The Eric Metaxas Show - Keith Getty & Det J. Warner Wallace

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Welcome to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, I've got something very, very exciting, but I can't share it with you. Instead, I'm going to go to my guest, Keith Getty, Keith. How you doing? Hey, Keith, listen. Look, first of all, you and your beautiful wife, Kristen, who's not just beautiful. She's incredibly talented, as are you. You have a new album out called Confessio.

Yeah. Can I talk to you about the album? Oh, yeah. We'd love to talk about it. Okay, but before that, you and I were just talking off the air, your uncle-in-law, is that what he's called? Uncle-in-law, Professor John Lennox. Professor John Lennox, whom I quote throughout my new book,

is atheism dead. You've spent so much time around Uncle John that you, sometimes you hear his voice in your head. Is that true? No, no, never. And I'd like to read a statement from the Lennox family. Kristen and I, Chris has just sounded to be a statement which says that I would not wish to impersonate any member of her family on the air, but wish to congratulate Eric Matakshus heartily on his new book. Is atheism dead?

Is atheism dead? I like the way you pronounce it. Say atheism. Atheism. Now, that sounded like you were imitating Uncle John. Uncle John. I do quote him very much in the book. And of course, I love him.

and I don't know if we've even sent him a copy of the book, but he should know that I've ripped him off nine ways to Sunday in making the points that I make in my book. But we're here to talk about your album. Tell us, my friend, Confessio, this goes back to Irish-American roots. So you're in Nashville now, but you're from Ireland, and your wife is from Ireland. And talk about the album, Confessio, brand-new album.

Well, you kindly interviewed us before Sing Global last year. We started the family hym sing and did Sing Global all last year through the pandemic. And then we were, honestly, our heads were just fried. And so we went home for a year. So seven days after, seven days after Sing Global, we flew home, 9-11. It's an easy date to remember getting in a plane. And on 9-11, we flew back to Ireland. And we stayed in Ireland for the whole year.

Did that like John Lennox and C.S. Lewis and Alastair McGrath and many other people who you know. We come from that tiny little north coast of Ireland and we spent the year there. And this album really is a love letter to that. You know, we come from this place that Christianity is 17 centuries old, that until the 1980s gave more missionaries per capita than any country in the world. It's not, South Korea now gives the most. And but but also, but also this connection as you brought our four daughters who are all American citizens, he brought them back, We're all born in America. As he brought them back to their heritage and explained to them,

here's Boncranah and Donnie Gall, where John Newton's boat came in and he wrote, began to write Amazing Grace. Here's where Be that My Vision was written, here's our culture. And we began to realize that, even as musicians, that everything from country music to bluegrass, to gospel songs, to shape note, hymnody, to Americana, to Appalachian music, are all outgrowths of our own Scotch-Irish tradition that we have. And so this album was just really, I think it's a love letter to our heritage.

So you mentioned shape, note singing. People never talk about shape note. I love shape note singing. Have you ever participated in one of those events where they do shape notes singing? Not an official event. I've been in a room where we've tried it and done it a few times. And how does it go? Like if they sing, like they would sing Amazing Grace like, Amazing Grace.

Like it's a whole different. What is it? How do you describe it musically? It's really bizarre. It's beautiful but bizarre. No, well, I think what I love about it is it gathers a community together and it allows them to sing great hymns that their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers sang. And they sing them in harmony. And harmony represents, to me, obviously it represents musical of beauty,

but it represents all of us getting together with all our differences and singing to the Lord, you know, who is our hope and who is our Redeemer and who's given us this good news. And so, you know, it's a, it's a beautiful. beautiful thing. And, you know, I guess being back in Ireland and live in life at a slower pace, you know, there was a lot of that sense of community and learning the sort of the older, the older traditions again that was really fresh. Well, I want to challenge people to go online, go to YouTube or something and find Shapnote. Shape note singing is so beautiful. But you are right. There's no question that the Irish connection and Scottish connection to America and to the music,

it's just it's inevitable it's there and so so what have you done in this album confessio what kind of songs do you have in it and how do you connect these traditions no sure well it ranges from it ranges from taking some of the beautiful irish hymns like be them a vision and doing those taking some hymns that of irish origin so how can i keep from singing was written by robert lorry who like yourself moved to new york to help to help with christian community there in the last century, but his father was from Carrick Ferguson, County Antrim. And he came over and he wrote, he wrote hymns like Shall We Gather at the River and we're marching, design, all these beautiful old American names.

