your own questions. You can wrestle with those, but then you help us model a conversant faith in the marketplace of ideas. So I've been so excited about our conversation today. Yeah. And before I even get into what that looks like through your ministry, because you're now an apologetics pastor at a large church in Dallas, Preston Wood Baptist Church. I want to talk about what that looks like. But first, since you mentioned being a father of lots of busy kids, I imagine that one of your highest priorities and your Anna Audrey's is raising Christian thinkers yourself. So how have you figured out how to do that as a parent?

I think everyone watching this wants to know, how can I raise Christian thinkers? Absolutely. It comes right out of the book of Second Timothy, where we pass on a legacy of faith to our kids. And first off, it's not always, it's not always perfect, right? There's no silver bullet. But one thing that we have really helped our kids understand is it's not a sin

to question your faith. Jesus loved questions. Jesus asks over 300 questions in the Gospels. Jesus asks more questions than he answers. There's 3,200 questions in the Bible. Unfortunately, so many Christians raise their kids, don't ask questions, just believe. And so I think one of the pillars of how we raise Lily, Justin, Abel, Riter, and Jacks is ask us your questions. If you're struggling, bring that to me.

And then let's grapple with those together. So I always invite them into a dialogue. I try not to assert my faith in them. I want to invite them into a faith conversation. And that's worked so well. And it's amazing to me because they want to ask questions that's not generally on our timetable. Is it like they always want to bring up like literally we were going to bed the other night. And Lily, who is our teenager, she's like, Dad, let's talk about Job.

I mean, it's like bedtime. Alex's like, well, we'll do a highlight. We'll go deeper tomorrow if you want. So the big aspect for us is, you know, Christianity is something we do every day of our life. it's who we are. Jesus is a part of our household. So we talk about them as if he was living in our home. I mean, that's essential too.

But really allowing them to own their own faith through grappling in those difficult questions. Yeah. And not shying away from any questions that they may have or calling, as you said, a question or even a doubt sin. Right. But just realizing that that's a healthy part of our faith, just like, you know, just like antibodies in our body, they are an important part of our health.

That's right. And so have you ever dealt with a question from your child that you're like, I actually don't know the answer to that right now? I feel like I would. Yeah, absolutely. You know, they ask questions all the time and especially with five. I mean, we can't get, Audrey and I can't get a word in edgewise at dinner. And so there's always difficult questions. There's there's a lot of chatter. And, you know, usually it's a question that requires, you know, more than a sound bite. And then our kids, you know, it's like, hey, listen, I'm answering the question. You just asked me. Don't go screensaver on me. Yeah. So we do take our time. But yeah, there's some difficult ones. And, you know, that's the fun part about growing in our faith is we don't have all

the answers as parents. You know, you can have a Ph.D. You can write a bunch of books. And guess what? They'll pop a question off that I haven't even ever considered in my entire life. And that's the fun journey about the life of the mind and faith. You know, as Augustine said, we think in believing and we believe in thinking. That's what it means to be a Christian to think and believe and believe in thinking.

So, you know, we're going to have unanswered questions until the moment we see Jesus face to face. And I still think we're going to have questions in eternity someday. The resurrection's a continuum. Ephesians 2-7 says that God is going to continue through the ages to come to show us His grace to us in Christ. We're not going to be omniscient when we get to heaven someday as God is. So I think we're even going to have questions someday in eternity, Ali Beth. So we better get used to asking and answering those. And for all of the people, all the parents in particular out there who are intimidated by the idea of discipling their kids to be Christian thinkers, very often it's because they are maybe ashamed of the fact that they either don't have the answers

or maybe they don't even know the questions to ask, whether they were raised at home where you couldn't ask questions or they were raised in a non-Christian home. And so they don't even know where to start. So it's important for us as adults, no matter where we are in our faith, to start being Christian thinkers and ask some fundamental questions. I mean, that's part of why you wrote this book, right? Body of proof. That's a huge reason why you do what you do as apologetics pastor. So for someone who's like ground zero just starting out, like, how do they start to be a Christian thinker and ask good questions? Yeah, that is a phenomenal question. First off, it's the goal of, it's God's will for all of us to love him with all of our mind.

