The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW Greatest Detective Story Ever Told

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

J. Warner Wallace, a longtime detective working on old cases where witnesses and even original investigators were no longer around, looks at the Bible from the perspective of a cold-case detective in his book "Cold-Case Christianity". The perspective is sorely needed even in secular subjects as our society has lost its way, out of touch with all objective truth and critical thinking. ColdCaseChristianityBook.comFind out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

Welcome back and joining us now is Jay Warner Wallace. I said at the beginning of the program, everybody loves a great detective story. Well, this is the greatest detective story ever told. And he is a cold case homicide detective. And he is still doing consultations, but he is also a senior fellow now at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. His cases have been featured more than any other detective on NBC's Dateline. His work has also appeared on Fox News on true crime and many others. He's been awarded the Police and Fire Medal of Valor for sustained superiority award for his continuing work on cold case homicides

and the Cops West Award after solving a 1979 murder uh he also has a weekly podcast you can find him on youtube as well uh mr wallace are all those uh uh listed under cold case christianity is where they'll find that right yeah you can find me under jay warner wallace and all the social media stuff but yeah for sure that's that's helpful thanks good yes and I have I listened to his book years ago really enjoyed the approach and as I also said anybody who wants to have critical thinking he wants to look at the information that is presented to us most of us are doing some kind of a cold case investigation because we're not right there on the scene evaluating it so we have to

look at the credibility of the witnesses or the journalists who are reporting this to us. So this is something that applies to everybody. But I've said many times, you know, when we talk about whether or not there is a God, you know, the arguments for intelligent design, DNA, things like Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, all those are very convincing. Even before we had things like DNA, creation spoke to us. We knew there was a designer. You look at a building, you know that somebody built that building, that type of thing. I wanted to get you on, though, because you looked at this from the standpoint of, are

the witnesses and the text, is it credible in the Bible? Tell us a little bit about how you evaluate that yeah and a lot let's face it we could make a case for god's existence and i i would sometimes i'm asked to do that and but that case you would make you can make actually without even opening your scriptures you could make that just from science you can make it from the features of the universe but even if you did that you wouldn't necessarily be making a case for the god of the bible because if you're a theist and some uh you know, if you're a Muslim or if you're any strand of theism, that this case you would make for God's existence might also apply to your case

for your belief system. But Christianity is different in that unlike other worldviews that talk about God, Christianity makes a claim. It's not just a claim about the nature of God. It's a claim about a series of events that occurred in the first century. In other words, it's not that our scripture is a set of proverbial claims, like the wise wisdom statements of Baha'u'llah and the Baha'i faith. It's not like that. Baha'u'llah doesn't make any claims about what happens in history.

The New Testament Gospels do. And because they're making claims about an event known as the resurrection of Jesus that's set in a specific time in history on a specific location on planet Earth, well, now we've got a claim that we could actually investigate. And that's the beauty of Christianity is that it is confirmable or it is verifiable or falsifiable based on our investigation of the claims made, the historic claims made in the Gospels. Now, it's much like when a crime occurs 40, 50 years ago, and if I decide to reopen that case, how do I know? I've got cases that go back as far as 1972. How do you know in a case like that where you don't have access anymore to the eyewitnesses because they're dead, or you don't even have access to the detectives who wrote the first reports when they talked to the eyewitnesses, because often they're dead now too. Well, what do you do with that? You have no access to the witnesses and no access to the report writers. Well, this is the problem we have with the Gospels.

And I think you could apply the same approach how do i you know what are the what are the areas of eyewitness reliability and do the gospel authors pass the test when measured that way now i'll tell you this is the only way i knew to examine the christian worldview because i happened to be a detective when i first got saved i was 35 and i've been working as a, I was already a senior detective on my, in my agency. And I was, you know, using these, applying these techniques to cases. And so it wasn't like I was thinking, well, let me do something kind of unique or novel here. I thought that everybody who was going to examine these claims about history would want to examine them this way. I didn't know any other way to examine them. So that's really the system I took when I first encountered Christianity.

That's what I think is so interesting about it, and especially because it is an exercise in critical thought. As you said, the Bible is very rooted in a particular time and place and historical aspects. When you look at Luke, it's very clear, you know, this happened when this person was ruling and that type of thing. And so these are things that we can investigate. And when somebody makes a claim, you know, we're seeing this happening all the time. You know, somebody makes a claim about climate change or about man's contribution to climate change. You know, how do we evaluate that? The burden of proof is on the person who's making the claim, right? Yeah, it is.