Wow. I didn't know that. Beautiful. There's also the interesting things like Kirk Willem. You know Kirk Willem, don't you? The brilliance, the saxophiless who sang, played the solo in Whitney Houston's, I will always love you. Let me just say, no. I'm really unfamiliar with Brittany's Oove. I'm embarrassed to say that as a musicologist that I'm unfamiliar with Brittany's Oove

and... Yeah, so Kirk Whelham. Kirk Willem, he and I have this argument about Amazing Grace because there's the John Newton Center and Donny Gall, which is the next county to ours.

And that's where Newton boat came in and he was shipwrecked and he became a Christian and there's the Amazing Grace Center. So we all believe that Amazing Grace is a Scotch-Irish tune that you can imagine being played in a wee whistle.

Kirk Willem, leaves, it's an African-American tune. Oh, he leaves an African. Yes, I've heard both. Yeah. Yeah. So he and I decided, so Kristen and her friend, Dana Masters, who's been Van Morrison's lead vocalist for the last decade, the two of them do a duet, an amazing grace, and then I play piano,

and Kirk Willem play saxophone. So it's two Scotch Irish and two African-American. We did a joint interpretation of that, which is great. It's like the Christian Ebony and Ivory, I would say. Probably, yeah, but it was, but of course, We remixed, as you know, Alison Krause and Kristen have sung together for years. And Alison Krause, we remixed a version they did it a few years ago of in Christ alone for the 20th anniversary of that. But we also set some, we did it as well with my soul for a new movie on Sabina Wormbrand that came out on Monday.

The movie is just out? I didn't know this. I had the privilege in my life of meeting Sabina Vornbrond and Richard Wormbron. these are two of the greatest Christian heroes of the 20th century, and there's a new movie I knew it. It's called Sabina, Tordred for Christ, the Nazi years. Sabina Tortured for Christ. So that film is out. I didn't know that.

I'm glad you told me that. The movies, we did the show they did. Wormbrand, part of his Christian conversion was hearing these two ladies singing it as well with my soul in a little church. And so the closing credits of the movie as it finishes is Christ and my wife. singing it is well with my soul in this music video. And it's really funny, I've got to tell you, you'd love this, Eric. We came to make the video, and it was a two-day shoot. And I said, I spoke to the director.

I said, listen, I'm really worried about this because I always play different parts in the piano. And we were having to mime on our recording. And he goes, son, you're only in four measures. So it's a five minutes, five minutes, ten seconds. And it's five minutes and four seconds of my wife and six seconds of me on camera. What is happening to this world? First there's Antifa, now this. I know.

Well, I'm just so glad to see you, but you're back now in Tennessee. Yeah, that's right. And I'll tell you something else. One of your friends, we just recorded an extra track for That Confess You, which is being added on the 3rd of December. Ricky Skaggs and Kristen have done an extra duet for this Irish-American record called Brightest and Best, which is coming out on the 3rd of December. So I'm going to make sure you have it,

It's what you can play out on your show on the 3rd of December. You know something? It really, it bothers me that I don't get to see you in person more often, that I don't get to sing. But I guess just cheers me up talking to you, Keith, even if you weren't related by marriage to John Lennox. And in my book, I quote John Lennox and Horatio Spafford, who wrote the hymn, it is well with my soul. He is featured in my book, is Atheism Dead. The world's getting very small. Okay, the album is Confessio.

Folks, I hope you'll get it. You can go to Gettymusic.com to find out where they're playing. Gettymusic.com. Keith Getty, give our best to Kristen, and God bless you, my friend. Thank you. Eric, it's always lovely to see you. Congratulations in your new book. Thank you.