Not just the Delta Force Christians like Ali Best Tucky, but every follower of Jesus is called to love him with all of our minds. And so I think first and form, most understanding, that's not, there's no prerequisites to that. You don't have to go own your faith in such a way that you have degrees behind your name or books or shows or platforms. You can start doing it right now. And remember, Jesus narrates God to us. And so I would get in the Gospels immediately. And I would understand the Gospels. I would understand good, right theology. And then just start growing in your faith. Remember, we don't do it alone. The Holy Spirit is our truth to her guide. He guides us into all truth. And so we don't do it alone. And,

What's amazing is there was a time in my life when I remembered I couldn't answer questions and I remember being silent when a friend asked me questions. And I made a commitment to the Lord Ali Beth, not on my watch ever again, Lord. I'm going to go deeper in my faith so I feel comfortable with faith dialogue. And the really cool thing about that is we need to have healthy conversations. You model that so well for us, how to have a healthy dialogue to be aware of the facts, to not shy away from the truth, and then to have healthy dialogue and to confront evil. You know, part of having a Christian worldview isn't just knowing what we believe, but we've got to poke holes and all the crazy beliefs around us. That's part of having a good Christian worldview. And so modeling that well, reading the Gospels, getting close to Jesus.

It's not hard. But as soon as we do that, we see that God activates addiction to truth in our life. And that's what happened to me. I became truth addicted. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe. leave is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day

and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. When I was a junior, probably between junior and senior year of high school, is when I started really thinking about Christianity. I thankfully was raised in a Christian home,

went to church, I went to a Christian school, kindergarten through 12th grade. And so thankfully, I knew what the Bible was. I knew a lot about the Bible. I knew a lot about God. And I would say I was genuinely a Christian, but it was until I started reading C.S. Lewis and a couple apologetics books that were assigned to us in school. Mir Christianity screw tape letters that I really started recognizing the depth of just the intellectual richness that is Christianity and Christian apologetics, that you can spend, you know, 13 years at a Christian school and you haven't even scratched the surface of the things that brilliant people and theologians are asking about God and they don't even have the answers to.

And that opens like a whole new world for me of, just, I don't know, intriguing aspects of God and Christianity that I hadn't thought about before, but it can kind of be a little overwhelming. Oh, yeah. And so I wish I had had an apologetics pastor kind of like shepherd me through that journey because I was reading at the time all different kinds of teachers and looking back, I'm like, ooh, that was a false teaching. That wasn't right.

Thankfully, God and His grace kept me. Right. But so tell me what you do as an apologetics pastor at such a large church. How do you help people who are like, I want this, but I don't. Oh, no, where to start. Oh, my gosh, we can talk all day. What I love is you've helped, you realize that there's a great intellectual tradition to the Christian faith. When you look at those early apologists, they outthought everybody around the alley. They were writing letters to the emperor, talking about why Christians were great Roman citizens and good for the empire. I mean, think about that

in the marketplace of ideas. They were willing to step up and show why Christianity made sense, the best sense of the world around us. And so, you know, apologetics seems like a new thing. thing, but apologetics has been around since the nascent Christianity, the early days of the church. Apologetics, for those that are just hearing that word for the very first time, it's a word that Socrates used 500 years before the New Testament was written. It means to give an answer Apologia a reason for what we believe. So that's all apologetics means. Can you give an answer a reason for what we believe? Today's post-Christian world, when I think about your children and our children, Generation Z, growing up the first post-Christian generation in the United States,

And I hope pastors who are watching and listening right now will hear my heart. I can't imagine a church today not having an apologetics pastor on staff. We have music pastors. We have student pastors. We have next gen. We have media pastors. How on earth could you not have an apologetics pastor on your staff right now who helps you parse through this secular humanist worldview that's encroaching in our children, trying to warp our children and wreck our families? We have to speak to that.

And we should. And guess what? the scales of truth tip in our favor, don't they? And so what I do is I work with our pastoral staff, of course. I do a meeting quarterly called Level Up, where we talk about cultural issues and how we need to address them at every level of our 150 ministries at our church. So there's an idea for you. And I don't hold back. I mean, we go in depth. And then how are we ministering around this? And it's not, you know, it's apologetics and cultural issues because those go hand in hand. the end of this is of course always evangelism to win people to Christ. But a lot of people

forget that apologetics is just important for the people of God in the church. Apologetics, I mean, when Paul writes to the Colossians, the Colossian Church, and Colossians 2-8, be careful that no one takes your mind captive. It's the forces if someone were to come into your house and kidnap your children. That's what Paul writes to the church. Don't let anyone take you captive through empty deceit, philosophy, the things of the world, et cetera, et cetera. You're complete in Christ. Stand up. Be a leader. Jude 3, Epigenizamine, Greek, continue to attack. We have to outthink those around us, Sally Beth. And so the really cool part is, is, you know, we guide the church at all levels through real content with real issues today. So I can tell you

that we're getting ready to go through a four-week Bible study that I wrote on difficult questions. and we're taking 200 life groups through that on difficult questions. So we do it at the life groups. We meet with the pastors. I have a worldview task force. I announced it during one of our sermons where I said, if you want to join my task force, email me. I got a thousand emails the next day.