And I'll tell you that everyone's making a claim. So here's what I would say. This is often leveraged against us, right? They'll say, look, you claim there's a God. We don't see God. We have no evidence for God. They would argue that. If you're claiming that there's something that exists when it's not obvious to the rest of us, well, that burden then is on you.

But that's not exactly how this works in criminal cases. You have an effect, a dead body. Okay. That's what I work. I work dead bodies. And then you have to figure out what is the most reasonable cause for that stuff you have in the crime scene. That's how this works. Now, if I'm going to suggest that there is a crime scene here, it's called the universe.

And we are in that universe. And the question is, how did everything in the universe come to be the way it is today? Now, I'm going to posit a cause. I'm going to posit that that cause is God, a supernatural being outside of space, time, and matter. If you think that you can get all the stuff in the universe without God, then you have to posit a cause also. You're going to say everything here is the cause of space, time, matter, physics, and chemistry. Okay, great. But we both have a burden now. I have a burden to show you why God is the best and most reasonable explanation. You have a burden to show me why space-time matter physics and chemistry are the most reasonable explanation.

We both share a burden because we're trying to explain the cause for what we see in the scene. So I don't like when people try to, you know, this is why it's so important to be, like you said, this enterprise of critical thinking is so important because we have to kind of think, well, how do I think about things critically and including my own faith? And if you don't think that that's important now, you probably haven't given your kids yet the glowing rectangle called a smartphone, because it turns out that once your kids yet the glowing rectangle called a smartphone because it turns out that that once your kids have that and sadly i see parents giving these things to their kids when they're you know their kids are like 10 years old well you've just introduced your child to a world that is demanding

evidence and thinks it has evidence for their beliefs and so they're adopting views that they think are based on science based on this kind research, based on a kind of thinking that they don't see in us as believers if we aren't applying the same approach to our faith. They think that on our side, we have people who just have wishful thinking, and on the other side, it's based on data and facts. Well, that's not necessarily the case. I want us on this side to be able to say no my faith is grounded in in facts as a matter of fact this this whole word hope that's used in the new

testament is not the kind of word that we use out like in our english language hope kind of means like wishful thinking i'm in los angeles county i'm close to los angeles kind of one county away and i worked in los ang Los Angeles County my entire career. And we've got like all kinds of sporting teams. So when I say, you know, are the Rams going to win on Sunday? Well, I hope so. That word kind of means, well, I don't know, but maybe. Well, okay.

Well, that's different than the kind of hope that's used in Scripture. In Scripture, the word hope is really a level of certainty, which is much higher, a level of confidence, which is much higher because it's based in something that can be known. So when we say we have hope in God, it's because we know enough to know that our hope, that our trust is confidently placed. So I think that that's the difference. And we need Christians to realize that difference and to help communicate that to the next generation or get ready that the tide is going to swing. And it already has started to swing against us.

And it's because we don't take the same approach the world takes. We kind of like the ones who are hoping this is true, and they're the ones who know what's true according to kids. Well, we have to kind of help our kids to see that we know what's true as well. That's right. Yeah, this all falls into what Christians call apologetics. I think a lot of people look at this and they, apologetics? What are we apologizing for?

Because that's another word that's changed meaning, just like you talk about hope, right? Apologetics used to mean that it was a defense, and it was that way from ancient times up until about the middle of the 1800s. And then it became, well, an acknowledgment that I've done something wrong. I'm at fault. And that really is kind of the way that most Christians approach when they talk about apologetics. Usually they apologize now for being a Christian instead of having a rigorous defense of it. So we need to move back to the definition of apologetics that preceded the apology that's out there, I think. Yeah, I'll tell you, I think every one of us who claims to be a Christian believer and I say this to juries all the time we tell jurors that we are going to tell them everything they need to know but we cannot communicate

everything that could be known because we don't even know everything that could be known in other words you're going to have to render a verdict even though you're probably going to have a few open questions this is true for every juror who's ever sat on a jury. They've had to render a verdict, but they probably would have, if you asked them, they probably would have said, you know, I wish I had the answer to this question though. And often we know that someone did it because they haven't confessed to it. We don't know exactly how they did it.