I made my shame. But I made me a vow to the moon and stars. I'd search the Humph of Thompson bars and kill that man and give me that awful name. Well, it was Gatlinburg. Hey folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners Pete and Seth Talbot have never made a big deal about, but I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain like neck,

shoulder, back, hip, or knee pain, 1995, about a dollar a day. But what they haven't broadcasted much is that every time they sell a three-week quick start, they lose money. In fact, they don't even break even until about four to five months. after if you keep ordering it. Friends, that's huge. People don't keep ordering Relief Factor month after month if it doesn't work. So yes, Pete and Seth are literally on a mission to help as many people as possible deal with their pain. They really do put their money where their mouths are. So if you're in pain from exercise or even just getting older, or to the three-week quick start for

1995. Let's see if we can get you out of pain too. Go to Relieffactor.com. Relieffactor.com or call 800-500-584-800-384. Relieffactor.com. I use it. it works. Hey there, folks. I've got more good news. It doesn't end. Jay Warner Wallace is my guest. And then beyond that, his book is called Person of Interest.

Who's the person of interest? Jesus of Nazareth. This is a very exciting, provocative, and unfortunately important book. Jay Warner Wallace, welcome the program. Hey, thanks so much for him. You know, if I had known, Eric, that I was going to release this book. At the same time that Eric Metaxus is going to have a new book, I would have said, you know, let's wait until January. What am I doing trying to release a book

while you got a book out? I was thinking the same thing about my book. So here's what we have to do. We have to tell people, if you don't buy both books, you're crazy. You're dividing a friendship. You're destroying the body. Okay. That's right. Now look, seriously, this book, my book is not really about Jesus, actually. So my book is, I set a low bar for my book. Is it a low bar for my book. atheism dead. I just wanted to show, in a way, the scientific evidence for a creator. You don't have to say it's Jesus. You don't have to say, but to say there is no creator of any kind is at this point preposterous. I then talk about biblical archaeology, which makes it really clear that the Bible is certainly no collection of folktales, and it's probably totally historical, even though you can't

prove that it's totally historical. And then I talk about atheism. But I do not. go into what you go into in this book. So I think we could pitch it as their companion books. Like you read my book and you're like, huh. Okay, so now I am thinking about this Jesus guy. Anything I could read about that? Hey, Jay Warner Wallace has just come out with a book called Person of Interest. Seriously, this is an amazing book.

I don't want to do all the talking. So if you don't mind, tell my audience, the premise because it is actually really fascinating what you have have done in this book, Person of Interest. Okay, so here's the weird approach I took. I work cold cases, and a lot of the cases I get are what are called nobody murders or nobody missings, where somebody kills his wife or a wife kills his husband, and then claims that they ran off and they file a report, a missing persons report, and that's how we take the

case. And then years go by, no one works the case. Okay, so you, you, just to be clear, some people know this, some people don't. You are a cold case detective and you've been a cold case detective, a real cold case detective for a long time. And you're bringing those skills to this issue. So I don't want to interrupt, but just in case people think you're like blowing smoke, this is what you do. Well, I've done a bunch of these cases. They're actually on a dateline.

And several of these are nobody missing persons cases. And so what happens is they get away with it for a while because nobody has ever discovered. there's no crime scene ever photographed, is taken as a missing person's report. I opened the case. I had one case, Eric, I kid you not, that 30 years after the crime was occurred, she'd been missing for 30 years. Her family never once called our agency because the killer so thoroughly convinced the family that she had just run off.

Now, what do you do when you have no crime scene, no evidence from a crime scene, no, don't even have a body? How do you make a case like that? Well, I always tell people that if she'd banished on that day because he'd murdered her. It's like a bomb went off on that day. But bombs are always preceded by fuses that burn slowly toward the detonation of the bomb. And afterwards, there is shrapnel all over the blast radius. So we'll make the case by simply examining the fuse and the fallout. So I thought, well, look, if Jesus is who he said he was, and let's imagine a future world where every single New Testament

document has been destroyed. There are no Bibles. There are no New Testaments. It turns out in that kind of absent of crime scene, no New Testament, you could still determine the historicity and deity of Jesus from simply the fuse and fallout of history. That's what this book does. It takes a look at nothing other than just the history of unusual places that have Jesus' fingerprints all over them, like literature, art, music, education, science, and even non-Christian religions. It turns out you can reconstruct the story of Jesus from those aspects of culture in a way that may be surprising to people because I'm not just going to show that he's had big impact. I'm talking about being able to reconstruct the story from those aspects of culture.