I have men and women who I said, I need first. I'll help you with your own Christian worldview. But we need to raise up an army of Christian thinkers that pass on a legacy of faith that can be on the front lines and share. the hope that they have within them and do it with gentleness. You know, I'm comfortable. I deal with atheists every week of my life, agnostics, secular humanists. And I don't get nervous talking to them because the truth is on our side. I've heard all their arguments. And I really want to try to reach

them. And so I can be very comfortable and I'm a better listener now than I've ever been. Yeah. Listening is loving. I have so much to say and so many questions to ask. So let me try to remember all of them. One of the things that you said was that Christianity makes sense. Yes. And I think we would be, or maybe I would just be amazed at the number of Christians who would actually kind of be uncomfortable saying that. They might say Christianity makes sense to me, or even worse, they would say it feels right to me. But does it make sense objectively? Does it make sense universally? As you mentioned, the history of apologetics of the church from the very beginning has a very rich intellectual component and intellectual history. There's a reason why all the Ivy

League universities in the United States were actually started by Christians. At one point, there's a reason why they're all dying right now, too. Exactly, because they've reached that post-Christian era long before the rest of the country has. But the Reformation and even before that, I mean, you mentioned this, which I just think is fascinating, is that Christians at one point were not scared to say, no, Christianity makes sense. not just for me, but actually for everyone. And it makes the most sense more than any other worldview, any other ideology. This makes sense for everyone logically.

Like that is something that I think a lot of Christians today, they won't defend that. No, and we need to. Christianity exhibits verisimilitude. It helps us, it helps us parse the world around us. It's very similar to how the world needs to be and how the world is. And Christianity helps us understand why we're here, the great purpose of why God has us here. And when we understand that, when we unlock that, we become great citizens. And we do need to poke holes, because let me tell you, secular

humanists are trying to say that their ideology makes the best sense of the world. Yeah. So Christians, it's a time for us to stand up and be counted. And, you know, that's why Winston Churchill was called that great defender of Christian civilization. It's why in September of 1943 at Harvard. He stands up. He couldn't sleep the night before his speech. And September 6, 1943, he makes the point. He was almost as a prophet, Ali Beth. He said, now the empires of the future will not be nation states. And you think about the time attacking fascism, Nazism, communism. He said the empires of the future will be empires of the mind. These ideologies that will attack Christian civilization. And this is where friends are way of

life, our way of thinking, the very fabric on which Western civilization is based, is under attack. Rufus fears, the now deceased O.U. Professor, made it clear that not until the dawn of the Bible did the idea of universal freedom, that means freedom for all. Not until the dawn of the Bible, did that belief system take hold. That comes right out of the cut and thrust of the Christian worldview. And we don't know this. We don't realize so many of the amenities that we enjoy in society right now come from Christianity period. They haven't always existed. Yes.

And most Christians, they remind me of that generation. It's right after the Joshua generation, and there rose after them a generation that did not know the Lord or the works which he had done for Israel, Judges 210. And so, gosh, I want my kids to know the great intellectual tradition of our faith, the intellectual kings that have come out of the faith.

I mean, it's one negative about the Reformation in my mind. I love the Reformation. But we lost track. of our Christian heroes. The New Testament stops and we can't tell you who, of course, we don't pray to saints, et cetera, but we've lost track of the great intellectual tradition of our faith. And so passing on those stories and friends, if we don't do it now, we're going to lose it. I mean, it's game set match right now if we don't stand up. I think people don't realize and what you just said is that in a post-Christian world,

what exactly we lose? A lot of people who say, whether Christians or not, you know, we don't really need Christianity to be in society. We don't need it to influence laws. We don't need it to determine morality. The idea of a human right is a Christian idea. You go to different countries today outside of the West and increasingly even in the West, but outside of the West, the idea of human beings having innate value because they are created by a power that's higher than the government is completely foreign to China. It's completely foreign to North Korea. It's completely foreign to India. Get on a plane and go check it out for yourself. I mean, this is not, this is not new. And it wasn't new in the early Christian era as well. There's a letter,

Papyrus Oxirincus 744. It's 50 years before Jesus was born. It's written in Greek. It's a love letter from a man named Hilarian to his wife, Alice in Egypt. She will give birth to their child before he returns from work. He's working in Oxerinkis. And he writes, and it sounds like this in Greek. Eon, ain't they lae eqbalet. If it's a boy, keep it. If it's a girl, throw it away. No one would have batted an eye in the Roman Empire. If it's a boy keep it, if it's a girl, throw it away. That was the way of life. So we have to ask ourselves, even though we have historical distance,

but as critical thinkers, what changed infanticide in the Roman Empire? Yes. Jesus and his movement that said, let the children come to me. Yes. I mean, we have to ask ourselves, why did Christianity have to invent a new term for burial? Mausoleum, sepulcher, monument. Those were the three options for burial in the time of Christians. And body dumping was a huge problem.