That's an open question. Yet you can still render a verdict and determine truth, even though you have open questions. The same thing is happening for us as Christian believers. There's an evidence trail. And like in a suspect in a case in a jury trial, that evidence trail seems to be pointing directly. It's leading right to that defendant at the end of the table. Now, it turns out it's not leading to his right two feet or to his left two feet.

It's pointing right at him, but it stops just short of him. So the question is, am I reasonable in taking the step across what I call the open questions? You're going to have to take a step from the end of the evidence trail across your unanswered questions to render a verdict. The same thing is true with Christianity. There's more than enough evidence that points to the reliability of scripture, to the existence of God, to the resurrection of Jesus, but I can't answer every question you want. And so you're going to have to take a step from the end of that evidence trail. But by the way, that evidence trail does not just, it points right to this conclusion. It doesn't point a foot to the right or a foot to the left. You're going to have to step across the end of the evidence trail to make a reasonable

inference. Now we call that a step of faith, but it's not blind. Now here's the sad thing about it. Most of us can make a better case for why we think the Rams are going to succeed in the NFC West than we can for why Christianity is true. And this is, in other words, there's something already that you are, I never call myself a Christian apologist. I'm a Christian case maker. I make a case for Christianityity but i think every christian ought to be a christian case maker it's about turning us in that direction but you're already able to make a case for something really well i don't know what it is it's probably some hobby if you're a woodworker you know which tools you make a case for which tools you ought to use what kinds of cuts you ought to do if you're somebody who's got other

hobbies a collection you know what to collect what's not a value what is a If you're somebody who's got other hobbies, a collection, you know what to collect, what's not a value, what is a value. You're geeked out on something already. The question is, are we that prepared to share our faith? Do we know enough about what's true? And this is something we don't have to teach our kids. They'll catch it. They'll catch it if we just are somebody who is, I mean, I talked about this all the time with my boys growing up. And my boys already know what I'm going to say on any number of topics. They already know how I'm going to think about it. And I didn't teach them really, hey, guys, when this comes up, I want you to think this way. They just watched me do it.

And because they watched, they caught it. And so I think this is something we can do for our children, even if not having to be all that intentional. Let's just live our faith differently. Let's just think about our faith differently and verbalize that. And it turns out our kids are going to catch that anyway. That's right. That's exactly what we see talked about really in Deuteronomy 6. When you're going about your life, you're walking in life, going down the road, you talk to your kids about it. And that's exactly true. Things are coming up all the time. Whenever you look at what is happening in the culture, what is happening in the news,

every bit of it really reflects back to the ultimate question about God and his existence and his interaction with us, I think. One of the big things that we have, though, that is a real obstacle is not whether or not in terms of critical thinking. We have a generation that doesn't even want to do any critical thinking. They don't even believe that there is such a thing as truth. And we call that postmodernism because during modernism, you had a lot of people who would make arguments using evolution or initially it was archaeology against Christianity. Now they don't bother to do that.

They just say that there is no truth or I've got a truth, you've got a truth, everything is subjective. How do you handle something like that? Well, I always tell people that everyone believes there's a truth. If you think there's no truth, you believe that that is true. So you believe the least one truth, that there is no truth, but it's kind of self-defeating. But the reality of it is, it's how do we ground truth? So you're right. If all truth is just a matter of my personal opinion, in other words, if I'm trying to determine something is true, all I have to do is look inwardly. Well, that's really fast. It's the lazy way to find truth. It doesn't require any research. I just make a decision

and how I feel determines what the truth is on this matter. But that doesn't require any effort at all because you have immediate access to your feelings. We have to help people to realize that there are two forms of truth. There are subjective truth claims and there are objective truth claims. And there's a difference between those two. And we all agree that there are differences. We just haven't thought about it carefully. This is why I write a book like Cold Case Christianity. I'm trying to figure out how do I help people to see this is not a matter of my personal opinion. I'm not a Christian because I like it better than other things. I don't even like it sometimes. I mean, this is a hard worldview to live, right? I mean, it makes demands on me that are against my fallen nature. It prompts me, it encourages me, it kicks me in the rear to do things that I wouldn't otherwise do, to hopefully be a better

person. And that's not an easy project because we aren't good by nature. We are pretty desperately fallen by nature. So this is a hard worldview to maintain because you have to surrender constantly. You have to surrender your will to the will of God living in you. Think about this, of all the theistic worldviews out there, ours is the one in which God does not just fight alongside you. If you join the team, God does not just fight your battles. God resides in you uh very different very different claim and so that just means we have to get out of the way and let god is god alive in us is is jesus alive in us and that's a very different kind of claim so so for me i'm helping young people to