Okay. And that's what we're doing in the book. So what you're doing, it's a beautiful thing. You're using logic. The same logic we use, as you've said, in crime detection. We want to know. People want to know what happened. We demand justice. And in most cases, there is a way to get there, including in what you call or what is called cold cases. There's no body. What do we do? You know what we do and you have applied your considerable skills to the murder, the execution of Jesus of Nazareth. So what is in this book? I mean, there's so much in. here. I was just looking through the illustrations. It's actually fair. I would say that makes it like a really fun read because there's so many different pieces of information. So let us let us know what is in here.

Yeah, well, actually, there's over 400 illustrations in the book because that's just the way I think of things in front of a jury. And it was good enough to let me spend two years building the jury presentations. And then I wrote a book from those stage presentations. That's what that book is. So it's usually every page has got some type of graphic element if it doesn't have a list. But here's what things I think you'll find interesting. I heard you recently being interviewed about your book with Sissy Graham, for example. And we talk about the impact of science and how science can demonstrate, well, I don't know people realize that science, the history of science, is standing on the shoulders of Jesus of Nazareth and his followers. As a matter of fact, the fathers of the

major disciplines in science, all of the major disciplines, from cosmology, from chemistry, biology, all the way to quantum mechanics and computer sciences. It turns out the fathers of those major scientific disciplines are all Christ followers. Okay, now hang on. Hang on. What you just said, this is the class they think like you say that and we move on. Ladies and gentlemen, did you hear what Jay Warner Wallace just said? I touch on most of this, not all of what you said in my own book.

This is huge news. This is huge news. And when you say Christ's followers, I mean, I would go farther and say that most of them, These are the fathers of these various disciplines in science were profound, devout Christians. That's not the kind of thing most people think. Most people think science diverges from faith. Yes, and you know, those people were so devout that they wrote in their personal letters and journals about Jesus of Nazareth. If all you had were the personal writings of the science fathers, you would get more information about Jesus than you get from the church fathers.

And I have a list of all of that in the book. That's amazing. That's amazing. Seriously, that's pretty cool. Wow. Well, it is. And so that's why I'm saying. You'd have to destroy more than the New Testament to get rid of Jesus. You'd have to destroy the entire history of science as we know it. I don't think anyone is teaching this to our young people. No one. No one is teaching this. So it's so dependent upon Christian worldview. As a matter of fact, it's been argued, and I think Demetius Souser wrote this quite well, that Christendom in Europe is what causes the scientific revolution. That's true. Yeah. But then you hear, well, look, everyone in. Europe and the 16th and 17th century was a Christian.

That's not the point. There were more people outside of Europe. Why didn't science explode in Asia? Why didn't a science explode in Persia? Or ancient Greece? I mean, look, there are many places that in some ways were more advanced than 16th and 17th century Europe. What is it about that time? And you're right.

So many people have written about it. I was not aware of this until I was researching my own book. And it's one of these things that it's such huge news. that we need to shout it from the rooftops because most people just have some baked in idea that the opposite is true. So I'm glad that that's one of the things you go into. Well, how about this? In terms of education, now, I don't get people to realize that modern education, as you know at the modern university, as you know it, it came out of three universities planted by Christfallers at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. Those three universities gave birth to the 24

daughter universities from which the scientists in the scientific revolution emerged. This is entirely, and by here's what's great about it. If you would research right now the top 15 universities in the world today, you would find they are all founded by Christ followers. The top 75 of the top 100 universities, in fact, were founded by Christ followers. Here's what's cool. If you were to visit those campuses, you would find that the original buildings in which they taught students still exist.

And on those buildings, you will find the images of Jesus that stay in of Jesus, the inscriptions of scripture from Jesus. You can reconstruct the story of Jesus just from the campuses of the top 15 universities in the world today. If you wanted to erase Jesus from history, it would take more than just the science fathers. It would take more than the scriptures. You'd have to destroy the top 15 campuses because they actually have the images and story of Jesus embedded on their buildings. I mean, wow, there's a lot here. the book is called Person of Interest, why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible.