You know, 40% of the empire were slaves. So if your slave drive, just kick them to the curb, literally, the body. Christians began because of the belief in the resurrection to be buried together. They had to come up with a new term for burial. So they were innovative. They called it Coimitrion in Greek, dormitory, sleeping rooms. It's the very word we transliterate, cemetery. Every time we drive by a cemetery today, we should be reminded of the fact

that that's the innovation of Christianity. They even took care of dead bodies of slaves if they were Christians and they were interred together. Wow. We have no idea. And friends, we have to know history. So I love your show, Ali Beth. We've got to know these things so that we can keep passing on this great legacy of faith. Because when you think about the Apostle Paul becoming a Christian, Galatians 328, he was a myth-misanthropic person. He just didn't like people as a Pharisee. Not just women. He didn't like people. If you weren't a Jew, he didn't like you. He had a PhD in Judaism. Saul Tarsis did. And the fact that he could have this experience with the resurrected Christ and then write something like Calatians 328 that there's neither Jew nor Gentile, there's neither slave nor

female, nor female, were all one in Christ Jesus. That would be looked on as seditious in the Roman Empire to say something like that. And then you look at modern day. I have a friend who has been in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. And I talk about this in one of my books. Her name is Mindy. They're Pets, you know, you go to Saudi Arabia to the department store, women, they don't have dressing rooms. So you buy the clothes from a male. You have to go home and try them on. She went to Dunkin' Donuts.

And when she was talking, I was like, oh, praise God, there's a Dunkin' Donuts in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She ordered her donut. She has her Ibaya on, Nekab, hijab. She sits down inside the Dunkin' Donuts in Riyadh and tries to enjoy her donut. Man walks around the counter, begins shouting at her in Arabic. women eat outside. She goes, she sits on the curb, it's like 200 degrees outside. It just disintegrates all over her.

And she said, Jeremiah, I've never felt so much shame. Yeah. Why? Because I'm a woman. So again, when we talk about ideas and worldview, you know, as they often say, you know, bad ideas have victims. Ideas have power. Yes. There's this book.

You've probably read it. And I forget the name. I think his last name is Bakke, but he wrote a book about the invention of children. And when I first read about this, I thought that this was such an incredible concept. And it's exactly what you're talking about, that if you go to pagan, Greece, and Rome, and what they looked like, the adult free male was basically the nucleus of society. The only person who really had rights because they were really the only person who could offer anything. Or so they thought women, children, slaves, the elderly, the disabled were all pushed to the sign. many times they were sexually exploited or they were simply left to die.

Children had such a low survival rate. It was so rare for them to grow into adulthood that they were really just kind of seen as people that you could dismiss and discard. And it wasn't until the gospel. It wasn't until Christians came along and universalized what was already a Jewish idea that people are made in the image of God. But then doubled down on that, reemphasized that by introducing this, radical equality that we are all equally dead in Christ or dead in sin apart from Christ and equally

alive in Christ with him. This radical equality of the gospel that we read in Ephesians too. Christians didn't just say, well, this feels good for me. They said, no, this makes sense for all of you. And radically revolutionized how societies treated marginalized people. You take Christianity out of society. We kill each other. You get all of that back in. It's a lot easier to enslave people. if there's no Christianity. Oh, yeah. Moral relativism, humanities dehumanized, no individual freedom, law of the jungle. We can study more than one half of the world's population has turned their back on God in the last