say okay look if you are the determiner of the truth, like you say, for example, chocolate chip cookies are the best dessert. Okay. Well, that's a subjective claim because you as the subject are making it true. Now, a different kind of claim, isoniazid is the cure for tuberculosis. Okay. That's a claim that I don't determine it. I don't make it true by believing it. Because if that was the case, I could say, I'd rather take NyQuil. nyquil is now the cure for tb well now it turns out nyquil isn't the cure for t because the subject doesn't get to determine it that's determined by the object known as isoniazid is it the cure so that's an objective claim about reality it's not subjective like chocolate chip cookies are the best dessert. It's objective that isoniazid

is the cure for tuberculosis. And we have to make the determination, which claims in the world around us are just a matter of opinion, subjective, determined by subjects, even groups of subjects, or are they objective? So the claim God exists, it might be a false claim, but it's not a subjective claim. I cannot make God exist by changing my mind. I cannot keep God from existing by changing my mind. He either exists or he doesn't. It's grounded in the object known as God. Now, there are false objective claims.

As a matter of fact, once you determine that a claim is objective rather than subjective, the only thing left to do is determine if it's true or false. And by the way, it's stupid for us to get online and battle with people over subjective opinions. Who cares? But we ought to be getting online and arguing with people about, or at least encouraging people to look at the truth when it's an objective. If someone's taking, your family is taking a NyQuil to cure their tuberculosis, I would hope you would stop them and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not a matter of opinion. That's actually not going to work because there's an objective truth about Isanias. Well, that's true for all of us going forward. The kinds of conversations we ought to be having

with our young people are about those objective claims about reality. God exists. That's an objective claim. It might not be true, but it's objective. What's left to do? Determine if it's true or false. Jesus is the way, the only way to that's an objective that's not an opinion i can't make it so by changing my mind i can't keep it from being so by changing my mind it's an objective claim about reality it might be false but we ought to be talking about those things with our students to make sure they know the difference between subjective and objective claims and how to determine what yeah we want to investigate this to see does god exist is the bible why would i write a book like cold case christianity i'm writing it because i think that christianity

is demonstrably true it's an objective claim christianity is is is true is something that our kids need to know it is a matter of of opinion. Because yeah, you're right. We are getting lazier and lazier. And because of that, we are no longer looking outward. If I said, you know, I could either earn a doctorate and become an anesthesiologist by simply wanting it and trusting my own opinions about the medications, or do I need to go to school to learn what is objectively true about those medications? Well, which of those two kinds of doctors do you want yes i think in the end it's

much easier i can become a doctor tomorrow if i can just will it but i'm going to take you know 10 years to do it if there's objective truths that i need to learn can you so you can see kind of why young people are more inclined to just look for those truths that are grounded internally because they're immediately accessible they're easy to grab and on just a matter of opinion so that's where i think we're at in the culture and we just need to help our students to see the difference between those two kinds of truths yes that is exactly right and and that is a key thing that affects all aspects of our life as you point out it's the easy path to take uh to say well you know we're not going to even debate the truth anymore. We're just going to go with what I feel like. And that's an important thing, because when

we talk about the difference with Christianity is that God is, you know, not there necessarily even fighting your battles for you, but he's there in you, working in you. And so there is a spiritual aspect of it. And how do we balance that feeling that we have, the directions that we are trying to go? We have to balance that against some objective standard. I think that's, you know, we don't want to have simply a rational knowledge of God. I know about God and that type of thing. We're not looking at the Bible from that standpoint, but we are looking at it from the standpoint, as you mentioned before, we need to question as to whether or not what we believe is actually true. And we shouldn't be afraid to question that because the Bible can stand on its own if we examine it. And so that's one of the things we

see many religions will say, well, you know, just pray about this, that this book is true or whatever, and then you get kind of a subjective feeling about that. But again, that's one of the things that I like about what you do with Cold Case Christianity. You look at it and you say, well, because this is rooted in factual historical claims, we can evaluate this, and that actually builds our faith. It doesn't become just an intellectual exercise, but you have to have the two things go together. You can fall off on one side or the other of that horse, can't you? You said it perfectly, because when I was growing up, I was not surrounded by believers. I'm in Los Angeles County.