I have to confess that I was myself, when I first, in two of my books I wrote about the resurrection, not in the new one, but I was myself genuinely astonished that you could use logic to effectively prove the case of the resurrection. I was sure that that had to be something you just take on faith, quote unquote. But a lot of these things are canards. They're just rumors, their myths, they're terrible ideas. And when you start using logic, so I want to challenge people,

dare to be logical. You'll get scared by what you find if you don't want to find Jesus. The book is person of interest, why Jesus still matters in a world that rejects the Bible. We'll be right back with Jay Warner Wallace. Don't go away. a zero, make like a mystery. Hey folks, Eric Metaxis here. Joe Biden and the Democrats have laid out the most socialist agenda our country has ever seen. Instead of following President Trump's blueprint that had the economy booming, the Dems are going to raise taxes, increase regulations, and skyrocket an already outrageous national debt.

If your retirement is in traditional investments, it is in jeopardy. Americans should be diversifying their investments with gold and precious metals. Gold gives you control over your wealth and protects you from market volatility, inflation, and a weakening dollar. When investing in gold, I turn to Legacy Precious Metals. Legacy Precious Metals has over 40 years of experience in helping Americans protect their finances, and this team is prepared to patiently consider your own personal financial needs. If you're looking to invest in gold, call the good folks at Legacy Precious Metals today at 866-473-6204 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. don't leave your retirement to chance friends contact legacy precious metals today that's 866

473 6204 folks I'm talking to jay warner wallace famous cold case detective who now applies his considerable skills as a cold case detective uh to the person of jesus the title of the book is person of interest what else is in the book that we can talk about on this program? There's so much. I just don't know where to start. It's loaded with good stuff. Well, I can tell you, the literature is one of those things we talk about in the fallout, right?

We talk about how much impact Jesus has had. There's no other historical figure who has been written about more than Jesus of Nazareth. You can check this with the Library of Congress. You can just check it on a Google book search. I mean, you will find that the second place finisher is pretty far below Jesus of Nazareth. Not only that, just from the writings in the first 300 years, I don't think people realize, that there are more non-Christian voices on ancient manuscripts in the first 300 years of Christianity, than there are Christian voices speaking about Jesus of Nazareth.

There's a sense in which not all you have are these Christian sources. Not true. So I've got a list in the book and an illustration of all of the non-Christian sources. That goes all the way from the non-canonical authors, all the way to Greek and Persian and Egyptian, and Roman sources to even Jewish sources, most of what they say about Jesus is not flattering. But they have to stand on the claims of the Gospels in order to criticize the Gospels.

The same way that the rumor mill about Elvis and all of the books that have been written about Elvis end up affirming the basic life biography of Elvis. Like, for example, they might say, yeah, and Elvis on this date, he stayed at a hotel in Memphis. And then they'll say, and during that time, he was sleeping with so-and-so.

Well, the sleeping with so-and-so part is just rumor. But you have to affirm a fact first that he was in Memphis on that night, which is true. The same kind of thing happens with the ancient sources about Jesus. They'll change the claims. They will start a rumor. But they build those rumors on true claims so that you can reconstruct the story of Jesus from the common true claims of all of the rumors. And that's what's so great about the evidence for Jesus. You have to erase more than just the New Testament.

You have to erase the history of early literature that's also written about Jesus. What this reminds me of, I mean, when I write my books and I wrote this recent book and in this book that you've written, if you're looking at things from a legal standpoint, not a scientific standpoint, but from legal evidence, you can prove the case, you can make a more than a reasonable case that God exists, that Jesus existed, that he rose from the dead. most people, including people of faith, they're not aware of that. They think I have to quote unquote take it on faith as though faith means parking my brains at the door. And it's just the opposite. If you park your brains at the door, you will not be a Christian or a believer in the Bible. Because you kind of have to, at this point, let's put it this way. At this point, the evidence is so overwhelming that I think it's really troubling,

to people who are atheists or somehow anti-Christian, and they're forced to look away, like the folks who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. They said, I don't want to know, because if I look through there, it's going to influence me. And so I dare people to read this book, person of interest, or my book is atheism dead. I dare you, because if you're interested in the truth, and everybody says, like, sure, I'm interested in the truth, but you can't prove it. Well, I dare you to look at the evidence because I think the reason you don't want to is because it's challenging something. It has to do with a person's will. They don't want to be troubled.