70 years from a governmental standpoint. I wouldn't want to raise my family in those places because anytime you have the absolute truth deniers, like in China where they have their own edited Bible and they have the community, the PRC Bible, it's an opportunity to insert a new truth. And so the communist Bible today, you can't. say you will have no gods before me because you can't say that as a good PRC member. And so anytime you have the absolute truth deniers make no mistake, they always insert their own truth, which, of course, marginalizes someone. Yes, that's why slavery still exists there. Exactly. And it still

exist in places like Libya and throughout Africa today. So how do we deal with as Christians in a world that tells us that Christianity doesn't only not make sense, but it's stupid, is backwards, is evil. Actually, the opposite of what is true that it has been the primary driver of oppression and of even violence and slavery and the marginalization of women and things like that. And yet we're standing here and we're like, well, I still believe in it. And not only that, but I believe all the things that you're telling me are bigoted. I still believe that God made us male and female. I still believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. I still believe that life inside the womb is sacred. Amen. How do we start being bold in those things and knowing why we believe that?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the first thing we need to know is I'm a big immediate next steps guy. And my wife is like, Jeremiah, you've got to make this practical. Every time you share an evidence for the gospel, make it practical because, you know, I'm a busy mom of five. So why does this matter for me today? We need to do a better job of being bold about the impact that here's the answer. The church unified and mobilized is the greatest force for good on planet Earth. That is right. Right now, the most effective apologetic in my mind is for us to get conversant on what happens when there's a tragedy, when some unspeakable horror, why are Christians always the first people in? When we look at the fact that today there are 90 million Americans who live in federally recognized shortage areas of a mental health professional, what fills the void? Pastors, 353,000 congregations strong, that donate 10 to 20% of their week to do biblical counseling to minister to people who are hurt.

who are on the edge. When I look at the fact that America would starve if there were no Christians, we have 46 million Americans right now that don't know where their next meal is coming from, 46,000 food bank agencies, 60% of which are Christian organizations. When my wife and I went through Hurricane Harvey, we lived in the most diverse county in America at the time, Fort Bend County, Texas. It was amazing to me that the church outpaced FEMA, and certainly there were no atheist tense. That's a whole other conversation, passing out bottled water. helping people muck out their houses. That's the facts. But it was like Christian delta force groups of believers that were mucking out people's houses saying, hey, can we pray for you and help you with

your house? And there were so many people reach that way. So an immediate next step for me is you have to get conversant. You know, you go to London, go to South Bank in London, go to the Florence Nightingale Museum. Understand that the whole science of modern nursing was the creation, the innovation of a Christian whose parents turned their back on her. She turned her back on wealth, and her love for Christ compelled her to want to care for those that were sick and hurting. Florence Nightingale, every time a nurse is pinned today at a nursing school,

that's a Christian Florence Nightingale who innovated modern nursing. I mean, we could do the whole show. I could do this for the next hour. Yeah. One after another to where that's why Churchill was protecting Christian civilization. I met with Rodney Stark at Baylor, and I went through the facts that for a thousand, years Christianity stamped out racism because a lot of people don't realize the same

literature that gave us democracy gave us racism as well this is a Greek thought Plato keeping the precious metal of Greece pure eugenics that's a Greek term eugenesis that comes out of Greek thought for a thousand years though there's no racist writer or thinker it goes dead after Christianity there wasn't a prominent thinker that espoused racial racist ideas until the Enlightenment. And it's in the Enlightenment where these thinkers bring these old neo-Atheist ideas back into vogue. You know, the Enlightenment thinkers had no problem with the transatlantic slave, by the way. So as they're idolized, Nietzsche, Foyabach, the Big Five thinkers, of course, Marx, Darwin, and I can't think of the fifth guy right now. But they're so immortalized on our modern philosophy programs and universities.

And these are the destroyers of people's lives, these ideologies. And they infect our college campuses. Yes. I was thinking about this last night, actually. We've got so many political interest groups in America that claim to be like fighting for social justice, fighting for the least of these. But really, if you look at whether they divide themselves by race or by socioeconomic class or by what they think their sexual orientation is or by what they think their so-called

gender identity is, all of them are fighting exclusively for their own interests. Right. When I'm not just talking about all the people who identify in these ways. I'm talking about the people who identify in the activist class of these groups. They claim to be fighting for justice. They are only ever fighting for their own interests. And then conversely, if you look at Christians, well, what are we always fighting for? We are always fighting for other people. Someone having an abortion over here, does it personally affect me? The only reason we fight for unborn children or fight for those who are enslaved or fight for the poor is because the love of Christ compels us to do that. That's why we start orphanages. That's why we start adoption agencies. That's why

we created hospitals. That's why we actually started hundreds of years ago, the universities, because we cared about other people more than we cared about ourselves. I'm not sure that you could say that for any other group. No, you can't. You can't, you can't, workly say that. So, you know, you're free to interpret the facts differently, but you can't argue with the historicity of what you're saying. This is the bedrock of Western civilization. And it's why we have to, we have to take the mic back from the skeptics. We have to get a conversant faith that can speak to these issues. So immediate next steps for people that are watching, you've got to get conversant in what Ali Beth and I are discussing right now. The great blessing that the move of God, which is

the church, it's the greatest force for good on earth. But we have to have, like you, evidence, a resiliency to our faith. So that means, you know, as I follow Jesus, as I live out the gospel, make no mistake, I am going to come into conflict with society and culture around me. So I have to be bold in my witness. And I have to be able to say, oh, nope, nope, nope, that's wrong. That's a lie. I'm not going to live that out. I'm not going to believe that. That destroys society. And friends, that's where we're at. That's what we have to do for our kids. Okay, we haven't even gotten into your book yet. There's a million other things I can talk to. I love this. I mean, a lot of this has to do with this book. So tell me about this book,