I don't know if that's just the way it was back in those days. I didn't know a lot of Christians. I was never asked by a friend to go to church, that kind of thing. But my dad, who was a very committed atheist, just like me, and he was a cop, just like I was first, I reopened as a cold case detective, a couple of his cases. So I definitely knew what he was going through. And I had his appeal for the most part. I would go to church with my wife if she wanted to go to church for Christmas christmas or easter but i was completely disconnected and thought it was all just you know rubbish okay so that's fine that's my dad now when he remarried he remarried a woman who quickly became a mormon and they had six children together so all my brothers and sisters are raised lds and you're

absolutely right i think all of us as humans we do have a high appreciation for evidence. We do. The question is, what are we accepting as evidence? And for a lot of us, you know, talk about this in the book, there's two forms of evidence, direct evidence and indirect evidence. Direct evidence is simply eyewitness testimony. Indirect evidence is everything else. DNA is indirect evidence. By the way, indirect evidence is also known as that ugly word, circumstantial evidence. But indirect evidence is everything you think is really hard evidence. There's no such category as hard evidence. There's just eyewitness statements and everything else. Everything else includes DNA, fingerprints, blood spatter, gunshot residue, whatever material evidence you want to compare. That's all indirect evidence. Now, most people, when they're thinking

about their theistic worldview, they are Now, most people, when they're thinking about their theistic worldview, they are evidentialists, but what they're accepting as evidence is an experience, a personal, it's a direct evidence. I directly saw this happen in my life, and I can't imagine that being a coincidence. So therefore, that served as me as evidence that my theistic worldview is true. And everyone, if you're a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Baha'i, a Mormon, everyone does this, okay? Now, I hope that we're not doing that too,

because if you were encountering somebody who's a Mormon who says, yeah, this is true because I had this experience, would you consider that evidence? Look, we've had experiences too, I get that, but we have to measure our experiences against the evidence and the claims of the book i'm not doubting that my mormon family has had experiences my question is do they really indicate that mormonism is true you can attest you know experiences can come from any number sometimes i've seen even christians say what seems to me

like a coincidence as an evidence that God exists, that Christianity is true. We can do better than that. If you find yourself sharing your faith in pretty much the same way a Mormon would share theirs, you're probably not doing it right. Because it turns out you don't believe that Mormonism is true, yet here you are sharing your faith in the exact same way. I had an experience that demonstrated that where I was raised in the faith. These are the most popular ways that people express their belief. We can do better. We could say, you know what, I had this experience,

and then I started to investigate to see if Christianity might be the best explanation for it. And here's what I discovered about Christianity. All of these details about the objective life of Jesus of Nazareth in the first century and how he rose from the dead, that, look, you can do the same thing with the book of mormon you will find no corroboration for the book of mormon remember

the book of mormon actually describes a thousand years of history on the north american continent of which there is not a single bit of verifiable confirmation on any of it now you got to think about that for a second i don't expect you know I know I have a a realistic view of corroborative evidence as a detective a corroborative evidence just gives you a small percentage of what the eyewitness says occurred you cannot it's not a video you don't have videos from the first century so the question then becomes you know I don't expect to get a huge percentage of the of the testimony uh corroborated but I expect to get a huge percentage of the testimony corroborated, but I expect to get something corroborated. And when I see that there's nothing corroborated in the holy book, I'm suspicious. You ought to be also. So I think we have to help our students to realize that, hey, we believe this

is true, but not because we want it to be true. Because here's what's happening. And you know this, David, the times are changing. And it's not going to be easy to live as a young christian in a culture that now not only rejects christians but rejects the teaching of the master and and trust me when they reject the teaching of your jesus they are rejecting your jesus yes and the teaching of jesus is no longer acceptable in a culture that has changed their views on gender identity on marriage on the sanctity of life, on those things that Jesus taught clearly about. And if you're going to say, well, you know, Paul didn't understand what we understand today. What do you think that book is?