So they think, I'm going to look away. I'm going to let it ride. I'm going to ignore it. Well, I remember the standard is different, right? So the standard is not beyond a possible doubt for anything in the highest levels of criminal trials. It's beyond a reasonable doubt. What I mean is we tell jurors that I'm going to tell you up front, I'm not going to

be able to answer every question. I still have open questions about cases. And in no body missings, unless he confesses, I'm not going to be able to tell you, how he did it, how he got rid of her body, how he moved her car. I had these open questions in a case. Now, we found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but there were still open questions that needed to be asked. Now, later he confessed to this, and he gave us all that information, but at the time of the conviction, he hadn't yet. And so we have to be able to make a decision to render a verdict legally based on the fact you may still have open, unanswered questions.

But that's beyond a possible doubt. That's not our standard. It's beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, the same thing is going to be true for your faith in Jesus. Do I still have open questions, theological? Of course, we all do. The more you study theology, the more questions you're probably going to have. But you have enough evidence to render a verdict, to make a decision beyond a reasonable doubt. What often keeps us, and this is why we have a voir dire process of selecting jurors, is that we are trying to eliminate the jurors who hold presuppositional biases that will make them act either unfairly toward the prosecution or toward the defense.

both teams are trying to make sure we eliminate the far edges of the group that are presuppositionally biased against us. Well, you've got to realize when we're sharing the gospel with people, but you give it my book or you give Eric's book, you're going to find that there are people who hold those biases. And you cannot remove those by argument often. Those are the things that I typically will model Christ and pray about, because it turns out that is God who moves the heart toward the reasonable center that allows us to hear the gospel, begin with. But I think these kinds of books are important for those people who God is already moving and this need to know, need to have the barriers removed. Sometimes we've constructed false barriers against Jesus and against God's existence that books like this will help remove so the

gospel can be heard again. And that's what we're doing in this kind of a project. I don't ever think that my genius in building a case is going to convince somebody. No, God is going to use this, though, after I help remove barriers between the people who read the book and the gospel itself. That's almost exactly how I put it when somebody says, I'm going to give this book to this atheist, this hard quote. And I think, you know what, that may be casting your pearls before swine. You're wasting your money. They're not going to read it.

They have a bias against it. If people are interested in the truth, that's another story. I'm talking to Jay Warner Wallace, the brand new book, Person of Interest, Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects. Bible. We'll be right back. I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would now. Hey folks, all you out there know that My Pillow doesn't have box stores or any shopping

channels. They've been part of this canceled culture and they want to pass the savings on directly to you. So you can get the lowest price in the history of My Pillow for the classic standard My Pillow regularly 6998, now only 1999. promo code Eric. They also have queen size regularly 79.998, now 2498 with promo code Eric or King size regularly 89.998, only 2998 with promo code Eric. My pillow is not just pillows. They've got over 150 products, everything from sleepwear to slippers and dog beds, you name it. My promo code Eric also

works on my store.com. You can get my books and frankspeech.com. Go to MyPillow.com or call 1,800-978-3057.7. promo code Eric to take advantage of Mike's special offer on his standard MyPillow. That's MyPillow.com promo code Eric or 1-800-97783057. Folks, brand new book. Looks like a great book to me. I don't say that lately. Person of interest is the book.

Person of interest by Jay Warner Wallace. He is known as America's foremost cold case detective. Think about that. America's foremost cold case detective. a big deal. Jay Warner Wallace, how did you get that title? Because there's a lot of cold case detectives out there. They are working it. They're working hard. Who said that you were America's foremost cold case detective? Well, I'm sure there actually, I mean, just to be a big deal in your own mind is sometime where you start, right? So that's a lot of it. I think part of it also comes

from how many times I appeared on Dateline, which is probably just by virtue of the fact that we're right down the road from NBC Universal here in Los Angeles County. But I I think I have been on Dayline more than any other cold case detective. And so people start to think, well, yeah, the only, no, there's tons of really good detectives out there who are probably even better than I am. But sometimes you just ends up being the one who's the most publicized. Okay. So you're the best known cold case detective. Yeah.

If that. And you've turned your attention as a cold case detective to the Bible, to Jesus. And how is this book person of interest? the new book, different from previous books. What do you do in this book? What do you try to do that you didn't do in the other books? Right. I actually think there's no other book.