Body of Truth, the seven best reasons to believe in the resurrection of Jesus and why it matters today. And I think a lot of people, they're okay with saying that, you know, Jesus was alive. He was a good teacher. And sure, he was influential. Maybe they'll even agree with a lot of the things that we just said. But risen from the dead, come on. So tell us why that matters and tell us about the proof. Absolutely. Thank you for asking. The body of proof for Jesus's resurrection is such that every believer needs to understand that we have a fact-based belief system. We are not Christians because Jesus is like the Santa Claus myth or the tooth fairy or fairy tales or fiction. On April 9, 8030, or if you will, April 5th, AD 33, Jesus physically bodily rose from the grave on a Sunday morning. That fact, is why we are Christians. Make no mistake. The Bible speaks of real people, real places, real events. The resurrection of Jesus, though, unfortunately today, Ali Beth, and this is why I'm so thankful you're bringing it out on your program. It's the resurrection is understudied. It's under preached.

It's under taught. And it has produced a weak, breathless Christianity. The resurrection of Jesus is the only reason that nascent Christianity took over the Roman Empire. There were 28 different messias in Judaism in the first century. A lot of people don't realize this. Jesus wasn't the only guy that said, hey, I'm the Messiah. There were 27 others. They all came to not with the death of the proposed Messiah. Only one had a movement that said, no, he rose again from the dead. And that was, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. And so there are 300 passages. Why is this important? 300 passages in the New Testament speak to the resurrection. The promise that we are given more than any other promise, more than two dozen times in the New Testament is John 1419, because Jesus lives, we will live also.

And so that speaks to so many issues today right now. And then finally, when we look at the fact that it is a historical fact, when we look at the issue that every sermon in the Book of Acts talked about the resurrection, we need to be better equipped to be conversant why we believe the resurrection of Jesus happened. This isn't something we talk about only on Easter week or at a funeral. Every Sunday was resurrection Sunday in New Testament Christianity. It's why we worship on Sunday, which was market day in the Roman Empire, work day, not on Saturday, like the Jews did. And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to, in about three and a half hours of reading with body of proof, produce a book because I'm amazed that this is the centerpiece of our faith. And make no mistake, the death and resurrection of Jesus is

the center of a Christian worldview. Everything else emanates from that. There is no Christian worldview you without the resurrection of Jesus. But I'm just amazed how few books there are. You know, there's a couple from 20 years ago, 10 years ago maybe. Very few books you could hand someone today and say, here's the best evidences. And so I did my PhD in Oxford, as I mentioned. I've published 200,000 words academically for the dozens that read academic works. That's a lot of words. But I wanted to have a book that would give you the seven best reasons to believe based on the evidence, but also practically again back to immediate next steps how that empowers our church movements today yeah and why and why it even matters and i'm delighted that you can be totally up to date on the

archaeology on the material culture discoveries that we've had on jewish burial traditions all those fun things but then there's we draw a line right over to how this gives us hope and encouragement how it's the key to our ethics today yeah wow it's a really quick book for all of that information and this is something that it seems like we kind of just look over that we don't talk about in a factual way. Of course, everything in Christianity requires a degree of faith, but you're saying that our faith rests on facts here. It doesn't just rest on some kind of superstition or hope that he rose from the dead. So just walk us through a couple of the reasons. I would love that. So there's a couple of things that we need to know as we look in the bodily

resurrection. Number one, it is a fact of history, as I mentioned. And so these are my seven. You know, Some may disagree, but these are the seven best. Number one, Jesus called it. He called his shot. Ali Beth, if the church had a hashtag, it would be on the third day. And by the way, we can't help you if you don't know what a hashtag is on this program. On the third day. Jesus had this amazing way. And this is why we can't unhitch the Old Testament from the New Testament. I'm an exegette. Yes. So we interpret Jesus in his ministry through the Old Testament. So we really need the Old Testament. Jesus messianizes and even eschatologizes Old Testament passages. He applies them to himself. The disciples just didn't get it. And I see myself on the disciples all the time. I mean,

they're just like constantly, what is he doing? And that will get to some of my other points. But Jesus takes Joseus 6, 2, and 3 very seriously. After two days, he will revive us on the third day. He will raise us up that we may live before him. Jesus applies that passage from Jose 6, 2, and 3 to his own life. Mark 831, Mark 931, Mark 10, 33, and 34. Jesus predicts his violent death and resurrection, but he also predicts on the third day, after three days, after three days. And then when you look at the earliest tradition of resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15, 4, and he rose from the dead, as the scripture said, on the third day. So this was the rallying call of Jesus' passion prediction on the third day.