Do you think that book is the word of God? Do you think that God doesn't, there's going to be a new revelation about how we ought to live. We're, then let's look for the new revelation, but it's not's going to be from god and i don't see it the last spokespeople for god are still recorded in scripture and until god has i don't think god's changed his mind about any of that stuff yeah so i think it's important for us to teach our kids that this is true and i'll tell you one last story about that my son david is an anesthesihesiologist and he's a pediatric anesthesiologist. And when he was in his biochemistry undergrad work, he will tell you that he, you know,

wasn't probably living like a Christian, but he said, because he knew from all the stuff we had studied as a young man, I was a youth pastor. I was his youth pastor. And we always talked about the science behind our beliefs. And he knew in a DNA lab he was working, he said, you know, I knew even if I wasn't living it, I knew it was true because I knew there was no way to explain the stuff I was working unless, of course, there was a mind behind the code. And he knew that he was stuck with God, right? And that's all we do for our kids is to make them really uncomfortable in the season of their running because that's coming

probably for a lot of our kids that's right and i don't i'm fine if my kids run i want them to be really uncomfortable while they're doing it and it doesn't need to be from my nagging it just needs to be from what they know is true that's right i remember uh and i remember the guy's name he's a country western star he said yeah i grew up in a christian family he said didn't keep me from sinning kept me from enjoying it yeah exactly you know what i think in some ways well and he might be doing much more sarcastically right but the reality of it is is that we ought not get comfortable with our misbehavior right and so if that's all you can do for your kids is make them uncomfortable with their misbehavior you're probably doing a good good job for your kids right so well you know you mentioned the archaeology stuff and i think that was one of the the key things and and you know you look at the

book of mormon it came out at a time when one of the major criticisms of the bible was this stuff is all made up there's no such thing as a hittite tribe and you know and all the rest of this stuff right and then they started looking and doing archaeology and they started finding all this stuff i remember taking my kids to the the British Museum and we saw the big relief up there about Sennacherib and the story that about how he attacked Jerusalem and other things like that they had a big They had a large Chip actually that it was a small part of the one of the columns there the the temple of Diana in Ephesus And and yet, you know, they found these things by

following the biblical record. You know, they would say, well, it says we know where this thing is, and it says that it's over here, so we would follow it that way. And so they were able to find these things and corroborate that. But let's talk a little bit about the reliability of the witnesses. You know, what is it that makes these witnesses reliable? Yeah, so I think that when we look at eyewewitness testimony it's an important part of our case it is our case people say what evidence do you have for the for the uh um for the resurrection and and when i hear that it it exposes for me at least that they clearly don't trust that what the gospels record is true it's like they want some other source but But could you imagine to have four

ancient sources that describe the same event? That's not bad. Of course, if you don't trust any of them, well, the question then becomes, well, why don't you trust them? So I think that the biggest work for me, and I was one of those guys, okay, yeah, you have some ancient records, but they're all Christian records. Well, hold on. Think about this for a second. It's not as though these are, that's not a fair argument to leverage against the gospels. Let me give you an example of that. Let's say, and I use this in the book, Whole Case Christianity. Let's say I'm working a bank robbery. And in this particular robbery, a guy walks into the bank and he walks up to the teller and he's got a quiet demand note robbery, right? And as he walked up, he wasn't making a big scene.

He was just getting in line. And as he was in line, there's a woman behind the other side of the office who's behind a desk who's the assistant manager. And she happens to recognize this guy right away from high school. And she's like, you know, oh, I want to talk to this guy when he gets done with the teller, because he was a great guy. You know, all star athlete, top grade, you know, just I want to see what he made of himself what happened in his life well now this dude is doing a bank robbery and and she looks at her co-workers face and it's clear this guy's doing a robbery in real time and she is shocked because she knew this guy's just call him robert smith she knew robert smith in high school and to now okay when the whole thing is done and i come to the bank to do the interviews, should I interview her about Robert Smith? Well, no, she's biased.

She thinks Robert Smith is a bank robber. You can't trust anything she says. She's a Robert Smithian. She thinks, no, look, that's not, that's a stupid approach, right? Because you're going to say, well, no, hang on. She didn't start off thinking that Robert Smith was a bank robber. She arrived at that decision because she saw it. It was after it happened that she's like, now I'm in. He's a bank robber. She arrived at that decision because she saw it. It was after it happened that she's like, now I'm in. He's a bank robber. The same thing happens with the gospels. It's not

as though these people, especially Matthew, this guy named Levi, who is not even liked by anybody. He is a tax collector. This dude is not looking for the Messiah. He's not a disciple of John the Baptist. He's not part of the original group but got jumped into with jim with jesus he's he's a guy who was on the outside looking in but after watching that stuff for three years he's like dude i'm in now i'm a christian now can i interview matthew well he didn't start off believing that jesus was was the christ but he ended up there and it's why on the of observation, just like the lady in the bank. So we have to at least ask the question. Now, so that's, first of all, don't throw out the gospels as though they can't be trusted. Let's test the

gospels. I don't trust eyewitnesses. I test them. Now, if they pass the test, I trust them. And there's a four-part test, right? This is what we do in our jury instructions in California. It's 13 questions that we allow jurors to ask when they are considering eyewitness reliability on the stand. And those 13 questions fall into four categories. You know, were they really there to see what they said they saw? The person who's testifying too. Can they be corroborated in some way? And I have, like I said before, I have a reasonable expectation about corroborative evidence. Three, have they changed their story over time? Or Have they been honest and accurate? And four, do they possess a bias?