I mean, everyone likes to think that, right? But I think there's actually no other book that does this. So here's what we're doing in this book. I've got another book called Cold Case Christian, where I'm looking at the Gospels themselves. Are they reliable eyewitness accounts related to Jesus? That's considering everything inside the crime scene called the New Testament. This book rejects that, says, no, what?

Let's pretend like all those have been destroyed. what would we know about Jesus outside the New Testament? And that's what this kind of book does. And I think what it does is it answers certain skeptical claims. Like, for example, one of this, like, is Jesus just a copycat savior, another recreation of ancient mythologies? Well, I actually look at that as part of the fuse leading up to Jesus. There are a number, it's hundreds of ancient mythologies that have broad general similarities

to each other and to Jesus. But they're only broad. They're not specific. So these people would, these are the common. expectations of people who think about God. And although they shape out differently, I might commonly expect that a supernatural being will enter into the world in a supernatural way. So these mythologies often show that God enters in a supernatural way, but they're all very different in how they enter in. Well, Jesus also enters into a supernatural way. It turns out that the 15 common

expectations of ancient people groups in the thinking about God, they only have about six to 10 similarities in the ancient myths. No ancient myth has more than 10 of these, and some have as few as six, but there's one person who shows up in history who actually embodies all 15 of the ancient expectations of people who believe in myths. And it's Jesus of Nazareth. Now, doesn't it make sense that God would meet those expectations given that we're thinking about these as people designed in the image of God who think about God? And then he shows up matching our expectations about God. Well, I mean, I would go a step further or a step backwards and say that because God created us

in his image, he created us with those expectations. We long for meaning. We long for love. We long to be known. We long for justice. We long for truth. We long for all these things. And, you know, you say, where do those longings come from?

And why is it that they're met in Jesus? It's a curious thing. And so it is no surprise that all these various religions and mythologies, they're kind of echoes of the gospel, even if they happen before the gospel. And that's one of the things you talk about in the book. Yeah. As a matter of fact, what you're talking about too in your book, look, it turns out right now, if you pull humans on planet Earth, the vast majority, the vast, only about 7% of humans right now would say they're atheists or agnostics on the surface of the planet. Everyone else believes in some type of higher power, even cite studies that have been done now in Ivy League schools by non-Christians, by non-theists who will demonstrate that, yes, it turns out that our default position as children is not atheism. Our default position is some form of theism.

Young kids look at the created world and they infer a designer from what they think they see as design in the world around them. This has now been said by some researchers that this kind of theism, this kind of idea of a higher power is bred in the bone. These are by people who are not themselves believers. So this idea that we only teach our kids to believe in God is actually not true. They have a default position, which is inclined toward believing in a higher power. And these common expectations, even of moderns, are met in their most robust form in the person of Jesus. It's part of that fuse that's burning up toward the... This is why Paul says on Mars Hill,

hey, you folks are really religious. You believe in a lot of gods. I'm here to show you who the real God is, and he's basically revealing to them, as C.S. Lewis says, your myths come from the minds of your human poets. The Christian myth is from the mind of God grounded in what we call real things.

And this word for myth is not Lewis saying it's a lie. This is the story, the narrative about God that actually is true compared to your myths and narratives about God that are untrue. And so that's what Jesus does. He appears and he meets the expectations of the expectors. Anytime the expected meets the expectations of the expector, you get a really good result. And so God shows up in a narrow window in which these mythologies are still being worshipped. And that window I show in the book in one chapter is so narrow, this cultural fuse open opens up a red zone window of opportunity from about 29 BC to about 70 AD.

And guess who shows up in the middle of that window? That's a wild concept. Can you say more about that, about that window? Right. So if you take the overlap of when all the mythologies are being worship, because they're not all worship forever, Osiris worship eventually stopped. But if you can capture a window in which all these mythologies are still actively being

worshiped, so the expectations of people groups can be maximized in the person of Jesus, you get a window of several hundred years. If you overlap on that, the window of culture in the Roman Empire, which allows us a 200-year period of peace called the Pax Romana, in which now we have the roads and postal service and tolerance within the empire and a window of opportunity for the message of Jesus to travel, now the window becomes shorter. Then if you overlap the prophetic window of Daniel saying that the Messiah will come between the reconstruction of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, now you've got another overlap. Now you end up with a window that I kid you not.