So he called it. Jeremiah, why is this important? Because skeptics today say that Jesus didn't. really know what he was doing, man. You know, people that came later made him God. He never said he was God. Sixty-nine times in just the synoptic gospels alone, Ali Beth, Jesus said he refers to himself as son of man. If you and I were in the audience, we would know exactly what he was doing because we would actually read the Old Testament. We would have been raised with the prophecy of Daniel seven that son of man will sit next to the ancient of days. That's Messiah. So again, do you see why it's

so important he predicted it? And then one of the other body of proofs is Jesus demonstrated resurrection power. Not only did he predict he had power over death to raise himself up, he adambrated his power over death by raising up Jairus's daughter from the dead. The widow of Nane son, Luke 7, John 11, Jesus shouts at that grave. And he says, doro Xo. A lot of Johan commentators actually say that if Jesus wouldn't have said Lazarus name, everybody's dead would have just come alive at that moment. And then they want to kill Lazarus. after he's been raised from the dead. So Jesus shows his power over death. The really interesting, another point about the body proof, this would be number four, is no one, none of Jesus's

disciples expected the Messiah to die by Roman crucifixion, let alone rise from the dead. They were all looking for a conquering Messiah, Messiah who would vanquish a corrupt priesthood, kill the Roman occupiers, indeed even kill the Roman emperor. We see that in 4Q 285 at Dead Sea Scroll. We see that in Matthew 16. You know, the disciples of Jesus at times spoke for Satan. Peter did. No, Lord, you can't go to the cross. Yeah.

And Jesus says, get behind me what? Satan. Yeah. And so we see that it wasn't what they expected. So there's no psychological reason to make up a resurrection narrative. Yeah. So what does this mean for us gospel-wise? It means that Jesus was the real Messiah, the 27 other guys.

They never roast from the dead. they all died. Jesus rose from the dead. That means he's real. What does that mean for us both here in understanding the gospel and the power of it, but also for our future resurrection? And I know that could be like a whole hour long conversation, but that's something that also isn't talked about very much and is a little bit confusing. So yeah, I thought it was interesting how you said that Jesus demonstrated resurrection power by resurrecting others from the dead while he was alive, but we will also be resurrected. So like tell us about that connection. And it's fascinating to me that In the New Testament, we actually hear more about the resurrection than heaven.

A lot of people forget that. Yeah. I mean, heaven is a great thing, but it's really about the resurrection. The new heaven and the new earth, the new cosmos, recreated. All will be made right. This is why one of my body of proofs is the resurrection is the only way we can ultimately make sense of the suffering in the world. Romans 818. I can't compare the suffering, Paul writes, with what I'm enduring right now with the glory that's to come.

And so that answers your question that Jesus is able to complete. his atonement for us, and it shows that his death was validated before God, the Father. His death paid for all of humanity's sin. He rises from the dead on the third day, showing that he had conquered and paid for sin. This is where grace is bestowed upon us. 200 times in the New Testament, salvation is conditioned on faith and faith alone. It's not faith in the finished work of Christ, the facts of the gospel. That immediately, when we turn to the God, to faith in Christ, we are forgiven, we're sealed with the Holy Spirit for eternity. And then the beauty is that that linkage that we have with Jesus' resurrection, our resurrection and Jesus' resurrection

are linked. So much so that we can talk about our friends and loved ones who have died in the Lord, we can speak of them in the present tense. And that's where it brings us great hope, Ali Beth, because, you know, as I was writing, truly in about 150 pages, once you get through Gary Havermask forward and all the end notes. I was thinking about my little sister, Jenny Lee, if you don't mind me being transparent for a minute on this show. She and her husband, Jeff, their two daughters, they had a baby who was still born at 25 weeks.