Those four categories are really what we look at to see if an eyewitness is reliable. Now, as I did that, it took the better part of a year. When I was first examining Christianity, I have a Bible here on my shelf that I bought, a pew Bible. I walked into a church, this pastor, I'd been avoiding it for many years i hadn't been to this church for anything any other reason and i really had never stepped foot in an evangelical church for anything other than like a wedding or maybe a funeral i don't remember if i had attended a funeral so i so i really had no idea what was going to expect my family growing up were kind of like cultural Catholics, like holiday Catholics.

So I knew what a mass looked like. And I thought it was nonsense, to be honest with you. I just, as an atheist, you know, I was never comfortable. But I walked into this church, this pastor seemed decidedly regular, you know, just like a regular guy. And he said that Jesus was the smartest man who ever lived. And that provoked me. It provoked me to buy a pew Bible. You know, one of those ones they sell for pews, just a cheap $6, $7 Bible. And I started to read the gospels. And I applied those four aspects of eyewitness reliability to the gospel authors. Do they pass the test?

I think they are written early enough in history to have been written by people who were present and in front of people who were present to fact check them. I don't think that they're written in the second century. I think they are very early in history. And in the book, I try to make a case for why they are early. And trust me, that's one of the objections your kids are going to hear. If they're in a Bible class in a secular university, they're going to come out thinking these things were written in the third century. And that is not true. Two, they they can be corroborated in any number of internal and external evidences of which archaeology is just one there are many other ways you could corroborate the claims of the scriptures and i go through those in the book three i don't

think they've changed over time i don't think the story, the miraculous story of Jesus is a, is a, like an exaggeration, a collection of additions over time where they added all the supernatural stuff. Don't believe that. I can show why that's the case in the book as well. And finally, I don't think they possessed an ulterior motive because there are only three motives for any misbehavior. I talk about those in the book. And they don't possess those motives. So, again, if I'm like, no, can you find a way? And this is what's so beautiful about our faith system.

David, you know that there is enough reason to reject the scriptures if you so choose to do it. Because God is gracious and he's not going to bully you into your faith. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be genuine unless you had the freedom to reject it. And God has given us that dangerous free agency. Why? Because God is love. Not God can love, God creates love. No, it says that God is love because he's triune in nature, has been in an eternal love relationship from the beginning of time in the triune nature of God. And he is love because he's triune in nature has been in an eternal love relationship from the beginning of time in the triune nature of god and he is love if he's going to create a world he's going to create a world where love is possible because that's what a loving god would do but the problem

with a world where love is possible is that it has to be a love with a dangerous prerequisite called free agency you cannot love if you're not free to hate. That's the problem. Now, what gracious God does is he creates a world in which there is free agency and then provides you with a book with all of the guidelines so you will not abuse your free agency. Now, you can choose not to read the book, but then when you abuse your free agency and do something despicable, that's not on God. It is logically impossible to create a world in which love can emerge without first creating a world in which we have free agency. We're not just robots. You know, when your doll says, I love you, doesn't really love you.

It's just programmed to say that. So it turns out if you want beings who can really, truly, freely love love you have to create the dangerous world we live in and that's what god does but he's given us the guidelines so we don't abuse our free agency so he's done everything you would expect a loving god to do parents do the same thing and so i think in the end i have to look at that world i'm living in and say yeah i mean i've got a bible that i can choose to reject because I have free agency, that dangerous prerequisite. But when I do that, that's not on God.