I show it in the book is between 29 BC and 70 AD. Something has the opportunity to happen right there in that window that will change the world. This is crazy stuff, folks. I dare you to look at this. I actually came to a similar conclusion, not as detailed in my own book. When I realized that Jesus arrives just as Jerusalem has been rebuilt, it's never been more spectacular. Boom, he shows up. He predict it's going to be wiped out.

40 years later, it's wiped out. I mean, you think, who made that up? God, we'll be right back. I'm talking to Jay Warner Wallace. It's the Eric Mataxis show. Go to my website, Ericmetaxis.com. Sign up for the newsletter so we can send you all of these interviews because you want them and because you want to share them with your friends.

Jay Warner Wallace, what should we talk about in our final? moments together today. Well, I just want to encourage people that all of us have the ability to make a case for Jesus. This is not something that's unusual. I mean, scripture shows us. This is the kind of casemaker Jesus was. I mean, think about it. After the resurrection in Acts 1, it says that Jesus spent 40 additional days with the disciples,

giving them many, and depending on the translation, convincing proofs, that's the Greek where we use for evidence. Now, they put that for a second. He's just resurrected from the grave. Do you think I really need more evident? Apparently. Jesus is going to give me 40 days more of evidence. Now, that's an evidential approach.

So that even when John the Baptist has got doubts and sends his disciples, Jesus, he wants to know. John wants to know. Are you the one? Look, if you're Jesus, are you a little upset with that? You're thinking to yourself, really, John, you're my cousin who baptized me, who saw the Spirit of God descent? Really? You have doubts now? You want to know.

Tell you what. Go back and tell John what you just saw. And he cites the miracles he had worked in front of John's disciples. That's a very evidential approach. I think that what we're doing, Eric, is you and I are writing books that I think are important to the church, even right now at a time when the church doesn't know how important they are. There's an entire generation who wants to know not just what is true, but please tell me why you think it's true. Because this is what the culture is doing.

The culture is making claims about all kinds of things and saying they're based in evidence or based in science. Yet you religious folks, you want us to believe this stuff blindly? That was never the request of Jesus. Jesus, testimony in the first century in the Book of Acts is not your personal experience with Jesus or how he changed your life. Go read the Book of Acts. It's the eyewitness accounts of their resurrection.

Direct evidence was offered by way of eyewitnesses. Blessed Thomas are those who will not have seen this, but through your testimony will know this is true. Direct evidence. That's what testimony is. We have to make a better effort to give young people the evidence for why God exists, which is what your book's about right now, and why Christianity is true. And that's really what we're trying to do in these kinds of works.

Well, and again, I want to say that you can't force people to believe, which is why I love America, because at its core, we have religious liberty. The idea is that, look, if it's true, somehow it has to stand on its own or we have to encourage people to think about it, but you cannot force someone to believe. But if you're unwilling to look at the evidence, if you're unwilling to look through Galileo's telescope, I suspect you have a bias. And so I want to say to people,

I really do dare you to look at the evidence with an open mind. There are many books, not just my new book and Jay Warner Wallace's new book, but you could start there and see what books we've read. but the evidence is overwhelming. It's stunning. It's so stunning that I myself was stunned by how stunning it was. When I wrote my book, I said, I cannot believe I didn't know this.

I can't believe nobody seems to know this. It's almost, I think we're just living in an unprecedentedly exciting time in history, honestly, that it's possible for us to know these things. You know, there are no cold case detectives, you know, in the 18th century. there's something about where we are now that is enabling us. And I think God's doing it for, you know, various strange purposes, because in some ways the world's gotten darker, in some ways, you know, science is more advanced. We can do so many things.

I can talk to you, you know, via Skype on this program. So there's a lot here. But honestly, I think the big news is we're living in very exciting times. And if you're interested in really knowing, is there a God who created the universe who loves you and who has a plan for your life? Like, really, I'm here to tell you, and Jay Warner's here to tell you, yes, you can actually know that. It is true. We know it to be true. And we want you to follow what we followed to get there.

Jay Warner Wallace, congratulations on an important book, Person of Interest. Thank you, my friend. Thanks for having me, Eric. I really appreciate you.