She had to go in and deliver Wesley, and we say his name. And Jenny had the, and she'll never be the same after experiencing that. But Jenny had the wherewithal from the Holy Spirit to write a blog and say, I know that the first time our son opened his eyes, he saw Jesus. And that's the power of the resurrection. The only reason my little sister could put one foot in front of the other after that experience is because we grieve, but we do not grieve as the heathen. We grieve within hope and with hope because we know we will be reunited with our loved ones.

And so there might be people who are watching this program right now and they've experienced a deep loss in their life. The resurrection is what will make sense of that loss ultimately. the resurrection is this great hope that we grieve. 1st Thessalonians chapter 4, we grieve in hope. And 1st Peter 1 3 is a verse I've been memorizing right now. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has invited us into a living hope.

Why? Why can we have a living hope today? Why can we put one foot in front of the other? Because of the resurrection from the dead. And so I know that was a long answer, but it's something I'm really passionate about about why it matters today for those of us that have experienced.

loss, disappointment, adversity, a resurrection-centric-centric life will give us a living hope right now. And we need that message today. We live in a culture of despair and compare and despair. We need that resurrection hope. So body of proof, this is wherever books are sold, correct? Yes, ma'am. And like I said, I mean, it's a very short read. It's a simple read, which is someone who has written as many words as you have and has such a great understanding of the New Testament. I think it takes another level of understanding and skill to be able to break it down for those of us who are not New Testament scholars in a way that makes sense and is applicable. So I encourage everyone to go out and get this. Also encourage, I don't know, well, I can't say this. I can't open you up to this. But if there are

pastors out there who are wondering, how do I start an apologetics ministry at my church? How do I get an apologetics pastor? Is there, I don't want to say contact you, but is there any resource that you can point them to to where they can start thinking through this for their own congregation? Yeah, absolutely. go to Google and just Google my name. I've written a lot of op-eds about how we can get started. I've done extensive interviews about ways in which you can start, even if you're bivocational or if you're a volunteer. We need, every church needs an apologetics ministry. So please check that out. Know that there are great evidences for our faith. Help our people to go, stop going to Google

and start going to God's word when they have those questions. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, people, I say this all the time. Like, I love that people listen to this podcast, obviously. I'm thankful for it, but there are people who listen to this podcast because, and this is what I don't like, because their pastors are not answering questions. They are wondering, okay, you know, they might say I even have a pretty good pastor, but I don't know what to think about gender. I don't know what to think about abortion. I don't know what to think about these big worldview issues. And that's not to say that a pastor from the pulpit has to talk about those every weekend, but there has to be some resource in the church so that they're not going to TikTok. Because they might become interrelatable, but they

I might also be going to Joe Schmoe on TikTok who doesn't actually believe in the authority of the Bible. So pastors, your congregants have questions and they want to know the answers to them. And you've got to lock in your own worldview if you're a pastor. That's the other thing. You know, we can't give what we don't have. And we, I mean, I've been trying to bring this term back in vogue. We've got to catechize our churches. Yes. Yes. We have to catechize our people. Protestants need to be comfortable with that word. It's okay. You know, we have to catechize them. We have to train them up to stand and have a reaqize our. resiliency to their faith. And every day I wake up, I'm excited because what I'm finding in all those

churches, because I speak in churches of all denominations, Lutheran, all the way to Presbyterian, everything in between. Christians want to be challenged. They're sick of the dumbing down of Christianity. Yes. We have the dumbest sermons of all time that are being preached right now. And it is so incongruent. I can't reconcile that with the fact that we're living in the golden age of Christianity from an evidential standpoint. You know, just the great discoveries of the last decade even, even in the last year, it's unbelievable. I mean, Christianity's closest cousin is archaeology.

It's so well evidence. And unlike any other belief system in the world, Christianity says, hey, test us against history. Yeah. You know, and I want pastors to lock into that to not shy away from it because Christians are hungry for it. They want to be challenged. And that's what I'm finding. Yes.

Jeremiah, you show slides when you preach at your church that have fragments on them. Yeah, people love it. Yeah. You show fragments of a heelbone of Yeho Honan to talk about the archaeology to support the resurrection narratives. You show that on a Sunday morning worship. Yeah, man, people love it. They want more of it. Yes. And our brains are incredible. They have the capacity to ask and answer really profound questions. And that's really when I fell in love with what Christianity is and offers intellectually. And I think everyone has. that inner hunger and capacity. Thank you so much. Dr. Jeremiah Johnson. I really appreciate it. I encourage everyone to follow him. I think you're on, you're on social media, correct? But definitely buy his books and look into making sure that you have an apologetics ministry at your church. You are absolutely right. That's what we need. So thank you so much for taking the time. Thank you. We love your show. Keep on, keeping on. We're all praying for you. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Deist. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues

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