That's on me and my rebellious nature. And what I like that you do, you know, a lot of times people look at external sources. And again, there's external sources that do help to corroborate this when we look at archaeology or other things like that. But you really look at the Bible itself, corroborating itself. And because we can fall in the trap if we're so reliant on external things of what they used to call higher criticism. We're going to take something and we're going to,

from an elevated position of science or whatever, we're going to take a look at the Bible. And of course, many prominent scientists were very active Christians. They had no problem with the critical thinking of it, and they would look at it as God says in Isaiah, come let us reason together, right? And that is the key thing. We don't check our reason at the door, but we don't, but there still is an aspect of faith, as you pointed out.

It's not a blind faith. It is a confident expectation, going back to hope, as you talked about before. And so I think that is the key thing, and I think it's very important what you do in cold case Christianity in terms of looking at, you know, the evidence that we have that is within the Bible, within the New Testament specifically, and how that corroborates from a rational point of view, from the types of things that you would do as a detective, who, as you said, in a cold case, you can't – all the evidence that you're going to have has already been collected by people who are no longer around, the witnesses are no longer around.

And that really is what we all have to do in terms of investigating this we all have to do a cold case christianity i think uh i think you're i think you're right i think if we can help our kids to do it uh and like i don't want to suggest in any way that my superior intellectual ability leads me to this conclusion look it's all God top down. And what part of it is, is am I going, and that's why the first chapter of our book talks about the first skill that any detective has to have. And that is to enter the room with your hands empty. Do not make up your mind before you get there. Surrender your prideful nature to this, because we all think I already know. And if we don't, if we do that uh we're going to end up with a case where um you

already arrive at the conclusion you started with and you ignored everything in between because you are came in thinking you or don't be a know-it-all is what i call it don't be a know-it-all you have to at least you know that's why the hardest part i think david about our world view is that it begins with the thing that it it is let's put it this way. I just wrote a book called The Truth and True Crime. It comes out next year. And I've examined in it the nature of humans, biblical anthropology. And I also look at it in terms of what new studies show.

I'm impressed by the fact that my last 35 years, sociological studies and researchers have discovered that there's one human attribute, above all human attributes, that will change your life for the better and contribute to human flourishing. It'll make you a better employer, a better employee. It'll make you a far better student. You'll be able to determine truth from error far better. You'll have deeper, more connected relationships. You'll have better mental health, better well-being and better physical

health you'll live longer if you adopt this attitude what is that weird attitude it's this thing that researchers secular researchers not christians call humility oh what a surprise well it turns out that's an ancient attribute which is all over the pages of scripture is that every problem isn is us being prideful and thinking we know. When if we could just, now here's the problem with our worldview. It begins with an act of humility.

That first act that says, you know what? I am exactly what scripture describes. I'm not all that great. And there is a God and I'm not him. That first act of bending your knee leads to a life predicated on humility and every thing you adopt from scripture will be an act of humility. So I think in the end, that's

the problem we have. And it's hard in a culture that which is all about me, me, me, me, me, everyone's social media profile, who's got more likes, who's got more views? What does your bio say about you? Are you important? Do you have a little check by your name? This is a world we're living in right now where just the opposite of humility is advanced. We have to help our kids to see that humility is still important. Yeah, that's true. You know, when we look at politics, we talk about a lot here on this program, people get really scared when they see politicians who, you know, secular press and everything, they get really scared when they see politicians who the you know secular press and they get really scared when they see a politician talking about god and i said well you need to understand this person really is a christian uh that they understand they're going to be accountable to god

and that they are not god you ought to be concerned about the politicians who think they'll never answer to god and are proud enough to think that they are, they need to rule the world. You know, that's, that's what really should, should, uh, put fear into people's heart. Uh, pride is a very dangerous thing. It's something that seems to drive most of the people in public life. And most of us, if we're, if we're honest about it as well, it's a constant fight against pride, regardless of who we are, but especially for the politicians that are constantly promoting themselves, uh, such an excellent book. Uh, Thank you so much for coming on, Jay Warner Wallace. And tell us where people can find your podcast, your website, the books that you've got as well.

Yeah, we're at coldcasechristianity.com. And if you want, we are offering a great package with this new book. We have just the 10th anniversary we're publishing right now. And we want people to get better trained as case makers. We've got an entirely free 10 and a half hour training course that's available with the book and you can find that at coldcasechristianitybook.com okay great coldcasechristianitybook.com thank you so much for what you do it's been a fascinating uh talk with you interview with you and i really enjoyed the book when i read it years ago thank you so much great to have thank you david i appreciate

you having me i appreciate it so much thank you have a good day uh we'll be right back folks In a world of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. You're listening to The David Knight Show.